Watching the wreckage…

While undoubtedly there’s a lot of excellent discourse taking place around the most recent Edelman snafu, a lot of the commentary is little more than rubbernecking.

I’m always nervous of taking a holier than thou position in these situations as it doesn’t take a lot for it to explode in your ever so smug face – unless you’re anonymous of course, but, then if you are anonymous what value has your opinion?

Let me digress for a moment. If you are posting anonymously, how can you criticize the manner in which other people are getting involved in the conversation? Anyone spot the irony?

Edelman screwed up. It’s a little more surprising because it’s strike two and if memory serves me correctly the first episode also concerned Wal*Mart.

But is it the end of the world? Nope.

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Two pieces of advice I’d give them (if they were listening) are firstly they took too long to come clean and give a statement – I doubt they’d wait so long for a client – particularly as they had all the facts! Secondly maybe it’s me – and I do NOT want to be picky but I’d highlight this comment from Edelman’s post:

Let me reiterate our support for the WOMMA guidelines on transparency, which we helped to write. Our commitment is to openness and engagement because trust is not negotiable and we are working to be sure that commitment is delivered in all our programs.

The term “which we helped write” jarred with me for a couple of reasons.  Firstly is he trying to promote thought leadership in an apology? It was unnecessary.  Secondly if you helped to write them and you’ve already fouled twice on the same issue… that raises questions n’est pas?

Anyway, no big deal, move on, and for the love of all that’s holy get your act together.

PS: Fair play to Mr. Edelman, he’s posting his socks off in the comments…

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The problem with unimaginative parents…

This something I wrote about before.  The Interweb is a large connected world.  Mistaken identity occurs all the time, particularly when your parents didn’t appear to spend an awful lot of imagination naming you 🙂

It appears that there is another Tom Murphy online blogging in Ireland, he’s the brains behind Santa Strike Force, and he’s the man that’s been nominated for the Net Visionary Award in the social contribution category.  Much deserved by the looks of things.

There were a couple of Tom Murphy’s in my school, there are three I know of in Microsoft, it’s always fun….

PR Blog Catch Up… at last…

I’ve finally caught up on a lot of recent RSS reading – I have to be honest coming back to a full RSS reader is often as stressful as a full inbox – so here’s some of the more interesting stuff.  Some is older, some irrelevant.  You be the judge…

 

Edelman

I think Edelman deserve a lot of kudos for their committment to the new changing world of online communication.  It could be argued that any agency “pushing the envelope”, so to speak, has a higher probability of hitting some speed bumps – however we could also be moving from careless and silly to stupid if they keep grabbing the headline – albeit the bloglines.

Trevor Cook | Neville Hobson | Shel Holtz | John Wagner | Kevin Dugan |

 

Irish PR Blogger

Even with a booming technology sector (booming for about 20 years at this point), Ireland remains behind the curve when it comes to new technology.  This includes blogs. I’m delighted to see that there’s no a third Irish PR blogger, long-time technology and finance PR guru Ronnie Simpson. It goes without saying that the ever industrious Piaras Kelly of Drury Communications was the second. 

 

PR Myths

Mason Cole takes a stab at some PR myths.

 

Taking relations from the other side of the fence

Mike Manuel provides bloggers with some advice on how to approach corporations.  It’s first time I’ve seen such advice provided and it’s a great idea though obviously will be ignored.

 

Watch your URL

Probably a little off-topic and definetely straying in adolescent humour, however John Collins’ post on unfortunate corporate URLs made me smile.

 

I need a third life

OK so I have previously been a little hesitant in supporting the whole Second Life thing.  I certainly don’t (yet!) share the passion it’s generating among certain PR commentators but it continues to crop up all over the place and is worthy of a mention. (Still haven’t registered or visited it).

  • Text 100 have produced a video on YouTube
  • Gary Goldhammer outlines six ways to know when PR has taken over Second Life.

 

New media, social media and other terms
  • Kami Huyse has a post on emerging trends in PR, drawing on discussions with Paull Young and Dr. Georg Kolb – a former colleague of mine and someone who speaks a lot of sense – though I’m still not sure on the Second Life stuff 🙂

You can listed to Paull, Kami and Georg’s discussion on the Forward Podcast here.

