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February 24th, 2010 by Steve

Ruth Jones, new to the Speed board (and 10 of her secrets)

We welcomed a new face to the Speed board this week: Ruth Jones. She has actually been bringing her Bradfordian charms to the office for more than four years now, but her energy and drive have seen her rise to run a line of business, our new Fast-Growth Technology Markets team.

I could wax lyrical about how good Ruth is all day, but it may only increase her market value and her ego.

Instead, here are 10 things that weren’t in the blurb about her appointment:

1. Ruth’s twin sister was World Number One Thai boxer

2. Sir Alex Ferguson wrote her a letter (well, he signed it)

3. Interviewed Geoffrey Richmond, former Bradford City chairman, aged 14

4. She has a cross-shaped scar on her stomach

5. Failed her driving test for speeding

6. Given the Last Rites twice

7. Played county hockey

8. Favourite film is ’10 things I hate about you’

9. First baked a cake at the age of 29

10. Climbed Croagh Patrick (not in sandals)

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February 24th, 2010 by Steve

Guardian Careers live forum: social media jobhunting for PRs

I’ve just finished helping out with a live forum The Guardian ran on how to use social media to find work.

The conversation covered a lot of ground: etiquette, examples of best practice, good tools to use, the perils of personal information and images, and at what point in careers people use social media to help find a job.

Here is a summary of some of the extracts that are relevant to PRs:

Use of LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
“LinkedIn is a great little black book but for the purposes of getting a job it is like a digitised CV – and so the same pitfalls apply”
“It’s a case of ‘less is more’ when I have to assess dozens of job applications. Same applies to LinkedIn.”
” I cannot understand why people have long-winded four page CVs that go back to their sixth form paper round”
“If Twitter is like conversations in a pub, Plaxo is like shouting in a meat market.”

Should you have your own blog or web site?
“A blog focused on your profession can be a valuable tool. It can demonstrate what you know, how you think and what ideas you have.”
“I really don’t believe candidates need websites unless they are looking for freelance work.”
“..blogs…made more sense to me. They give you a better platform for displaying timely content relevant to the news cycle and expose you to a more current form of writing, plus as I said you can integrate your social media eg Twitter, YouTube (if a video or multimedia journalist) etc to show your variety.”
“Having your own web site purely so you get hired can make you look like a going commercial concern. Or a prat with an insufferable ego.”

Will what you put on Facebook make you look like a t*t to a potential employer?
“Good reputation practice is to have a consistent message, content and themes across all of the social networks and interaction points and to use them as a framework for a job or career plan of attack.”
“If you have Twitter or YouTube or LinkedIn account that is completely public, then don’t post anything you are not comfortable having out there for all to see.”
“If I were to start again I would have my work and personal social networks separate.”
“Don’t post anything publicly that you wouldn’t want your boss to see.”

Are younger people better at jobhunting using social media than more experienced people further into their careers?
“Every so often I notice people who do not have a LinkedIn page and say – WHY!!!!”
“I really do think this is a generational issue. I’d advocate free social media training for older jobseekers compulsory training for senior staff.”
“I ran a student work experience programme at the NUJ’s conference last year, reporting using blogs, Twitter, live-blogging, YouTube etc. The majority of the students were unfamiliar with some, if not all, of the media. Only a minority already had Twitter accounts.”

Should people also know how to use a phone to make calls?
“Sometimes there is no substitute for a phone call or a face to face meeting, and I agree people should not hide behind technology, particularly when they are evading a difficult issue.”
“In PR it’s all very well being able to write a potent email or an inspiring tweet, but if you can’t hold a conversation over the phone then I’m not interested in hiring you.”
“When all you had on your desk was a DOS computer with no internet connection, a phone and an ashtray, you inevitably had to do a lot more communication by phone. It was a more integral career tool.”

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February 23rd, 2010 by Steve

Department of Corrections

Seething at yet another grammatical sin spotted in PR copy, I was ‘forced’ this morning to start a new Twitter feed, @SpeedGrammar.

