A Surplice of Spin

A very long time between posts...

2009-09-04T01:21:00.002+01:00

Hi there,

Thanks for visiting! I've moved to a new blog: http://surpliceofspirit.blogspot.com/.

Cheers,
Melanie

Some good tips for writing online

2007-11-15T13:26:00.000Z

Er, it's been a long time between posts!

Came across an interesting post today about myth-bashing in newsrooms from the Media Guardian's, Jemima Kiss. She reviews three main conceptions about online journalism, posed by Online Journalism Review editor Robert Niles.

He says that:
- Detail is good
- Attention spans are not the issue
- Get the figures right

All sage advice really, for anyone writing for an online audience.

New white paper on Social Media

2007-08-23T10:54:00.000+01:00

We've just released a new white paper on social media, called Tracking the Influence. Influential web strategist, Jeremiah Owyang and Dow Jones' Matt Toll co-authored the report, which was based on the discussions from a blogger round-table held late last year.

For communications practitioners who are new to the whole social media phenomenon, the white paper basically tries to answer the question "why should I care about it".

It sets the scene with a discussion about the nature of Net-based conversations, the breakdown of barriers between buyer and seller, and the troubling stats that very few people trust CEOs. Troubling if you're in the PR team supporting that CEO and substantially more worrying if you are in fact a CEO.

It then looks at the discussion from the blogger roundtable, which pulled together influential bloggers and communications professionals. The participants sought to define what was important in social media, why we should attempt to measure it, and what those measurements should entail. The concepts of engagement, community, influencers, reach and sentiment generated much debate.

The paper concludes with some ideas around what capabilities an organisation needs to understand and drive sucecss in the world of social media, and lists a stack of helpful resources.

It's worth a read, particularly if you've been getting regular requests from your mates to join facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, Plaxo etc.

New Survey: New Technology Tools Have High Acceptance Rate in Public Relations

2007-07-31T07:55:00.000+01:00

We have just completed a survey in conjunction with the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) which shows that that new communication technology has been widely accepted by the public relations profession.

The survey, “Wired for Change – A Survey of Public Relations Professionals and Students: Attitudes, Usage and Expectations in the New Communication Technology Environment,” was conducted to gain insight into how the more than 32,000 professional and student members of PRSA and the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) view the role of technology in shaping future communication practices.

You can read about the findings in the press release, and there's also a 10-minute webcast of the survey via Webmasterradio.FM.

More hype around Corporate Buzzwords

2007-07-19T10:46:00.000+01:00

Word Play once again gets tongues rolling, as The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Management Line blogs report on some new Factiva media analysis.

The analysis looks at the frequency of terms such as "fast track", "going forward" (as opposed to "going backwards"), "user friendly", "empower", "downsizing", "multitasking", "core competency", "customer centric", "client focused" and "rightsizing" in the mainstream media, and tabulates them in charts. You can also see which publications most frequently quote these terms, althought bear in mind, it's not necessarily the publications that are the gobbledygook-touting culprits, but the spokespeople they are quoting! There's a healthy discussion going on in the blogs about what other terms annoy people.

My colleague in Australia, Chris Pash, developed the analysis using our recently launched Factiva Insight: Agency Analytics.

Factiva Insight: Agency Analytics is cool because it allows users who are not necessarily familiar with boolean search strings and power searching, to access our vast content collection and media analytics software, to create insightful charts.

The product is designed for PR agency teams who need to create quick but robust media analysis for use in pitch development, account planning and client management. For us, internally, it's a great way to generate meaningful content that gets the Factiva and Dow Jones brands out there.

New white paper available: Best Practices in Media Measurement

2007-07-06T10:58:00.000+01:00

Dow Jones recently commissioned Professor Paul Argenti of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business to write a thought-provoking article about the evolution of and best practices in media measurement.

A key driver of the growing importance of media measurement is the increased number of C-level executives demanding accountability from their communications departments. Without
using new media-intelligence technologies, it is impossible for public relations or communications professionals to be truly accountable, comprehensively monitor media coverage, or make fact-based decisions regarding communications strategies.

This white paper is intended to help communications professionals understand how new media- intelligence technologies are changing their roles. It also provides ideas about how media measurement can be adopted to add more value going forward.

Feel free to download a copy of the article here.

Cynthia leaves hospital

2007-07-05T10:24:00.000+01:00

I was really pleased to read this morning that Aussie plane crash survivor and Sydney Morning Herald reporter, Cynthia Banham, is leaving hospital tomorrow.

It's less than four months since she somehow made it out of the horrendous plane crash at Yogyjakarta airport, that claimed the lives of 25 people including 5 Australians.

As I said in a previous post, I truly admire Cynthia's courage and strength of character - both in her survival and her ongoing recovery.

Best wishes to you Cynthia.

What price reputation: BusinessWeek article references Factiva Insight

2007-07-04T12:27:00.000+01:00

This week, a BusinessWeek article referenced Factiva from Dow Jones as one of the vendors who can help companies get more scientific about reputation management.

It said:

"That's why companies are trying to get more scientific about reputation management. Many big companies now shell out $2 million a year on image research. This will be a tiny slice of the $4.2 billion spent on PR this year, but such research is growing fast. To get a fix on how companies are seen publicly, they are hiring firms like Factiva and Delahaye that use powerful search engines to track databases of all print, broadcast, and Internet coverage and to search for trends."

The article debates amongst other things, whether a good reputation is linked to better stock prices. This echoes the findings of a white paper Factiva commissioned in 2005, entitled Strong Corporate Reputation Delivers Shareholder Value...But Who Controls It?. Worth a read, but if you want the short answer - yes. Good reputation was found to have impacted share price positively.

It was interesting to note that reputation management was not discussed too much at last week's PR Week Forum, as it had been in earlier years. As I mentioned earlier in the week, there was more focussed on online communities - which can certainly have an impact on a company's reputation.

Anyway, check out the BusinessWeek piece!

Contiki takes advantage of facebook

2007-07-02T14:22:00.000+01:00

I had my nose in facebook all weekend, which is proving to be way too addictive.

Interestingly, I found Contiki in a related group (though listed as sponsored) on the Explore the World group.

Does advertising belong in social networking applications? I reckon yes, if it's relevant. Contiki as a tour company is clearly offering tours that are of relevance to this particular group. so it makes perfect sense for them to be there. From a marketing perspective, they also using the site to create conversations amongst their potential and existing customers, in the very place where those users are spending a lot of time.

There's also a group for Kumuka travellers, called Kumuka Overland, although this doesn't appear to have been set up by the company - it doesn't confirm this one way or the other. Great for Kumuka if their customers are starting such groups.The rules of marketing are definititely changing.

I reckon travel companies like Contiki, Kumuka and Explore are doing a good job of using new forms of media to get to their customers. Will be interesting to see how things evolve in this space.

Facebook..what's all the hype?

2007-07-02T13:53:00.000+01:00

I'd heard of this facebook thing, but with the proliferation of similar thingies like LinkedIn, Plaxo, Myspace, and all the others, I'm trying to limit what I sign up to, and how many places I have to maintain ALL THIS STUFF!

Anyway, over the weekend, I signed up to facebook. And I can see how people become addicted to this stuff. After adding a few friends and colleagues, suddenly I can see what they're up to, what they're interested in outside of what I may know about them, who their friends and colleagues are, and god knows whatever else they want to share about themselves.

It can be anything from the minutae of their lives (XX is chilling out, YY is going down to the pub to watch the rugby etc), to the big, important questions...like "Which is better: Gymea Pub or Northies?" That's an in joke for anyone who knows anything about THE SHIRE. But I found this scintilating question on the group Sutherland Shire: God's Country.

There are bwzillions of other groups - professional organisations, groups by activity, interest, region, age, languages etc; groups about beauty, beliefs and causes, dating and relationships, friends, gardening, health and wellness, pets and animals, travel and the list goes on.

Travel is a passion of mine, so I signed up to a couple of travel groups that cauhgt my eye. This is where I could begin to see the commercial potential of these sites...

What was hot at PRWeek's Summer Forum?

2007-07-02T13:17:00.000+01:00

It was a fast and furious few days at PR Week's Summer Forum.

Ed Vaizey MP opened the conference with a pleanry session about PR & politics. He gave some hints about how PRs should engage with politicians, stressing that the best approach was to ensure the issue was relevant to the MP's constituency. You could do this by engaging local businesses or individuals from the constituency to approach the MP on your behalf, he suggested.

During his speech, Ed had to battle with extremely gusty winds that threatened to lift the marquee right off the green at the Forest of Arden golf course. The weather was truly disgraceful, but the wine and conversation flowed freely.

After dinner, we took part in a trivia quiz. My table led the competition right till the last round, before we were pipped at the post by the table with all the Haymarket execs. Hmm. Me smells something fishy…

Tuesday and Wednesday, and it was down to business, with a packed schedule of workshops and 1:1 vendor meetings.

Nicole Lander, Communications Director at Dairy Crest led the first workshop, Payment by time vs payment by results. She discussed whether agencies should be paid on retainer or on a project/performance based approach. The room seemed fairly divided about the approaches. She cited an interesting dilemma about where an agency had planned a huge product launch on a particular day, only to be wiped out the next day by the breaking news of the 7/7 bombings. Should they have been paid for what they had achieved to that point, or not ben paid the full amount, because they had not achieved actual agreed outcomes. I think that was a particularly extreme example, and most people would reasonably expect payment for investing time in the project. We collectively liked the idea of a hybrid payment approach, consisting of a monthly retainer with a performance-based component to it.

