August 31st, 2010 by John Brown

Google’s priority inbox – end of the PR mailer?

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Google has launched a new ‘priority inbox’ service for its web-based email service, Gmail. Basically Gmail monitors a user’s email behaviour and ranks email’s in order of importance, bumping the most important and unread emails to the top of the reading pane.

This got me thinking, could a priority email service spell the end of the PR mailer? By PR mailer I mean a mass mailed press release with something like ‘Innovative, groundbreaking thought leader comments on market leading spanner’ in the subject line. As 99% of hacks would hit the delete button every time they received something like this, a priority inbox system would send this mailer to the bottom of the pile, meaning not even the catchiest of subject lines will make it onto the journo’s email radar.

Good PRs will always thoroughly scrutinise whether a story is newsworthy or not, select the right journalists that would cover that story and then contact them by their preferred method. Crap PRs will send a mailer to a Gorkana (replace with whatever service you use) list.

So in an industry under constant pressure to reduce spamming, a priority inbox could be the catalyst needed to encourage more sophisticated PR activity.

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August 16th, 2010 by John Brown

Obvs this is pssng me off! – Why I hate people speaking in abbreviations

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So today I read an article on the BBC’s website entitled, “How the internet is changing language”.

If you speak to anyone around the office they will tell you that I have a deep and emotional hatred of people abbreviating when they speak. By this I mean ‘obvs’ for obviously, ‘totes’ for totally and ‘defs’ for definitely.

It’s like someone smacking me repeatedly in the face with a large, incorrect, dictionary. There is just no need for it.  My life, and I imagine the speaker’s life, is not going to benefit in anyway from the millisecond ‘obvs’ will save if said in replacement of ‘obviously’.

I can assure you I don’t have such a hectic and incredibly important life where those milliseconds can all be racked up so that I can spend more time discovering cures to terminal diseases or solving world hunger. To illustrate this, I spent four hours yesterday playing Batman on the Playstation, in my pants. I can safely say I have enough time on my hands to listen to the full word rather than its abbreviated backward cousin.

While the BBC article gives examples of where abbreviation has helped, or in some cases is completely necessary (take Twitter for example), this shouldn’t mean that people go about life speaking as if they only have 140 characters with which to get the message across.

I guess that is the thing that irritated me the most; there is no practical reason why people are now saying ‘actch’ instead of actually. It’s just some Paris Hiltonesque language that began with OMG and has slowly evolved into this dumbed down version of an already dumbed down language.

It’s a way of communicating that needs to be met with anger and a point blank refusal to acknowledge the sentence that contained the offending abbreviation.

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August 10th, 2010 by John Brown

#speedkids Bring on next year (I’ll dress as a clown)

I admit. I was anxious. Nervous. I would even go as far to say that I had a a furrowed brow of worry at the thought of the office being overrun by mini versions of my collegagues.

However, all these fears were quickly dispersed over a game of office football.

Speed had a ‘bring your kids to work’ day today and I thought it was fantastic. The kids ranging from truly minature crawlers to walking, talking, cappucino drinking little adults; gave the office a cracking atmosphere today.

The impromptu rugby tackles, random hugging and continuous medium paced jogging were complemented with a fantastic media consumption survey done with the older kids and of course a huge amount of sugar.

The little ones were full of an energy that sparked me to do my first half paced jog since 1992.  I think even my press release pitches were enhanced by letting journalists know that, this time around, the burp they heard was in fact a toddler rather than me.

For me, I found learning the media habits of the 10-12 year olds fascinating. All of them knew about illegal downloads and all said they would never take part in such activity. There was a general conscensus that Spotify was a better music access format than iTunes and BBC iPlayer was an invaluable tool for catching up on Doctor Who. @wadds will be putting up a video of the session soon so you can learn from these minature media moguls.