This will now doubtless become an epicentre of grammatical errors on my part, to derisive howls from colleagues and peers.

But a superhero is needed to correct these wayward written ways, so do follow if you feel you need a state of correctness gently thrashed into you.

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February 19th, 2010 by Steve

Money’s too fright to mention

There can be few more contentious issues in PR than salaries.

I did a quick search on what bloggers have written about the topic and found nothing. A few bits and pieces on the debate about work experience slavery morals last year, including something I wrote, but nothing that tackles the guts of the topic – do we get paid the right amount?

I could make this a very lengthy post. But in the interests of my time and your sanity, here are what I see as three major salary factors in the PR industry at the moment:

The money must be there
If you work for an agency, that agency must make enough money in order to be able to pay more in salaries. This is blindingly obvious. Yet so few agencies, despite being in the communications business, seem to do a good job of getting their teams to understand that. There are essentially three levers in a PR agency: staff costs, overheads and profit. That is it. These aren’t complex businesses. The greater your income, the more you can increase staff costs. And those income increases can come both from growing your client list and increasing your fees. A good starting point for anyone wanting to increase their salary might be to demonstrate consciousness of ways of generating new client income and ways of charging more for services, where there is a market demand and where the market will accept that pricing.

It is a similar picture with in-house positions. A growing, thriving business will typically have ever-larger and more sophisticated publicity needs as its reputation develops. A stagnant or shrinking business will not.

Agencies must benchmark better
Most agencies will tell their staff that they pay reasonably well. They’ll use phrases like “in the upper quartile” or “aim to be industry-leading”. In an age when most are advising clients on the commercial virtues of truth and the challenges of maintaining credibility across diverse media, this does seem to be wearing a little thin.

Agencies should be benchmarking their rates and their salary brackets versus the market at least annually. Speed does it twice a year. We’ve just done one actually, taking data from recruiters and competitors (don’t worry, we won’t reveal any specifics!) and comparing that with what we offer. This is not a foolproof approach as job titles vary, some figures are given as broad ranges and sector specialisms come into play. But without blowing our own trumpet too much, we’ll be showing this information to all staff. No spin, no massaging the figures, no rushing it before the eyes so it doesn’t sink in. I doubt many agencies are that transparent.

If your specialism is media-linked, watch your earning potential erode
Ah, the digital divas. The above stuff about benchmarking currently has one fly in the ointment – that fear is forcing some agencies to pay unsustainable salaries to digital specialists. I don’t know why, but my guess (and, as I tell my wife, I am not often wrong) is that the agencies paying them are fearful of missing out on the modernisation of media and its implications for PR, so are chucking money at it rather than taking a more commercially grown-up approach.

If we had had such a developed PR industry 50 years ago, we would probably be in the same boat over the development of TV. People would have set themselves up as small screen specialists, touting the end of print and charging a big premium for their services. Only the sector wasn’t even in its infancy then, and the development of TV as a medium was far slower than the internet, hence the lack of a panic factor.

A far better approach is for agencies to train all staff to be able to handle all sorts of media. Conventional PR operators must master digital. Digital PRs must do the opposite – all media may eventually be digital, but understanding the fundamentals of journalism must be meat and drink to all PRs.

Media is changing fast, but whatever we call it today before long it will all just be media. A new, exciting, challenging and diverse media that can both move in the blink of an eye and pause to think shrewdly.

If you tie your earning potential to just part of that media today, do not expect it to keep on growing. And as a client if you’re being charged an unfair premium for what amount to niche media services, perhaps you should question that.

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February 19th, 2010 by Steve

The school reunion (agency style)

I could be generalising. I could be being unfair.

But from what I know, the vast majority of PR agencies do not welcome former employees with open arms and warm wishes after they’ve left. Instead, there’s a typically sniffy attitude from both sides, with the employer sometimes feeling slighted and the employee feeling unwelcome, or jaded. The connections made through social media are changing this, but nevertheless a malaise remains.