Julian Pike from legal firm Farrer & Co then discussed Legal battles and the role of PR. Sometimes good PR can involve keeping a company out of the media. He discussed the impact of social media like blogs and chatrooms on PR, how orgnisations had to be ever-vigilant about what was being written about them, and what some of the recourses were if their company was being slammed in those environments. ISPs are generally obliged to take down defamatory material, so he suggested going straight to an ISP and requesting that they remove offensive material about a company from the blog/chat room. In some case the ISP can be compelled to shut down a blog or website that it hosts.

Antony Mayfield from Spannerworks discussed Engaging with online communities. He mentioned the latest social networking phenomenon – Myspace and facebook. Ok, ok, they’re not so new, but few people in the room had profiles on these sites (though I suspect most of will sign up in the next few days, just to see what all the hype is about). He used interesting case studies about online communities like Catster and Dogster to demonstrate the popularity of sites that allow people to share similar interests. Our CMO, Alan Scott uses the example of Nikonians to illustrate the same point. These communities are huge and have tremendous user loyalty!

It seems that most people in the communications industry are still trying to get their heads around how to engage with online communities and how to incorporate them into their marketing and PR programs. Watch this space…

Tom Whitwell, Communities Editor at the Times Online (and blogger at http://musicthing.blogspot.com/) spoke about the changing newsroom and what he had learned in his 7 months in the role. He encourages Times reporters to try things with their blogs and stories. He said the internet affords us with instant measures as to whether something is working or not. He also pointed out that he gets far less contact from PRs in his current role than he did when he worked on magazines. That started a debate about whether PRs valued print or online coverage more. I reckon it completely depends what industry you’re in and what you’re trying to achieve. It was a great debate in any case.

The 1:1 meetings with the vendors were generally useful. It’s always good to see what the various PR agencies and media monitoring companies are up to. And most useful, as always, was the time chatting with other delegates. It’s always helpful what challenges PR professionals in other companies and industries face.

Overall it was a valuable few days and well worth attending. Thankfully we were able to get back down to London by train, than the ark we’d been secretly building.

Roll on PRWeek's Summer Forum

2007-06-21T14:12:00.000+01:00

I'm heading up to Warwickshire next week for PRWeek's Summer Forum.

I went to the same event a couple of years ago, and it was a great conference - strong speakers and good networking opportunities. There was particularly heavy rain around Chepstow, where the event was being held, and the sewerage backed up and flooded into the hotel's foyer. You can imagine the musings of 50 PR-types in that scenario...eeeow.

Hopefully the only thing that'll be flowing this year, is great ideas and bubbles!

A new survey on influencing technology buyers

2007-06-21T13:42:00.000+01:00

Hill and Knowlton released an interesting survey this week, entitled Influencing Technology Decision Makers.

Following a survey of 60 companies, the research found that PR can positively impact the purchasing decision.

The report highligts key trends including:

The dominance of analyst research - and how effective analyst relations really can help to drive sales enquiries
The power of the blog - and the growing importance of one-to-one dialogue
The importance of the right media coverage - and which publications ranked highly in terms of IT audience credibility

It's a brief but worthwhile read.

The 50 best business blogs...according to the Times

2007-06-19T10:34:00.000+01:00

Interesting story a few days ago on the Times Online, about the 50 best business blogs. They've categorised it by sector. Definitely worth checking out if your company is one of the companies for which there is a dedicated anti-blog.

There were a couple of amusing quotes in the line up - this from Weber Shandwick's Colin Byrne on the Olympic logo: "Of course if your initiative attracts reams of bad headlines and coverage, and thousands of people take to the blogosphere as ‘badvocates, fuelling yet more media coverage, it could be described as a PR disaster I suppose."

An event for communications, marketing and sales professionals

2007-05-21T16:34:00.000+01:00

We're hosting an Expert Series event next Thursday about how to Prove Your Strategic Value with Effective Media Measurement.

We'll have the agency perspective from Hotwire PR and the customer perspective from AEGON, as well as Alan Scott and Chris Shaw from Dow Jones.

The second stream focuses on Aligning Marketing with Sales:The Key to Customer Focus. Speakers from Dow Jones, Salesforce.com and Jennifer Kirkby, Consulting Editor at MyCustomer.com will share their views on how to get closer to your customers to drive revenue growth and retention.

It's shaping up to a be a great event. You can register here to attend.

The new rules of PR and the new rules of book launches

2007-05-11T11:37:00.000+01:00

Further to my last post about the Gobbledygook Manifesto, David has taken the somewhat progressive step of using his blog to do a virtual acknowledgement of everyone that provided input and commentary to the book.

It's already generating comments on the post, and I bet we're all thinking, "gawd, why didn't I think of that". What a fab way to launch a book and get the word out. We'll all no doubt eagerly read our free copy of the book and blog about it, and whooosh - there's a global viral marketing campaign in action.

Hats of to the true blog marketing guru!

Gong for the The Gobbledegook Manifesto

2007-04-27T11:46:00.000+01:00

Congratulations to David Scott, whose Gobbledygook Manifesto project made it into MarketingSherpa's Viral Hall of Fame 2007. This is the second year running that David's campaigns have been awarded this auspicious gong.

We worked with David to provide the media analysis that measured the volume of over-used and jargon-laiden words in corporate press releases. It was a cool project - quirky, but full of warning for PR professionals who use these words in their releases.

Next month sees the launch of his new book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR. Be sure to check it out!

My thoughts are with Aussies plane-crash survivor, Cynthia Banham

2007-03-08T14:21:00.000Z

About 5 years ago when I was mid-way through my MA in Journalism, an inspiring young woman - Cynthia Banham, who had done my course a few semesters before me came into our features writing class to give us an overview of what it was like to work as a real journalist.

She had transitioned from a fully practicing lawyer from freelance writer to a reporter on one of Australia's most respected newspapers - the Sydney Morning Herald. I followed Cynthia's work ever since, because I completely admired how she decided she wanted to be a journalist, and then worked her butt off to become one - on a top paper no less.

I happened to catch details of this week's horrific plane crash in Indonesia, and was absolutely shocked to read just now that Cynthia was not only on the plane, but one of the survivors. The news story reports how she managed to pull herself from her burning seat - despite having spinal injuries - and somehow roll herself to a nearby rice paddy into the water. She is in a serious but stable condition.

The article also talks about Cynthia's sheer determination to survive, and having seen just a smidgen of that determination when I met her after that lecture some 5 years ago, it's not surprising that if anyone could do it, Cynthia could.

My thoughts for a speedy recovery go out to Cynthia.

Let the award season begin!

2007-02-20T10:47:00.001Z

The new year has well and truly dawned, and this naughty little blogger is only just peeping out into the blogosphere for the first time in 2007. Note to self...blog more. Awards programs are in full swing, with the PR Week Awards celebrating its 21st birthday this year. Entry submissions are due by 24 May. The CIPR Excellence Awards 2007 are also open for submission until 28 February.

Is evaluation on the increase?

2006-10-25T16:35:00.000+01:00

Metrica released an interesting survey this week about media evaluation in the UK.

These stats showed promise:

"Almost one in four organisations (23%) now believe that between 11% and 20% of annual PR budget should be spent on measurement, representing an increase of 9% over the past two years. The number who believe that between 5% and 10% should be spent remains about the same at 61%."

It would be interesting to know if the percentage range of 11%-20% is actually being spent, rather than the amount that companies feel should be spent.

Interesting also, the growing incidence of using advertising value equivalents, which indicates to me that perhaps some of the companies who have recently started to do media evaluation are relying on AVEs as their primary measure. It’s still a very basic form of measurement, but I think it’s also indicative of the general challenge of the PR industry - which is to come up with a universally acceptable methodology on which to base media evaluation.

The Gobbledygook Manifesto lays down the gauntlet!

2006-10-13T11:49:00.000+01:00

David Scott, an online content marketing expert, has just released the Gobbledygook Manifesto, which looks at some of the most overused words in press releases. PR professionals pay attention!

While our earlier cliche media analysis sort to look at some of the most over-used cliches in the global business media, we worked with David to provide Factiva media analysis based on over 388,000 press releases issued in the first 9 months of this year, with a view to seeing how frequently a pool of about 20 over-abused terms appeared.

As David's post points out, about 1 in 5 press releases contains adjectives that David considers to be Gobbledygook, that is, meaningless phrases that clutter corporate writing.

The winner (or most abused term), was "next generation", with over 9,800 references in US-issued press releases this year. Here are more results from David's post.

"There were over 5,000 uses of each of the following words and phrases: "flexible," "robust," "world class," "scalable," and "easy to use." Other notably overused phrases with between 2,000 and 5,000 uses included "cutting edge," "mission critical," "market leading," "industry standard," "turnkey," and "groundbreaking." Oh and don't forget "interoperable," "best of breed," and "user friendly," each with over 1,000 uses in news releases."

UK-issued releases fared somewhat better, with only about 11% (29,300+) of the 264,000 press releases issued across UK wires in the last 9 months, containing Gobbledygook phrases. Interestingly, "next generation" is up there, but "cutting edge" appears more frequently in UK releases than in the US.

I would love to have a Plain English day, where all corporates eliminated superfluous adjectives and actually communicated clearly. We have the luxury of choosing from thousands of words to describe what our organisations do...are we really cutting edge if every man and his dog (bang goes another cliche!) is as well?

Stay tuned on the Gobbledygook Manifesto, and use it as a checklist to see if your corporate communications are degenerating into repetitive blah. I shall certainly be doing so.

An interesting crisis management case study - EDF

2006-10-04T17:23:00.000+01:00

Steve Hemsley's recent PR Week feature entitled Monitor your way out of a crisis provided a useful case study that outlined how energy giant EDF monitored and responded to the crisis that was the ongoing slew of negative press they copped over summer due to their ongoing price increases.