  • Stuart Bruce on using social media in PR.
  • Neville Hobson outlines how to create a social media communications strategy.
  • Susan Getgood offers some thoughts on viral marketing.

 

CEO Blogging

Shel Holtz takes on Dave Taylor’s assertion that a CEO should never blog. I have to say I agree with Shel, there are of course CEOs who should never blog, but some CEOs will find it incredibly successful.

 

The death of the press release (at TechDirt anyway)

Read all about it… [Via Jim Horton]

“However, too many PR folks either think we don’t mean it, or don’t bother spending enough time on the site to realize we don’t want press releases. You think we plan to pay attention to either type of PR spammer? We’ve had our fair share of posts highlighting stupid PR practices in the past, but (of course) the worst offenders don’t actually read this site — they just spam us. It’s not surprising, of course, to find out that we’re not alone in feeling this way.”

  • On a related subject, Mark Jones of the Australian Financial Review gives his view on the relevance of the press release. [Via Trevor Cook]
  • Meanwhile in case you think there is a future in press releases – at least the online forms – Todd Defren has announced a new Social Media Release Builder.

 

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When the flack jumps ship the Iceberg is in sight..

England take their football/soccer very seriously indeed. They recently appointed a new manager for the national team, Steve McClaren, who it’s fair to say wasn’t a popular appointment – among the fans or the media – and their 2-0 loss during the week to Croatia has created something of a firestorm among the tabloid media.

No suprise then perhaps that McClaren was the lead story in the sports section of Saturday’s edition of the UK Daily Mail, except the subject of the story was something of a surprise.  The headline read:

McClaren Fired!

Then the sub-head explained he had been fired by his PR advisor (not his employer). You know things are getting bad when the flack jumps ship – and when it’s the lead story.  Of course the fact that the flack in question is one Max Clifford explains a lot…

 

“In the early stages Steve certainly seemed to understand my advice and I think a lot of the things I talked about, he would like to have done but it just didn’t materialise.

“The relationship now is virtually non-existent. If I can’t take part and I can’t contribute then there is no point in me staying involved. What was made very clear to me in the beginning was that the FA were very unhappy with my appointment.”

PS: It appears Mr. McClaren’s job is fairly safe.  The ruling body of English football are still paying £13,000 per day compensation to their previous manager so it’s felt that they are committed to avoiding having to pay McClaren the £10 million compensation they’d have to if they fired him.  I want one of those jobs.

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Making a social contribution…

I was having lunch with a friend of mine yesterday, who mentioned in passing about the Irish Internet Association’s Net Visionary awards.She asked how come I had been nominated? Huh? Then followed five minutes where she wouldn’t believe that I knew nothing about it.  It appears I have been nominated in the category of: “Social Contribution”.  Someone forgot to tell me, but then given real bloggers like Bernie Goldbach and Tom Raftery are in the running and I think I’m the only nomination without a biography or link the words ‘hell’ and ‘snowball’ come to mind. 

A PR guy making a ‘social contribution’ – what is the world coming to?

The key, the sink and the heir…

Things have been quiet on the blog recently.  There’s an easy explanation – I was on vacation and have been trying to get back on an even keel since I returned.  Of course what happened the day before I went on vacation was far more stressful than coming back to a full in-box…

Friday before vacation was the usual rush to make sure everything was done, handed off, prepared etc. I had meetings all morning and when I checked my muted mobile phone for the first time at around 1pm I spotted about seven missed calls from Sorcha – not a good sign.

I transpired that my son and heir (aged 2.5 years) decided that it would be a great idea to investigate how keys can lock doors and he managed to lock Sorcha in our bedroom.  That would’ve been OK, except that her mobile and the cordless home phone were downstairs.

A full half hour tutorial on how to unlock a door followed, but the little man was unable (or unwilling) to complete his training, got bored and decided to go into the bathroom, put the plug in the sink and see how long it would take for the water to reach the overflow hole – not long as it transpired.

Meanwhile, Sorcha is hanging out of our bedroom window trying to attract the attention of passers-by. No luck. An hour later he’s back at the bedroom door telling Mum he’s a little wet but is going downstairs.