PR agencies are people businesses. People do get on with other people. Some of my good mates are people I worked with years and years ago and I still meet up with them from time to time. So it’s natural that when people leave agencies they will stay in touch with former colleagues. In my opinion, the best scenario is if they stay in touch with the employers too, and that everyone appreciates the contribution people make in working hard and their achievements in developing their career.

Of course some people leave jobs with a bitter taste. A shame, but it does happen. Employment law being what it is, it can be difficult for these things to happen in the way both parties would really want, and can be far from ideal. Equally, some seem to struggle to move on and it takes a while for them to give up tapping into gossip networks. If they’re particularly lacking other things to focus on, the wooden spoon can come out.

Which is all a bit daft. One of my former employers, now operating as Ketchum Pleon, started doing an annual reunion about 10 years ago and it has spawned various (positive) splinter factions of people who get together for drinks occasionally. They make contacts, they remember what was good about working there, they wonder at how old some people look these days.

Speed has been on the scene for nearly a year, but its short history goes back further, to the roots of BMA Communications, Mantra, Lighthouse PR and Rainier PR, and a spin-off, Custard PR. Over (in some cases) 20 years many people have passed through the doors. Most have left smiling. Typically the teams were good at retaining people and most got a lot out of it. Many have gone on to develop PR and marketing careers that those who founded the agencies are rightly proud of. Which is great; how it should be.

After work on 23 March we’re asking them back. We have contact details for most, and if not we know people who know people. So it’s an open house. It won’t be glamorous, but we’ll have food and some booze in the office and a crowd of people nattering. So very much like old times.

Agencies should take their alumni seriously. People should be, ideally, proud of where they worked and the bosses should be proud of the people who worked there. Here’s hoping the rest of the PR industry can do something similar.

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February 15th, 2010 by Steve

10 things not to say in a PR job interview

First, a disclaimer: Speed has been interviewing recently so has seen quite a few prospective recruits, and these comments are not specifically about any of those interviews.

Apart from the one that was quite weird, but that is probably obvious.

So seeing the comments of senior journalists this morning on what they look for when hiring reporters, I thought about how that compares with PR interviews.

I’m planning another blog post this week about PR salaries and career progression within agencies, so this is perhaps a good prequel.

Things not to say when being interviewed for a job at a PR agency:

1. I really like the thought of working in PR

2. I know quite a few people who work in PR and am really into reading the media, so I think it’s something I’d like to pursue

3. They’ve piled me up with so much work that I don’t think I can keep working there so I need to go elsewhere where I can do less work (yes, have had this one more than once)

4. I don’t really do anything outside work

5. I don’t really read the newspapers, I get all my information from social media

6. Really sorry I’m late, I misjudged how long the journey would take me

7. If I joined here, how quickly would I be promoted to account manager (fine to discuss, but not in this presumptuous way without any discussion of why you might be capable)?

8. What do you think my best qualities are?

9. With the ways things are today, I don’t think grammar and proper English really have a role anymore

10. Do you have a blog?

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February 4th, 2010 by Steve

The PR person of the future will be an utter know-it-all

It used to be that certain media stereotypes befitted the PR industry. We worked hard to get away from them, talking about being consultants rather than suppliers, bigging up our strategic significance.

Today, the PR person comes in all manner of shapes and sizes. In many ways, we are a symbolic reflection of the diverse, fragmented, rapidly evolving and somewhat nervy media we work with.

We now have these types of PR people, amongst many others:

- Moderately experienced female PR, invariably blonde, lives Fulham, very comfortable with conventional media and tries hard to play lip service to social media

- Young digital pup, of-the-moment trainers, the hair of the commercially innocent, social media slurper but does not read the papers really

- The experienced senior director, a fondness for expensive moisturisers and knows PR is changing, but looks in the mirror each day and really wishes it wasn’t

- The overworked agency stalwart, dabbles with social media, sometimes surprises with digital acumen, but employer does not give them time to really learn the digital ropes so conventional remains the bread and butter

- The extreme digital enthusiast, made a personal vow a year ago to practically abandon conventional PR and bathe in the heady waters of digital, often tweets about pets and weather

You may recognise some or all of these.