All of the major energy companies in the UK were punished in the media, as "fuel poverty" became a frequently used term.

The case study discussed what tools EDF used to monitor the media throughout the crisis, what the results were, and what their response to the situation was. The article mentioned that "an unexpected twist was the discovery that the power blackout in London was bigger news in the regionals than EDF Energy's price hikes. As a result, Wynn (EDF's director of comms, Gareth Wynn) says he is now considering investing in an online measuring tool to provide real-time monitoring information so his team can respond more quickly."

Indeed, traditional media monitoring and evaluation tools such as hard copy clippings or manual evaluations, are increasingly too slow to provide true value in a crisis. They may provide a useful retrospective view of what happened, but that's too late to actually help you navigate out of the crisis - and as EDF discovered, online monitoring tools may even highlight opportunities in a crisis that would otherwise remain undetected through traditional means.

More talk about measurement & reputation

2006-10-04T17:09:00.000+01:00

Seems like everyone's talking about measurement - how to measure the value of PR, how to measure the value of reputational and relationship capital etc.

My colleague Glenn, has an interesting post about a case study at a recent conference that discussed how United Technologies measures intangibles like like leadership, human capital, technology, reputation, familiarity and favorability.

This was very much the theme of a a Reputation Management workshop I attended yesterday at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

Jon White, the lecturer was talking about how accountants have always been able to determine the value of "goodwill" of a company (which, crudely, is the market capitalisation minus the value of the physical assets), but that we somehow need to be able to break down the remaining chunk into elements like human capital, intellectual capital, reputational capital and relationship capital.

Relationship capital, he said, was the value of the relationships the organisation formed with its various sets of stakeholders. And that's where he felt PR people could most definitely add to the value of their organisation.

The challenge to me still seems to be around how you actually put a value to a relationship with an individual, group or entire set of stakeholders - I believe the concept is spot on, but I think many companies and PR professionals are still struggling to do this on a practical level.

It will be interesting to see how it evolves.

Course recommendation: Creating a PR Strategy @ The CIPR

2006-09-21T23:24:00.000+01:00

This week, I attended the CIPR's 1-day Creating a PR Strategy Workshop. As well as being a great chance to get out of the office for the day and network with other communications professionals, it was a thoroughly valuable course.

Dennis Kelly, Director of the Centre for Public Relations Studies at Leeds Business School, facilitated the workshop and reminded us of the importance of planning in strategy creation. We had rather a long discussion about definitions, with the key takeaway being that the terms aims, objectives, strategy and tactics all being using fairly interchangeablely (and inaccurately) in practice.

He outlined why strategic PR (or communications) was important, and what we stood to gain personally and professionally if we throught and operated more strategically. He walked through 4 simple steps for strategic planning - the audit, creating the strategy, implementation and evaluation. We worked on a case study throughout the day that illustrated the key points, and were quite surprised at what we could collectively come up with for an area that for pretty much all of the participants, was out of our area of expertise.

It was also interesting to hear the participants talk about what continues to be a common theme amongst PR and comms types - how to measure what we do effectively. Dennis outlined the different levels of measurement; inputs, outputs, out-takes, outcomes and outflows, and we all estimated we were measuring our efforts around Level 2 (output). We did however, have a good brainstorming session about how we could get more creative in measuring results - using hard metrics, rather than the "fluffy stuff", as Dennis was adamant we avoid.

The workshop was a timely reminder that every now and then it's worth looking up from the mountain of media queries, internal requests and day-to-day stuff, and take a big picture look at your entire communications program and it's objectives. Much food for thought!

I'm doing the CIPR's Reputation Management workshop in a couple of weeks, which I'm also looking forward to.

I want to deal with more organisations that listen!

2006-09-18T10:46:00.000+01:00

I had an experience this week that personally proved to me that companies who take the time to engage with bloggers can start to truly get to know their customers in a way that database segmentation or direct marketing campaigns could never achieve.

In my spare time, I maintain a travel blog, and I have written about some of the tours I’ve done lately with Explore. My experiences with the company have been entirely positive – the tours I did around Iceland and Croatia with Explore this year were excellent, and I would not hesitate to recommend them to family and friends. Explore tours are well organized, great value for money, FUN, and have a great combination of structured and free time. What really appeals to me is that they get to some really obscure places. I plan to do more Explore tours as time and money allow – and no, they are not paying me to say this!

What impressed me about Paul, the “ECommerce Bod” from Explore who emailed me, was that he offered help in getting me more information if I needed it, offered some information about their affiliate program (which I may or may not pursue, but it wasn’t a hard sell), and shared some personal observations about Lake Bled, Slovenia, where we’d both visited recently. It was clear he knew his stuff. He was authentic – and that’s important.

When I replied, he continued our conversation about the rather scary cable car that scales the cliffs surrounding Lake Bohinj en route to the ski resort that overlooks the entire valley. Talk about great views! He mentioned that the next Explore brochure was coming out soon, and to keep an eye out for more tours. As if I need any encouragement!

I thought it was cool. And relevant and appropriate. It makes me feel like the people at Explore are actually interested in what their customers are saying about their company – good or bad. They talk to me about stuff that interests me, and not in polished corporate speak but with a friendly, conversational tone. The tours themselves are great, but this personal touch, way after the fact, is really refreshing.

He also said he’d keep reading my blog. So, Paul, if you are reading this, thanks for your emails, and I hope you get to do one of the Explore train tours soon.

Dimwitticisms get airplay Down Under

2006-09-04T16:30:00.000+01:00

In the (dare I say it) ongoing spirit of our cliche campaign pinging round the world, and morphing into an analysis of Dimwitticisms, the Dimwitticism tracker hit the Australian airwaves over the weekend, on ABC News Radio.

Presenter Kel Richards featured the most frequently used "dimwit" word, "ongoing" in his Word Watch slot.

Citizen journalism and the London Fire Brigade Exhibition

2006-09-04T13:12:00.000+01:00

I love photography, it's importance in the news, and the way it provides a permanent reminder of a particular scene.

So the current exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery in London was a perfect way to spend an hour on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The London Fire Brigade Archive is a small exhibition at the gallery running until 17 September and features nearly 100 black and white images from the broader collection of some 300,000 images.

According to the official blurb:

"The captions of each photograph will also form a prominent part of the exhibition. They document a verbal account of what happened which was recorded and attached to the back of the photograph. This documentation is a fascinating insight on how the recording and documentation of incidents has changed over the years."

Before you go into the actual exhibition, there is a smaller, equally engaging photo montage about how citizen journalism came into play during the July 7 bombings last year. It analysed which newspapers ran with some of the more shocking pictures taken with the mobile phones of commuters trapped in the various carriage and underground stations. It was still chilling to see those pictures more than a year later, but certainly interesting to see how citizen journalism did and will continue to re-shape the news agenda by providing pictures and commentary of world-changing events.

Cliche madness jumps the pond

2006-08-25T13:28:00.000+01:00

Our cliche campaign continues to amuse, pinging back across the Atlantic, and enjoying a run today in the Guardian's Organgrinder blog and the UK Press Gazette.

It's really cool to see the, ahem, animated conversations taking place on the Guardian's blog post about general usage/abusage of cliches.

Factiva Achieves #1 Market Position According to Analyst Firm

2006-08-24T09:19:00.000+01:00

It's an exciting day here at Factiva! US analyst firm Simba has named Factiva as Number One in the Current Awareness News and Research Online industry in terms of both revenue and the number of subscribers.

According to Simba's Electronic Information Report, Factiva leads the industry with 2005 operating revenue of $281.6 million and a subscriber base of 1.86 million.

Achieving #1 market position has been one of Factiva's goals since the company's inception in 1999, and it was a true pleasure to issue the release announcing our success in meeting that goal.

Of course, it makes us all the more focussed on continuing to deliver value to our customers, and ensuring we stay at #1!

A bad, bad, super-bad day…

2006-08-23T16:00:00.000+01:00

Gotta love the Oddly Enough section on the Reuters Newsblog. This photo today made me chuckle.

Media Measurement Users Wanted for Market Research

2006-08-23T15:09:00.000+01:00

My product management colleagues are calling for people who have media measurement responsibilities for participation in a paid market research study.

Research Plan: A Factiva product-development or user-interface-design professional will conduct the one-on-one sessions, which may include an opportunity for the participants to try one or more Factiva products or prototypes, give comments on their experiences and answer a few questions. Each participant will be asked to attend one session, which will last from 1 to 2 hours and be conducted at the participant’s work place or via web conference.

User Description: A typical participant will be a professional who actively conducts some form of media measurement, using online tools to monitor his or her company, brands, issues or competitors in the mainstream media and/or on consumer-generated Web sites, such as blogs.

Compensation: At the completion of the session, the participant will receive a thank-you gift worth $100US / £60UK. The gift can we waived if the participant wishes.

Please contact Glenn Fannick at glenn dot fannick at factiva dot com if you're interested in participating.

First the cliche, now the Dimwitticism

2006-08-22T09:42:00.000+01:00

The Cliche Index has now morphed into Dimwitticism's, which we're helping Vocabula to track each month.

According to the site's editor and publisher, Robert Hartwell Fiske,

"Whereas a witticism is a clever remark or phrase — indeed, the height of expression — a "dimwitticism" is the converse; it is a commonplace remark or phrase. Dimwitticisms are worn-out words and phrases; they are expressions that dull our reason and dim our insight, formulas that we rely on when we are too lazy to express what we think or even to discover how we feel. The more we use them, the more we conform — in thought and feeling — to everyone else who uses them."
Bookmark the page and check regularly if these words are creeping into your writing!