Then the electricity in the house goes out.

Half an hour later, Sorcha manages to grab the attention of a lovely man driving a truck, who kindly throws his mobile phone up to Sorcha, who is then able to call someone (not the errant husband who has his mobile on silent, but that’s another story) to let her out.

Meanwhile the bathroom is under water, the electricity is blown and the kitchen has become a wet room with a destroyed ceiling and walls. But on the plus side has a fantastic internal waterfall feature – think a rainforest in your kitchen.

Junior is alive and well, so when you consider the potential outcomes I think we got off lightly.  For parents – remember to keep the keys away from the toddlers….  oh and if your mobile is on silent – check it from time to time….

Probably the best round-up ever..

I’ve been in Copenhagen for the past few days and have finally managed to catch up on some of my RSS reading and podcast listening.

Here’s some stuff I found interesting…

 

 

Tivoli, Copenhagen

Blogs: Do they need to be first hand or boring?

There were a lot of great questions and observations at the event in Edinburgh last week, but two particular questions struck a chord with me.

1) Are blogs ready for every market?

Although there’s no empirical data that I’ve seen or would stand over, I think it’s fair to say that common sense tells us that the size and maturity of blog readership differs from one geography and market to another. 

For example, in the US technology industry, blogs are mature and influential, however, in a given UK market the immediate influence and first-hand readership is probably significantly lower.

First-hand is the key term however.

A less sophisticated Internet user doesn’t know or care if they’re using a blog.  They just see a website.

They probably find information using one of the better search engines* and whatever relevant results arrive they navigate to. It’s unlikely they’ll add your RSS feed (yet) but that doesn’t matter – what matters is that they’ve found and are reading your content or opinions. 

Using blogs to deliver this content is a powerful tool in itself.  The combination of the blog’s SEO friendly format with the power of modern search engines means that your content can be incredibly valuable even if the current readership is small.

Information overload is always going to limit the number of feeds you monitor (without more sophisticated intelligence) so the “long tail” effect is a powerful one – particularly in the, as of yet, nascent online community. Of course first-hand readership is important – but it’s not the only measure.

 

2) But surely some subjects are just too boring to blog about?

Are they? In practically every sector around the globe there is an ecosystem of producers, suppliers and customers. That presents some opportunities from a blog creation perspective.

When this question was posed it was in relation to a drinks manufacturer who had started an (inane) blog about its products.  The blog content was appalling – blowing it’s own trumpet – with no value for the reader. The result is a blog that will never deliver the results its creators were aiming for.

But does that mean that certain companies or sectors will never have suitable content for a blog? Nope.

It’s not the blog that’s the problem it’s the content creators.  Think how and why your blog could be interesting.  It could be supporting your community efforts, covering company news or views.  The alternatives are endless.  The lazy option is to blow your own trumpet – the successful option is researching what your audience would value.

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*Cut me some slack, it’s the search engine I use 🙂

Edinburgh done – London to-do

Unfortunately this post was delayed much longer than I’d hoped but at least now I’ve more content to link to!

Last week’s event in Edinburgh went very well.  There was great engagement from the audience and, as always, it was fantastic to catch up with Chris, Elizabeth, Neville, Philip and Stuart.

  • Listen to Neville’s podcast with a number of the delegates including Andrea Conway, Scott Douglas, David Connor and Adrian Mahoney.
  • Listen to Neville’s MP3 of a brief closing discussion with himself, Philip, Stuart and myself.
  • Read Neville’s post on the event.
  • Read Philip’s post.
  • Read Stuart’s post.

Just as we’ve finished Edinburgh we’ve agreed to do one final event in the “Delivering New PR” series.  It’ll take place in London on Friday, November 10th 2006 in the Marriott Hotel, Regents Park.  Following that event we’re going to review the event, content and format with a view to launching a follow up series in 2007.  The event is being organised by the ever efficient Nicky and Andy at Don’t Panic Projects.

You can find out more here.

Q & A's

Questions and hopefully some answers… (L-R: Philip, Stuart, Tom, Elizabeth and Neville)

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