Not clones, but better skilled
But in the future, the PR person will become much more of a standard item. Of course agencies will always look for diversity and range of experience when building the right team and the right culture. But the set of skills will become more regular across the team. And those skills will be a good deal more sophisticated, as well as comprehensive.

As Speed people covered at a Social Media Week breakfast this morning, our view is that PRs of the future are going to need to be experts in all corners of the media, and how to use editorial techniques to do commercially-valued things for clients. Social, print, broadcast, all types of media. Animal, vegetable, mineral, as The Bishop of Bath and Wells (pretend) once said in Blackadder.

The PR person of the future will need to be a complete know-it-all. We’ll need to know how the newspapers work (and boy is that changing fast), how social networks evolve and what has greatest influence at any given time, how ripples effects can be created and PR’s role in a rapidly changing marketing mix.

PR and advertising: let’s sort it out
Danny Rogers at PR Week has picked up on the latter point. He has also touched on why PR may need to hire people from beyond PR. My view on that is that is only one part of the picture: too many PR people have simply not been given encouraged (or had the foresight) to learn the skills they will need in the future, which is why some agencies may be thinking broader. The bigger picture is that PR must grow up and work with advertising to establish the mutual value we can create for clients.

Face it: PR must stand up and be counted
But first, we need to upgrade PR. How we gather insight, the ideas that will really work across diverse media, who the right influencers are now and for the long term, and how we can really, honestly, properly, confidently, unashamedly measure impact.

And the answer to the last point is not just about the latest slightly-better-than-previous-versions social media monitoring tools. It is more like what blend of tools will be more effective for each client, and above that how we can truly tell whether audiences have been influenced to act to our benefit, and when they will do so.

Speed’s approach to the skills challenge we now have in PR is bootcamp-like, but we feel the only way to ensure everyone across a PR business has the skills they’ll need for the future and that clients are coming to rely on. We make no apologies for this. We do not see how half measures or half-cock schemes will cut the mustard. We are working to ensure we are the consultancy that really cracks where PR – all of PR – is going amidst a diverse and fast-changing media.

We are not know-it-alls by any means, but – within the confines of public relations, and how the industry is changing – we aspire to be that. If you know what I mean. PR people who are experts across the new, broader remit of PR, rather than those who stick to our traditional knitting or cling to trends.

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February 1st, 2010 by Steve

Print media quiz for digital PRs: the answers

The answers to those questions about print media for digital PR people.

Conclusion: either a.) digital PR people largely clueless about print media, b.) digital PR people can’t be arsed to read this blog or c.) inconclusive. B and c most likely.

1. Stone: big slab of solid stuff that sub editors used to use to lay out pages (pre-Quark Xpress) manually, using glue and a knife. Proper old school

2. Delayed drop: editorial technique of leaving the juicy bit of the story until the end of the copy (largely redundant these days due to immediacy of news and over-zealous subbing)

3. Gash: news page that is approximately 50 per cent advertising and the remainder editorial. As in instruction notes to subs like ‘go big gash flag pic first last only’

4. Reverse stipple: reversing the normal type/background shading of a headline, putting it in a box (normally) and using dots to make it stand out more. Useful technique for enlivening a page full of good stories to add prominence to one (otherwise less noticeable) item

5. Snapper: a photographer

6. Flash: small news item on the front page to bring your attention to a larger story insider

7. Sting: what it sounds like. Effectively ambushing someone for a story. The fake sheikh springs to mind, but some are orchestrated by the authorities, like being invited on a dawn raid in which front doors get put in and suspects are chased across fields in their pants

8. Snatch: picture taken without the subject’s prior permission, such as of a defendant leaving court. Bushes and parked cars are allies, dumb pedestrians are not

9. Snout: insider paid in cash by the publishing company for passing information on (names, addresses, other passages to sleaze)

10. Crosshead: like a sub-heading. A technique used to break up the copy, often used by Sunday newspapers in features

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