Cliche madness in the blogosphere; dissection of an evolving PR campaign

2006-08-18T11:39:00.000+01:00

It's fascinating to watch how the relationship between PR and bloggers is evolving. I conceptually understand the viral nature of blogging, and the speed with which something can take off in blog land, but it's a huge rush when one of your company's pro-active PR campaigns shows signs of going viral unexpectedly. It's also fascinating to monitor the way it can swing from blog-initiated stories generating mainstream media coverage, to mainstream media stories spawning blog posts in places you would never have imagined.

As I've mentioned previously, the Factiva Cliche Index is something we developed to have a bit of fun with - to demonstrate the use of language across different media sets; to demonstrate the capabilities of our Factiva Insight: Media Intelligence technology; and to help the media have a bit of a chuckle at itself!

In recent weeks, we decided to start pitching the Cliche Index to bloggers as well as the mainstream media. Jeremy Wagstaff was one of the first bloggers to write about it, and then followed Graham Holliday and Bob Baker on his News Thinking Blog.

Back to traditional pitching to business media, and the Cliche Index ran in the Indian business press - the Hindu Business Line, which prompted a few more bloggers to write about it.

More traditional pitching to Singapore's Marketing Magazine resulted in the Cliche Index first being covered on the publication's web site and then it's blog, The Pitch. What I found fascinating in this instance was that the two articles are distinctly different in tone, with the former being a straight news piece and the latter taking on a more casual tone, in keeping with the conversational style of blog writing. The other interesting learning point was that Marketing ran one of our Factiva Insight charts in the blog article - which reminded me that bloggers love good quality, self-explanatory and free graphics they can drop into their articles. A few days later, Marketing then featured the Cliche Index back on its main website, running a small competition around who could correctly identify the number of cliches in a paragraph.

Over to the other side of the world and back to pitching to blogs, the very funky MediaBistro.com in New York ran a post, which generated other blog posts and calls from two of the most influential news organisations in the US, requesting updates and some tweaks to the Cliche Index. Stay tuned...we're still working with them, and are obviously most happy to oblige! Then the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a news piece which generated a number of reader comments about cliche abuse and dodgy use of language in business.

Not wanting to be outdone, my Australian colleagues pitched to The Age's Management Line blog today, combining mainstream media and influential blog in one go. Already there are a stack of user comments about the use of language, and we are gaining exposure on one of Australia's premier news sites in a way that is otherwise typically challenging for us.

So many other opportunities have come out of this brief, but frenzied campaign. That it's bouncing literally from one country to the next, day after day, is indicative of the enthusiasm it's creating in our own PR teams, as much as the interest its generating in the mainstream media and blogging community.

It's really reinforcing to us from a PR perspective that with blogs, there are many opportunities to create conversations with the public in a way that has never been possible.

Who Moved my Blackberry?

2006-08-03T13:37:00.000+01:00

Absolutely hysterical holiday reading was Who Moved My Blackberry by the FT's columnist, Lucy Kellaway.

I loved Lucy's observations about life in a global organisation from the perspective of one Martin Lukes, marketing director extraordinaire. The story is entirely fictional, but could be true of any large company - the politics, the office romances, the backstabbing, gossiping, email overload and powerpointization of the world. It also presented a pretty amusing picture of technology and "being connected 24*7", via Mr Luke's inbox, Blackberry and mobile phone. Beware of the rogue child who steals your Blackberry!

Interestingly, as I was reading the book and journeying through the stunning Croatian country-side last week, my Blackberry beeped, and a Factiva news alert came in. It was a profile about Lucy in The Independent, Lucy Kellaway: My Life In Media. Nice to know that she references Factiva...

Do you consult any media sources during the working day?
As I make up most of the things I write about I exist in a bubble of ignorance. I do check Google, Factiva and ft.com occasionally.

Singapore's Marketing Magazine launches a blog

2006-08-03T13:19:00.000+01:00

Singapore's Marketing Magazine has launched a blog called The Pitch, which, the magazine's editor, Tony Kelly says:

"is a forum for Marketing to sound off about a whole range of things loosely tied to the industries we cover. The great thing about blogs is they are meant to be a little bit garage, rough around the edges, not so structured as formal journalism and a little less...accountable."

I like the idea of blogs being a "bit garage"...telling it how it is, without either editorial or corporate restrictions.

It will be interesting to see exactly what types of "gossip, rumours, opinion, lies, slander and humorous anecdotes" they post on the site. I for one, will stay tuned!

Secretary sacked for blogging

2006-07-19T11:57:00.000+01:00

The story of the British secretary who was sacked for blogging about her life in Paris is doing the rounds - a colleague mentioned it to me this morning, then I read a Sydney Morning Herald report.

33-year old Catherine blogs on Petite Anglaise, and has built up a huge following judging by the number of coments she receives on each post.

She was sacked recently for gross misconduct, her employers claiming she brought the company into disrepute. And she is now launching a test case before a French employment tribunal.

Catherine's blog posts look harmless enough - I guess there are always two sides to the story, but the focus of her blog is really about her personal life, and it seems to be a fairly large over-reaction by her employer. It will be interesting to see how the court case pans out.

On a related issue, my colleague Glenn Fannick, was blogging last week about where people who blog for work should draw the line. He said,

"A few of my co-workers were chatting this morning about how much a person like myself should say when blogging about product development issues. It is a tough question. In my role at Factiva, I'm privy to product development and business plans which would be very interesting to write about. The things we wrestle with when deciding new product features and where to take the business would make for interesting writing. However, revealing such things could be bad for business. We don't want to tip our hands to the competition."

I agree with Glenn's view that it can be tricky to know when to draw the line about what to write on a blog about work - he goes on to say it is a matter of common sense. And I also share Glenn's view that a company like Factiva can foster loyalty in its employees by encouraging them to blog professionally or personally, and trusting them not to do or say anything that will harm the company.

I truly hope for the sake of free speech, that Catherine wins her court case.

At the end of the day there has to be a way to avoid cliches...

2006-07-19T09:58:00.000+01:00

A couple of years ago, Chris Pash, an Australian colleague, and Factiva's Director of Publisher Relations in Asia Pacific showed me a "Cliche Index" he'd developed. He and his journalist mates would brainstrom what they considered to be the most frequently used (and abused) cliches. Chris then ran searches for those cliches across Factiva.com to see which in fact were used most frequently. It's a but of fun, but also an interesting demonstration of how the English language changes over time.

These days, we're able to use our Factiva Insight technology to track more cliches and update the index more frequently. The system can even tell us which publications are using the cliches...writers be warned!

WSJ Columnist and blogger, Jeremy Wagstaff has just written about the latest Factiva Cliche Index - check it out.

New enhancements to Factiva Search 2.0 get the thumbs up!

2006-07-18T15:53:00.000+01:00

Last week, I was asked to give a new starter at Factiva an overview about the PR function, and I said that I felt it was critical for PR practitioners to be passionate about the company they work for, and the products and services they offer.

I couldn't imagine plugging away, trying to pitch a company, product or brand that I fundamentally thought was cr@p, boring or unethical.

So it's always satisfying to read positive external endorsements about your company or products - like the review of Factiva Search 2.0 that was published today by Information World Review, entitled Factiva sets scorching pace in Web 2.0 stakes.

Try Factiva Search 2.0 for yourself by typing in a keyword in the search box under my profile. Go on. You know you want to!

My blog makes it into print!

2006-07-12T16:31:00.000+01:00

Hoorah! My little 'ol blog made it into print. Andrew Cave's article, The World According to Blog, in the June edition of CorpComms referred to Factiva as a company who endorsed blogging by employees, and listed A Surplice of Spin as an example.

The article also quotes my colleague, Patrick Kervern, our Business Marketing Director for Media and Reputation Solutions, about why companies must begin to engage more with stakeholders this way:

"We believe that in a public relations dialogue with stakeholders, one of the best ways to communicate is to have a blog. Blogs present risks, but also opportunities. Silence is not an option any more because if you don’t talk to people, somebody else is going to talk on your behalf." - Patrick Kervern.

New PR blogs and websites

2006-07-04T14:39:00.000+01:00

Back from a couple of weeks holidays, and it appears that a few new PR blogs and websites have cropped up.

The busy people at PR Business launched their website (although some sections are still in the process of being populated), shortly after relocating offices and revamping their magazine's layout.

Tony Bradley, President of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) is also blogging about the PR industry on PR Voice. His most recent posts were about his attendance at the 3rd World Public Relations Festival.

The dilemma of an Aussie who drew Brazil

2006-06-06T20:49:00.000+01:00

Despite mentioning last month that I am less than enthusiastic about soccer (I mean football…I’m an Aussie, what else can I say!), and the hysteria that is the World Cup, I decided to play in our World Cup office sweepstake.

As I randomly drew the envelope that held the team I was about to start barracking for, I visualised GREEN AND GOLD and the Socceroos scoring their way to World Cup victory.

But out popped another nation for which green and gold is important.

Brazil.

And therein lies my dilemma. Brazil the favourites vs my home team. The one good thing is that my green and gold boxing kangaroo flags will sort of serve both teams, while most probably annoying all of my British friends and colleagues.

It’s interesting to see who, according to Factiva Insight, the UK media rates as favourites to win the World Cup – Brazil, England and Germany. The Australian media ranks Brazil, Argentina and then England. To count as a hit in this chart, the country named had to be mentioned within 4 words of the word “favourite”. Quite surprisingly, the Australian media doesn’t rank Australia as a favourite at all…but then we thrive on underdog status, which is clearly where it all went pearshaped in the last Ashes series.

So I guess I will now be barracking for two teams…Brazil for the grand prize of the sweepstake, and Australia for national pride.

PS. As an update to my earlier post, The Rooney Metatarsal and Kewell Groin have more than doubled their media presence in the last 3 weeks, with a staggering 2100+ articles and 500+ articles respectively. WHAT is this world coming to?

What's the value of online coverage?

2006-06-04T19:46:00.000+01:00

Years ago - pre-Internet - if any of us can remember that far back, getting coverage in the print version of a daily newspaper or target magazine was a huge goal; an achievement that would see the PR person and/or agency do a wee victory dance. Or if the coverage was significant, a raucous lap round the office. Well…perhaps that was just me…

Now – my marketing colleagues are frequently asking if we’ve had any good coverage in online publications. If it’s online, like the Factiva Research about French CEOs we provide to Les Echos each month for example, they can forward the URL to salespeople who can forward it to clients on prospects etc. They can refer to the link in direct marketing campaigns – online coverage definitely makes it easier and quicker to get further internal and external mileage from the piece.

Which leaves the old PR practitioner in somewhat of a quandary. What is more important in terms of print or online coverage? What’s more valuable and what gets more reach? Which medium is most appropriate to support a company’s PR strategy?

I guess the answer will be different for each company and for each scenario. I still love flicking through newspapers and magazines and seeing coverage – but an article can often get far more traction online, with bloggers jumping onto a story and giving it another round. It will be most interesting to see how this debate pans out.

Update from the 2006 European Sabre Awards

2006-05-29T20:38:00.000+01:00

Last week, Berlin was host city to the second annual European Sabre PR Awards. As a guest of our German agency, Hotwire PR, I had the pleasure of attending this award dinner for the first time, and seeing the results of some great PR campaigns from Europe.

The award ceremony was hosted by Paul Holmes, editor of The Holmes Report, and recognized best-in-class campaigns and agencies throughout Europe.

The variety of the entries across the 50 categories was as fascinating as it was broad, and it was all the more interesting to get a ‘behind’ the scenes view of the judging process from Hotwire’s Co-Founder, Kristin Syltevik, and BEA’s Director, Public Relations EMEA, Sarah Atkinson – both of whom I shared a table with.

They said that the winning campaigns – examples like “The Amazing Bank Account Case Study” and the “Tired of Your Dog? Need to Make and Extra Buck?” campaigns – were compelling, both in the messages they were trying to get out and the results they achieved. They talked about the importance of having clear objectives for a campaign, and demonstrating measurable results – not merely in volume of clips alone, but how these initiatives effected attitudinal and/or behavioural changes in the target audience.

It was a timely reminder that PR is broader than press coverage alone. PR is ultimately about building relationships and trust, with media, influencers, industry bodies and all of an organisation’s publics; whatever form they may take.

It was an inspiring evening with many examples of imaginative work. Congratulations to all the winners for raising the bar and giving us all new examples in excellence to aspire to.

An emerging brand...the Rooney Metatarsal

2006-05-19T15:07:00.000+01:00

For a chic that's less than enthusiastic about soccer (sorry, football), the fact that the World Cup is about to crank into even higher levels of hysteria for the next 6 weeks, is a torturous one. It’s all over the media. It’s EVERYWHERE!

Not even escaping back to Australia for two weeks in mid-June will let me get away from soccer (argh! Football!) speak – it will be just as manic there, with the Socceroos playing in the World cup for the first time in ages.

Now…what about this metatarsal thing? Wayne Rooney’s Broken Metatarsal seems to have become a celebrity of its own. I didn’t even know what a metatarsal was until I looked it up in the dictionary. And for your information, its:

“of, relating to, or being the part of the human foot or of the hind foot in quadrupeds between the tarsus and the phalanges.”

Ok. So the dude has a broken foot, and I guess that’s a bad thing if you’re a World Cup soccer player. But did it warrant more than 1,000 articles in the mainstream news and business media? Truly…according to Factiva Search 2.0, that’s how many articles referencing the Rooney Metatarsal have been published. And there are more than 3,000 articles dedicated to Rooney’s “injury”.

In the entire 2 seconds it took me to research that fact, I came across an article discussing the Liverpool winger (and fellow Aussie), Harry Kewell’s Groin Injury. Eeek! I didn’t need to check that in the dictionary… Another second of research told me that there had been over 200 articles dedicated to the Kewell Groin so far – and it hasn’t even had as much time to manifest as the Rooney Metatarsal. So are we going to be subjected to hundreds more articles on this ahem…rather sensitive issue? Lord, I hope not.

All this got me thinking…what effect are these cataclysmic injuries having on the players’ sponsors? Looking up “Nike and Rooney” resulted in just 222 articles in the last 90 days (only 20% of the volume that The Metatarsal generated!)

So perhaps sponsors should consider thinking of sponsoring specific bits of their favourite players – the players could get heaps more money that way, and the sponsors could hedge their bets and spread their risks. The Nike Navicular, The Mastercard Metatarsal, The Philips Phalanx and the Toshiba Talus and all have quite a nice ring don’t you think?

Enough of this football-speak. Go the Aussies, and bring on August!

PS. You can also find these and other far more business-critical insights via the Factiva Search 2.0 experience available on Factiva.com.

Inspirational marketers

2006-05-18T17:48:00.000+01:00

This week's Marketing Week contains a a great feature about the 100 most influential marketers. Not surprisingly, Richard Branson ranked Number 1, with entrepreneurial spirit being cited by the survey as a key inspirational attribute.

I was privileged to be a guest of Hill and Knowlton's at the recent Institute of Directors Annual Convention, and saw Will Whitehorn, the President of Virgin Galactic, present. I have to say I was truly inspired by Virgin's vision of space travel. To talk about the challenges of commercialising space really is an example of thought leadership and setting lofty goals.

Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks was voted Number 1 in the Readers' Choice and Number 10 over in the Marketing Week report. His co-founder, Adam Ballon also spoke at the IoD event, and was equally inspiring. There was a real contrast in approach between the big established brands and the "young guns", represented by guys like Adam, who spoke on the entrepreneur's panel.

The Innocent story is such a good one. I loved the anecdote about the basis on which the co-founders took the decision to chuck in their "real jobs" and start Innocent full time: they asked punters at a market day to vote by throwing their empty Innocent smoothie bottles into one of two bins. Fortunately for Richard and Adam, the punters voted that the smoothies were good enough, and the "yes" bin got more votes than the "no" bin. The rest, they say, is history. The Innocent website is also really cool - it's funky, lists and shows all their employees, and screams of personality. Innocent really seem to know what they want their brand to be about, and live it consistently.

You can follow the link from the IoD event page to download podcasts of both Will Whitehorn's and Adam Ballon's appearances - both of which I recommend.

Marketing Week also used exclusive research generated by Factiva Insight to compare the rankings of top marketers in their survey, with the rankings of the the same marketers across the UK media. Interestingly, British Airways' Martin George topped the rankings by media coverage, followed by Barclay's Jim Hytner and Innocent's Richard Reid.

Commiting the deadly sin of blogging...

2006-05-15T13:45:00.000+01:00

I admire bloggers who can keep pumping out posts each week, let alone every couple of days! It's hard going - whether it's finding the time, or finding the topic. And so I have commited the deadly blogging sin of lapsing between posts. 2 months is a long time in the blogosphere - reputations can be built and destroyed in that time.

In any case, I shall strengthen my resolve to get back to posting more frequently.

PR blogs on the increase

2006-03-06T10:53:00.000Z

Constanin Basturea is doing a great job of tracking new PR-related blogs that crop up each month. In February, he found another 55 new PR blogs.

Check out the recent-launched IABC blog on measurement. I suspect this will start to gain quite a following.

The Guardian's Comment is Free project

2006-03-06T09:33:00.000Z

Having assembled some 200 contributors, it will be interesting to see how the Guardian's Comment is Free project pans out.

A Journalism.co.uk article quoted the Guardian's editor-in-chief, Emily Bell as saying,

"There is no reason why a traditional journalist would take notice of the web,
she said, but that she'd be doing a disservice to the newspaper's columnists if
she didn't show them why their major competition is now online. One of the
strongest resources of a journalistic brand is its commentators."

It will be curious to see which columists embrace blogging as a new way to engage with their readers. As the article points out, there is still prestige associated with being published in a newspaper - but increasingly their audiences are moving online. In the same way that PR professionals who don't embrace blogging will be left behind, journalists could possibly face the same fate.

And newspapers face similar challenges. If indeed one of the strongest resources of a journalistic brand is its commentators, newspapers must tread the very fine line between giving valued content away for free (ie, via their commentators on blogs) and deriving revenue from that content either via premium subscription services or advertising.

Australia's controversial new advertising campaign

2006-03-01T09:53:00.000Z

Most of the time I'm extremely proud to be Australian, but as I was catching up on the weekend papers, I was mortified to read about a new Australian tourism advertising campaign that asks potential visitors, "So where the bloody hell are you?".

The Weekend Australian reported that Tourism Australia was rethinking the campaign, and said that some words from the ads would be omitted in markets like Japan, Korea, Thailand and Singapore.

While there is no doubt that Australia is an awesome place to live and an amazing place to visit, I feel that this type of Aussie vernacular is inappropriate for an international advertising campaign. There is huge scope for the target audience to not only miss the point, but to be offended - and that's not the kind of message Australia needs to be communicating on the world stage.

Successfully marketing the outflow of power plants…

2006-02-28T09:44:00.000Z

Who’d have thought that there was any good news in the outflow from a power plant?

I couldn’t help but find an excuse to ahem…brag about my trip this weekend to Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, and the northern-most capital in the world.

Yesterday, I visited one of Reykjavik’s most famous attractions – the Blue Lagoon. Sounds tropical huh! About as tropical as anything could sound in a country you’d expect to be covered in ice.

So there I was, swimming in the outflow of the Svartsengi geothermal power plant – in a lake full of mineral-rich seawater heated by underground lava. While the outside temperature was about 1C, the water was a bubbling 30C (and hotter in some parts).

Some 70% of visitors to Iceland visit the lagoon. It is believed that the combination of silica mud, salt and blue-green algae can cure psoriasis and eczema. Of course it’s also nice just to have a relaxing soak in a bizarre steamy setting in the middle of a lava field.

That some Icelandic entrepreneurs were able to cash in on this natural phenomenon and market it to the world is amazing. That I’m not glowing green today, is even more amazing!

Farewell to a great leader - Clare Hart moves to Dow Jones

2006-02-23T16:16:00.000Z

It's not everyday in PR that you have to issue a press release that announces the departure of a senior executive - let alone the CEO of the company. But that's what we did yesterday, fortunately under very positive circumstances.

Our CEO, Clare Hart is leaving her role at Factiva to join Dow Jones as Executive Vice President Dow Jones and President, Dow Jones Enterprise Media Group. She will also become Chair of Factiva's Board. Claude Green, our current Deputy CEO will become Interim CEO until a successor is found.

Within Factiva, it's clear that Clare has had a tremendous impact on creating not only the commercial success the company has enjoyed in its 7-year history, but the vibrant, dynamic culture that streams throughout Factiva's 42 offices worldwide. One of the most consistent observations I’ve heard from colleagues, is about how Clare walks into any Factiva office and knows virtually every employee by name. If she doesn't know someone, she introduces herself to them. With some 800 employees companywide, it's an impressive effort.

It has been a privilege to work with a leader who is so highly respected by employees and customers, media and analysts, partners and the broader business community around the world. From a PR perspective, it certainly makes my job easier! I sincerely hope our next CEO is as “PR-friendly”.

We will all miss Clare, but are equally excited about her success and her new role at Dow Jones. Best of luck Clare!

PW Week predicts blogging revolution will force change in PR

2006-02-20T15:12:00.000Z

Kate Nicholas’ column in this week’s PR Week ran with the bold headline that blogging will force change in PR.

I agree with Kate’s observations – I don’t think blogging spells the end of public relations professionals altogether, but it certainly does change the dynamics between PRs and journalists, and PRs and their publics. As Kate points out, “it is more likely that we'll see a return to the roots of PR when public relations professionals actually dealt with the public, even if these days it's in a virtual environment.”

Determining how to engage with bloggers still seems to be under debate - do you pre-brief, brief or pitch them like journalists? Do you respond to negative or inaccurate posts consumer-generated media (CGM) in the same way that you would respond to a negative or inaccurate article in the mainstream media? While different companies may implement different policies about dealing with blogs, it is the more progressive companies who are actively monitoring CGM - if you're not aware of a conversation taking place, you can't even begin to participate in it.

Another question is one of how to measure the impact of PR out in the blogosphere. If a company actively wants to engage with bloggers who represent one of their audiences, they need the tools and processes in place to track, measure and evaluate those initiatives.

There are certainly new, sophisticated tools available to do this, for example, the Factiva Insight suite - but I believe that tools are just one part of the broader change in thinking required by public relations professionals to successfully navigate the ever changing media landscape and communicate with their publics in the most effective way.

What do blackberries and air have in common?

2006-02-16T13:41:00.000Z

Answer: I need them both to survive.

Ok, it might be a bit of an exaggeration, but only fellow Blackberry users seem to understand the complete horror show that is losing one's Blackberry. I was Blackberry-less (my device doubles as my mobile phone) for a week earlier this month, and it surprised me at how dependent I'd become on it.

It wasn't so much the inconvenience of losing the data - that was all stored back on my laptop at the office and restored easily onto the replacement device. It wasn't even the security aspect, because the device was locked and password-protected, and the supplier was able to suspend the number right away. Nor was it the mobile phone aspect because I went back to an ancient pre-paid handset.

What was most annoying about the whole Blackberry-less experience, was that time spent in cabs, on the Tube and other equally good opportunities to catch up on the day's backlog of email, was now gone. It's always a challenge to get through the seemingly increasingly number of emails that come in (especially when your email address is listed on your company's web site!), but to lose the opportunity to catch up on emails in those weird little free timeslots through the day is grim.

Because I work with colleagues around the world, there are many instances where I have to respond to someone's 'end of day' request, whether it be from Asia at 7.30am GMT or the US at 9.30pm GMT. The Blackberry lets me do this quicky and easily without the hassle of dialing in from home, or waiting around for an email from someone else to come in.

Proponents of the 'Crackberry' line of thinking that Blackberries are addictive may have a point - but having been without mine for a week, I'm more convinced than ever that are they a business critical tool, especially in an industry and role where you need to move information between people very quickly.

Happily, my replacement device is now up and running. And if you recount your story of losing a Blackberry, I will be endlessly empathetic.

How do I love thee...let me analyse the media coverage and sales figures

2006-02-16T09:54:00.000Z

When I think of Valentines Day, the two brands that first come to mind are Hallmark and Interflora. I’m sure the card and flower markets did a roaring trade this week, but it was interesting to note from a PR perspective that those two companies were not associated highly with the Day of Love by the media.

A search in Factiva Search 2.0 revealed that Marks & Spencer and Barnes & Noble, followed by John Lewis, eBay and Starbucks received the most coverage in relation to the search term ‘Valentine’s day’. Quite surprising results – I’d love to get the respective sales figures for each company to see who profited most from February 14!

And I’m wondering if flowers are on the way out, and other romantic options like dinners, entertainment and luxury gifts are on the way in. All of these industries ranked most prominently in relation to the search term ‘Valentines Day’. Or perhaps retailers of these items ramped up a variety of communications programs to piggyback on the usual Valentines day frenzy.

With the marketing mix comprising so many elements, it can often be difficult to pinpoint which element/s drives sales most effectively.

To prove whether PR does more than build awareness - and actually drives sales - continues to be one of the perennially challenging quests for PR practitioners. We might know anecdotally that our initiatives are causing prospective or existing customers to pick up the phone and place an order, or that they're allowing our salesforce to do the same - easily - because an initiative generated much positive buzz in the media, but often the systems that track and measure business outcomes from point-of-sale, direct or online marketing campaigns are not geared up to evaluate PR campaigns in the same way.

I believe that all PR practitioners need to be aware of the impact of their initiatives on generating sales, and more importantly, committed to developing processes that demonstrate that value.

The lengths that some PR people will go to...

2006-01-30T17:21:00.000Z

Gotta love the folks over at Conchango, who are raising money for the Duke of Edinburgh Award. I had to donate to their cause - couldn't resist after the email I got from their fab PR manager:

"As some of you may be aware I’ve volunteered to do this year's 3 peaks challenge in aid of the Duke of Edinburgh award. I’m taking on the challenge with my team members from Conchango and we’ll be donning pink ballerina tutu’s to demonstrate our agility and flexibility whilst frog marching up and down the 3 highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales - Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon.
Those of us who are brave, noble, or just plain stupid, will try to do all 3 within the space of 24 hours - The Three Peaks Challenge. There is no official body, or definition of the Three Peaks Challenge. It is generally accepted that to complete the challenge you must ascend and descend all three peaks, and drive (or be driven) between them, within 24 hours."

A couple of things caught my attention about this call to action - pink's my favourite colour, I believe in the Duke of Edinburgh award and it made me chuckle. On top of all of which - anyone braving UK peaks in tutu's at this time of the year, must be mad.

Good luck team Conchango!

New leaders of media?

2006-01-30T16:59:00.000Z

There's an interesting story in today's US PR Week - Market Focus: New leaders of new media, about how some companies are pro-actively using blogs in their PR initiatives. The editor profiles four campaigns that successfully used blogs.

I thought the comment from Weber Shandwick's Mike Spataro about the skills that PROs of the future will require, is pretty spot on. He said:

'The PR pro of the future is going to be someone who will not only possess great PR skills, which will always be important, but they're going to have to be digital communicators to deliver messages that are based on the technology and lifestyle of today's consumer.'

I was also really pleased to see that David Scott's e-book about the new rules of PR, has been a successful example of using blogs to get a message out. He's had over 20,000 downloads since he launched it on 16 January!

PR Buzzword Bingo: product vs solution

2006-01-19T11:07:00.000Z

Every industry creates its own jargon, but the tech industry is renown for coining phrases and over-using terms to the point of abuse.

Take the word “solution” for example. Anecdotally, I would have thought that usage of that word overtook the term “product” ages ago. All you hear about these days are SOLUTIONS!

I typed both terms into the whizzy new Factiva Search 2.0 to see how frequently both terms were being used, and which companies and industries were most frequently associated with those terms.

Surprisingly, there were more mentions of the term “product”, with 273854 articles in the last ninety days referencing this term, compared with the 109470 articles that mentioned “solution”.

Not surprisingly, the industries most associated with the term “product” were Computers/Electronics, Pharmaceuticals, Software, Telecommunications and Health Care. It was interesting to note that the largest mentions of the term came from Business Wire and PR Newswire, presumably via press releases or other PR-generated material.

Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Barclays, General Motors and Intel had the most product-related news in the last ninety days.

When it came to “solution”, the IT giants predictably ranked highest in their use of their word. Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, HP and Intel were all associated heavily with the term “solution”, although Microsoft’s association with it was nearly more than double that of IBM’s in the last ninety days. As the largest software company in the world, that’s not surprising.

What is interesting however, is to see where and how that term is picked up in different media. Factiva Search 2.0 instantly lets me click down to a subset of the total results into different media types including Newspapers, Magazines and NewsWires. In the case of Microsoft, which resulted in a total of 1024 news items being associated with the term “solution”, 125 of those items were reported in Newspapers and 157 in magazines, compared with the 590 mentioned in Newswires.

These ratios would no doubt be similar for other tech companies. Perhaps a conclusion we can draw, is that many PR practitioners (and yes, I can put my hand up as being guilty of this too), are using terminology in press releases that is simply not being picked up in the media. Would we ever dare not to use the term “solution” in a press release?

Fortunately, Factiva Search 2.0 can immediately highlight how and where messaging is being picked up, what terms are hot (and over-used) and which companies are most frequently associated with them. The challenge for PR practitioners is to find the balance between using what has become almost-mandatory jargon and producing clear, effective communications to the target audience.

New rules of press releases - free e-book by David M. Scott

2006-01-18T19:08:00.000Z

Online Marketing Expert David M. Scott has just released a snazzy new e-book about the The new rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly.

It talks about how the changing media landscape presents an opportunity for PR professionals to engage with their customers and potential buyers directly.

Definitely worth a read!

Not all search is created equal - early praise for Factiva Search 2.0

2006-01-18T11:08:00.000Z

The tagline for our Factiva Search 2.0 advertising campaign is "Not all search is created equal" - and early feedback from industry analysts and the media indicates that they agree.

Roger Whitehead, a senior analyst at Bloor Research wrote today in a report entitled Factiva Search 2.0 - An Images Mirror, that :

"Public search engines on the Web have taught computer users the value of search but not of good searching. Sites like Google and Yahoo! give too many off-target results to be usable as line-of-business tools. Only specialised information delivery products and services can provide the relevant, filtered and intelligent results that users can reliably act on with confidence...Factiva's new Search 2.0 service is an example of this sort of tool.

The report went on to say that:

"The objective—which I think it achieves—is to present to a relatively unskilled user a quality of result that, normally, only a trained information analyst could achieve."

Mark Chillingworth from Information World Review also praised the new search functionality:

"Information World Review was given a sneak preview of the service prior to launch and was impressed. The search interface is crisp and discreet with more than a passing resemblance to Google. Results for in-depth searches are delivered incredibly quickly. To the right of the main search results are the additional features, included related news clusters, companies, industries and subjects. It is all well laid out, well defined and easy to use."

For PR and communications professionals who need to work faster than the speed of online news production, having the power to find relevant and credible information quickly is not a luxury - rather a basic job requirement. I'm sure that our many customers in PR agencies and inhouse communications teams will see immediate benefit from this exciting new search capability.

Factiva Search 2.0 is launched!

2006-01-18T09:19:00.000Z

It's all go here today! We're launching a preview of our awesome new search functionality, Factiva Search 2.0 to our 1.8 million subscribers. We claim that Factiva Search 2.0 improves the way business information is found and understood. And it really does!

If I need quick facts about Tony Blair, a search in Factiva Search 2.0 instantly reveals the news today that police foiled an attempted kidnapping of his son. The left hand section of the search results returns a list of headlines from Factiva's collection of highly credible news sources. Over on the right hand side of the screen, the really cool stuff kicks in.

Charts show me the media references about Tony Blair in recent weeks, and I can click onto any of the columns to see related news items for that week.

The News clusters functionality actually discovers terms that are most frequently used in conjunction with the main search term, so if I was not aware of the kidnapping story, it would instantly highlight that to me.

In the same search, Factiva Search 2.0 provides me with a list of companies and industries most frequently associated with the search term "Tony Blair". I notice that the BBC gets the most mentions in the last 90 days, followed by Lloyds of London and Rolls-Royce Group. If I were the PR Manager for those companies, I'd be clicking into those charts to investigate further.

Factiva Search 2.0, as some of our early users have pointed out, is highly addictive. For news junkies and PR types, its an awesome research tool. It can provide quick snippets for pitches, background research on virtually any topic, and the charts provide a quick "pulse" to identify what really is going on in the news.

Stay tuned for more snippets out of Factiva Search 2.0!

Factiva Insight: Reputation Intelligence up for PR Week Innovation Award

2006-01-16T12:28:00.000Z

It's award season! Factiva Insight: Reputation Intelligence is a finalist in PR Week's Innovation of the Year and we're eagerly awaiting the awards ceremony on March 2.

Constantin Basturea points out that:

"3 out of the 5 finalists in the 2006 Best Use of the Internet category are blog-related; two of the agencies nominated for the prize are blogging.

3 out of the 5 finalists in the in the PR Innovation of the Year category are about: wikis, weblogs, and blog monitoring; again, two of the agencies nominated for the prize are blogging.

3 out of the 5 finalists for PR Professional of the Year are blogging.

As per my previous post, all indications are that blogging is not going to go away any time soon.

Will it be the Year of the Blog?

2006-01-13T15:48:00.000Z

While debates rage as to whether blogs represent a true opportuity or threat to communications professionals, the blogosphere continues to grow at staggering speed - Factiva launched a couple of series of whitepapers around blogs. The first explores how public relations and marketing professionals use blogs to research and understand how the market perceives their company and products.

The second white paper looks at the creation of blogs by organizations as a way to contribute to the worldwide online conversation. It covers how public relations and marketing professionals write blogs themselves or encourage subject-matter experts in their organisations to do so.

One subject-matter expert, our CEO Clare Hart, has just launched her own blog, From the Hart. She'll be looking at the world of enterprise information and search. We're really looking forward to seeing how this evolves into a communication vehicle via which Clare can share her expertise, comment on the market and engage with Factiva's publics. Check it out!

Why PR people annoy journalists

2006-01-13T15:21:00.000Z

Happy new year! Three weeks in the Australian sun cut into my blogging time, and I've been a bit slow off the mark in getting my thoughts together for this blog.

I was chatting with a journalist this week, and we got into a discussion/whinge about bad PR practices. I somehow landed on a media distribution list where I'm listed as an editor rather than an inhouse PR Manager. With the names Dow Jones and Reuters in Factiva's tagline, I guess people could be mistaken for thinking that I actually can do something with their press releases.

What amazes me is the sheer volume of JUNK I'm sent from both PR agencies and PR professionals that is theoretically meant to be newsworthy. There was the press release from a tourism PR agency who's big call to action for journalists was a free colonic irrigation if they booked a holiday in the Baltics - "Boweled over by the Baltics" the headline screamed. Eek! Having just seen a documentary on colonic irrigation, I thought it was the most revolting call to action I've ever seen.

Then there was the PR Manager who sent me an unsolicited email containing 6MB worth of pics of her spokespeople, and jammed my email for 15 minutes.

In my year of being on this media distribution list, only one person followed up with me after they'd sent my press release (and she only did so to ask why I had deleted her message without reading it - that it had been declared a public holiday in Kalamazzoo was not of interest to me, so I didn't bother opening the email).

Its no wonder that journalists often have limited patience for PR people. If they're being bombarded with as much useless PR-generated material as I am, I'd resent every email I received.

It doesn't take much to research a publication and journalist to know what they're writing about and what would be of interest to them. Some PR professionals could improve their effectiveness 100% if they merely took the time to do so!

Factiva & King Kong share space in Times Square

2005-12-06T14:22:00.000Z

KING KONG PREMIERE Security personnel guard a 20-foot tall model of King Kong in New York's Times Square, Monday Dec. 5, 2005. The gorilla model is part of the New York premiere of the new movie version of "King Kong"directed by triple Oscar winner Peter Jackson later Monday night. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Measuring PR in 2005 and beyond

2005-12-05T22:57:00.000Z

In PR land, end of year reporting typically involves a review of media coverage, analysis of the various interviews and briefings that took place, assessment of significant campaigns, comparison of this year’s performance against the previous year, a general review of the teams and agencies that supported these initiatives, and planning for the upcoming year.

I work with Factiva’s regional marketing teams and PR agencies in the UK, Europe, Asia and Australia, and having now seen the bulk of end-of-year reports for each market, it struck me that PR agencies, and indeed, we PR types still revert to the traditional ways of measuring PR performance; with number of clips and their percentage in Tier 1 print publications still being a huge component of any year-end report.

We acknowledge that broadcast or print features that detail our vision and quote our spokespeople are worth more in PR value than mere name mentions of the company and our products. And then there is the perennial debate about whether print coverage is more valuable in PR terms than online coverage. Of course – the value of various pieces of coverage will differ for every company, depending on the business, marketing and PR objectives.

It was more interesting to observe though, that in a day of discussing this year’s PR activities, not one of the agencies or Factiva teams commented about our coverage in the blogosphere. To be fair – we didn’t ask the agencies to monitor references to Factiva in the blogosphere – we have the tools to do it in-house, but…

Alan Scott, Factiva’s CMO, for example, was quoted throughout the blogosphere in relation to the recent Sony “rootkit” crisis. Alan was originally quoted in an Information Week article, but his quote that blogs are changing the rules by which we live, was picked up by a number of blogs including PR Blog Watch.

In this new world of corporate and individual communications, will a positive quote on a blog like this be more valuable than a hit in PR Week or on BrandRepublic.com? We’re still debating this issue internally ourselves, because we need to understand which blogs and bloggers will emerge as the most influential – but we acknowledge that we can’t ignore blogs either. And I have no doubt that PR teams in many organisations are pondering the same issue – how to monitor blogs, how to find the ones that matter, how to report on PR or marketing activities that pro-actively target blogs, and how to assess the value of coverage in blogs against coverage in mainstream media or “credible” online publications.

In 2006, we will include in our monthly board report, stats about Factiva’s coverage in the blogs from Factiva Insight: Reputation Intelligence – alongside our coverage in the mainstream print and online media.

We don't yet know how these new metrics will pan out, but like the old adage says, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it".

Indeed the rules of PR are changing!

Clare Hart wins 2005 New York Ten Award

2005-12-01T16:38:00.000Z

Last week, Clare Hart, Factiva's CEO was named a winner of The New York Ten Awards™, an annual award recognizing ten leaders in the greater New York business community who have, through their innovation, significantly impacted their organizations and industries.

The word "innovation" can be overused - some 1,320,716 articles in Factiva.com reference the term.

When I think about the products that Factiva launched this year under Clare's guidance - amongst others, Factiva Salesworks, Factiva Companies & Executives, an enhanced Factiva Public Figures & Associates, the entire Factiva Insight suite, including Factiva Insight: Reputation Intelligence - which we're now using to monitor and manage Factiva's PR activities across mainstream media, websites and blogs - I can't help but feel proud to work for a company that places such high importance on innovation, and whose CEO is recognised at something like the Ten Awards for such a focus on innovation. Congratulations Clare!

Cynical media? Not unless you're guilty - or an Australian sports fan

2005-11-21T22:16:00.000Z

Before I moved from Australia to London a year ago, I was warned that the British media was more negative and cynical than the Australian media. With access to more than 300 million news items in the Factiva database, I thought I'd do a quick analysis of headlines to see if I could make any high level comparisons.

So...does the media report more on wins or losses? Surprisingly, the word "win" appeared in 84% of the 36,304 headlines in the UK media last year, that contained either the word "win" or "lose". This was on par with the ratio in the 9,000+ global sources in Factiva.com. The percentage of headlines in the North American and Australian media referencing the word "win" was marginally higher, with both media sets reporting a ratio of 86% for "win" and 14% for "lose". Conclusion: winners are grinners, and no one likes a loser - unless...

You're talking about the terms "guilty" vs "innocent". In the British media, 82% of the 3,655 headlines that contained the terms "guilty" or "innocent", reported "guilty". This percentage increased in the Australian media to 89%, in the global media to 90%, and in the North American media to 93%. Conclusion: guilty people seem to make headlines far more frequently than innocent people, which is a bit of bad luck, unless you believe that any PR is good PR.

The terms "bad luck" vs "good luck" in the headlines returned a fairly consistent ratio across the global, North American and British media, which ran at about 41% for the term "bad luck" and 59% for "bad luck". The luck was up in Australia, where the ratio swung the other way and more than half of the headlines contained the term "bad luck". I suspect that most of those articles were about The Ashes series this year. But let's not go there. Speaking of disasters...

The North American media used the term "disaster" five times as much as it used the term "miracle". 85% of the 15,757 articles in North America last year reported "disaster" in the headlines. The percentage of the word "disaster" in the global media headlines was 82%; 72% in the UK and 69% in the Australian media. So with the remaining 31% of headlines in the Australian media reporting the term "miracle", I'm hoping that the bulk of those articles are about upcoming performances by the Wallabies.

Hmm. Cynical media or cynical reader?

Censorship in the spotlight

2005-11-21T13:24:00.000Z

The issue of censorship was the focus of a raging debate at a UN communications and technology summit last weekend, according to a report in the Weekend Australian.

The article summarises the debate between those who say that the Internet should be available for people to exercise freedom of speech and those who claim that Internet restrictions are warranted to protect the state.

China and Iran were two of the 15 countries that the French press freedom group Reporters sans Frontiers, labelled "enemies of the Internet" in a protest at the Summit. Interesting to see that the latest estimate of the number of blogs in China is 6 million and growing, and 700,000 in Iran - staggering numbers!

Will such governments ever willingly back down in their views about censorship or will technology such as blogs force them to? I suspect that the collective voice power the blogosphere provides otherwise once repressed, disgruntled, frustrated or angry individuals, is an issue that governments on that list of 15 countries will not be able to ignore.

The Invisible PR Person?

2005-11-18T10:23:00.000Z

Ah - the journalist/PR relationship is alive and well in the case of Charles Wright and Apple Australia. I found Charles Wright's Razor blog/column yesterday, about the perfection of Apple's program to develop the invisible PR person very amusing.

New research: good reputation can improve share price

2005-11-17T14:49:00.000Z

Valuing intangible assets such as a company's reputation, has always been challenging. In an economic climate where everything must be tied back to the bottom line, even the issue of "reputation" comes under scrutiny.

The question, "what is the value of having a good reputation?" is one that communications professionals are often asked to answer. While they intrinically know that a good reputation attracts better employees, drives sales and improves relationships with all key stakeholders, it can be an ongoing battle to get the budget to fund the activities that nurture their company's reputation.

Factiva and Investor Dynamics recently commissioned research that investigated the financial link between good corporate reputation and share price.

Conducted by MBA graduate students at the London Business School, the research found that good corporate reputation can directly contribute to the value of the business. The research indicates that investors who base their portfolio buying on companies with strong reputation reap on average 1% per month excess risk-adjusted return.

Check out the white paper which details the research. It's a great supporting resource for anyone who plays some part in managing their company's reputation.

Bloggers: - re-defining the rules

2005-11-17T12:43:00.000Z

I speak with many PR professionals at industry events and Factiva's events, and it's fascinating to see what the general level of awareness of blogs in the PR and broader business community is. It's also interesting to see whether people consider blogs a threat (or an opportunity), or if they view blogs as "merely a bunch of geeks having a whinge".

At the International PR Summit in London earlier this month, Mark Adams, the Head of Communications for the World Economic Forum, raised the issue of blogs in a panel discussion about global communications trends, challenges and opportunites. He said that companies who ignored blogs did so at their own peril.

It's hard not to agree when you see headlines like: "Bloggers Break Sony", which appeared in an Information Week article yesterday.

It's yet another example of how consumers are using virtual voice power to force companies (in a very public way) to listen.

As Alan Scott, Factiva's Chief Marketing Officer said in the article, "There's a whole new set of rules that people have to live by. Whether it's blogs or user groups or NGOs, it's all about honesty and authenticity. This is just the latest painful example of a major company finding that the old tools and the old actions don't work."

Demonstrating the value of PR

2005-11-17T12:01:00.000Z

This week's PR Week (Nov 11, 2005) reported interesting new research from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

The survey sized the UK PR industry at £6.5bn, and found that PR contributes £3.4bn to the British economy. PR is also estimated to provide £1.1bn of corporate profits.

PR spend, the survey found, has risen by a third since 2000 to an annual average of £1.2m per organisation, and it estimated that there are now 47,800 people working in the PR industry.

It's great to see stats like this that reinforce the value of PR.

What exactly is news?

2005-11-14T23:04:00.000Z

Journalism lecturers at university taught me that news is amongst other things, new, unique, unusual, controversial or quirky.

A Factiva colleague and former journalist gave me a far more practical example – the “man bites dog” test. “It’s not news when a dog bites a man – that happens all the time,” he said. “But it is news when a man bites a dog.”

A quick search on Factiva.com returned some 289 articles dating back to 1987, with ‘Man Bites Dog’ in the headline. The stories behind those numbers are a little more disturbing…

One drunk man in Shanghai bit a dog to death after it had nipped him on the cheek as he walked home.

And spare a thought for Renny, a three-year old police-dog, who was bitten by a drunk patron leaving a Syracuse nightclub. When questioned and charged with injuring a police animal, the offender said he could not remember biting the dog because “he was pretty drunk.”

In another incident, a drunk and blind man was caught on cameras gnawing his guide dog’s ears and nose. He was fined and banned for life from ever owning a dog,

Eoow! What is it with drunk blokes and biting dogs?

On a more positive note, my favourite Man Bites Dog story was reported in the Daily Telegraph in August 2000. A Welsh fisherman had to abandon his boat in a storm and climb a 40 metre cliff. The only way he could save his pooch was to carry her to safety – using his teeth. "I grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and clamped my mouth around the fur. She didn't seem to mind," he said.

Aww…finally a good news story!

2005-11-14T17:25:00.000Z

Probably not the most compelling USP I've seen...

If you can't beat em, join em!

2005-11-14T08:42:00.000Z

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to blog I go.

Apparently the blogosphere is growing at the rate of a new blog every second. That’s a lot of people creating a lot of content! Who’d have thought there were that many wanna-be journalists and self-publishers?

I suspect that my motive for blogging is similar to that of millions of other bloggers: I question what I read in the mainstream media; I question what’s being served up by corporate and government PR machines; and perhaps, for a brief moment, I want to unleash my inner journalist and write my own views without censorship or the corporate editing process.

Having worked in marketing and corporate communications roles in both large and small companies for over ten years, I’ve experienced my share of corporate editing/censorship. In the early days, the marked up changes would appear across the page in bright red ink. Now, the tracking function in Microsoft Word lets my various internal editors do that electronically. Some days, those mark ups have left my pages looking more like road maps - or war zones. One time, when I was writing a press release, an ex-boss decided to short-circuit the drafting process, commandeered my keyboard as I was mid-way through it, and attempted to finish the release for me. His reputation for being a micro-manager was never more evident…

These days, I am a Public Relations Manager for Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters company. I work with our regional marketing teams and PR agencies across the UK, CEMA and APAC, as well as my colleagues in our US head office. I still have to work documents through a long approval process which ensures consistency of our corporate message. And that’s fair enough – the best companies and brands have consistent and well articulated messages.

That said, Factiva is also encouraging its employees to blog. Whereas some companies have a blanket “Thou shalt not blog” policy, Factiva is actively encouraging us to “go forth and blog”. When I put on my corporate communications hat, I ponder whether this is opening the company up to unnecessary communications risks. But then many companies are being blogged about right now by their past and present employees, and by satisfied and dissatisfied customers. In many cases, companies are completely unaware that these conversations are taking place. To me, that is a far bigger communications threat.

So. This blog is my own foray into self-publishing, and will discuss my observations as a communications professional, and how the ever-changing media landscape is impacting my role and the role of corporate communications globally.