All in all I really enjoyed today although now I do feel a little bit like this little fella:

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August 3rd, 2010 by John Brown

Speed MDs’ Word Cloud: Comitted lover vs media geek

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Stephen Waddington (@wadds) and Steve Earl (@mynameisearl)

Both of them known and loved for sharing their thoughts on their blogs. In fact Wadds is up for the Greatest Contribution From An Individual award in the Reputation Online awards, and I am sure his blog has some part to play in this. While Steve Earl has managed to spark many a heated debate as a result of his fiery musings on a given subject and is well known for not holding back when it comes to minor irritations.

Both great contributions to the blogosphere, but what do their blogs reveal about the men behind the keyboard? Well I have done a word cloud for each blog. It seems that, while Wadds is clearly an online geek, out to comment on and shape the digital world of tomorrow, Earl is more of a family man and a bit of a romantic.

Wadds, ever the media mogul, had a word cloud that left me content that the world is in order with words such as online, search and marketing all featuring heavily in his cloud. Earl’s on the other hand made me fall off my chair in disbelief. Wedding, love and kids all featuring on his cloud of romance. Who would have thought that Steve Earl would be the perfectly baked cookie of the PR world, hard on the outside but with a warm gooey centre.

I leave you with the links to the word clouds:  Stephen Waddington’s and Steve Earl’s

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July 6th, 2010 by John Brown

Getting a job starts before you graduate

The Graduate Original Soundtrack album cover.
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This morning I find that the media is brimming with stories on how graduates with degrees below a 2:1 are struggling to find work. While I have a certain amount of sympathy for those who are finding it an increasingly difficult task to get employed, I can’t help but feel that there is a certain amount of ar$e scratching taking place.

“I spent three years (probably one year of not doing very much and two years pulling my socks up) getting a degree, now give me a job.”

Sorry guys and girls, that just doesn’t cut it any more, and hasn’t done for a long while.

As undergraduate barriers to entry have eased considerably over the years, the onus on the student to complement their studies with quality work experience has increased. A quick chat with friends and colleagues reveals that many, including me, went looking for work experience in our second year of uni and found it to be exceptionally valuable when it came to finding full time employment.

In the past few weeks  at Speed we have had a few interns join us, all of which appeared to find the experience worthwhile, and all of which would be given a good reference if they requested one. A couple of these references from credible workplaces will be valuable gems when it comes to applying for work.

Whether you get a 1st a 2:1 or a 2:2, employers of today want to see real passion and drive to learn the job at hand; work experience is not a nice thing to have but an essential ingredient to a shining CV.

I leave you with one of the jobless graduates quoted in the Independent “I probably didn’t put as much effort into my degree as I could have done.” Well to be honest friend, why the hell are you complaining?

I wrote a few tips some time back for graduates or soon to be graduates looking for work, I hope this helps!

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June 16th, 2010 by John Brown

Trade magazines – Here today. Gone tomorrow?

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The one topic that is constantly being debated in our industry is whether print will die off. It dominates Twitter discussions, gets analysed in blogs and is discussed at networking events. Most of the time the debate is focused on newspapers, with many people ignoring trade magazines and simply assuming that they will be (or already have been) tossed onto the print scrap heap.

Being a PR focused on the technology industry, I engage with a plethora of trade publications.  The editorial focus can range from HR to outsourcing, IT to facilities management.

The majority of these publications have a website which holds the bulk of their content, yet many appear to be reluctant to let go of their print offering, despite a few becoming incredibly thin. So will we see the death of the printed trade publication in a few years? I am not sure we will.

I think that trade publications will continue to hold their breaking stories and 24 hour news online, it’s the only way to compete effectively, however their print titles will become less frequent, more features focused and perhaps a little more exclusive.

I can see weeklies becoming monthlies, and monthlies becoming quarterlies. These new trade titles will include special reports, well researched features and exclusive interviews.  News will simply be a roundup. More money will be spent on design and aesthetics, in order to make the new magazines a bit of a luxury item and appeal to the C suite executives that they are trying to reach.

Trade titles have a lot more to give the print world than we all think, so long as they make the right changes, now.

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June 11th, 2010 by John Brown

Unlimited free phone calls and texts for all – just charge for data

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So o2 has announced that it is scrapping its unlimited mobile data plans in favour of Smartphone tariffs. These range from 500mb plans, costing £25-£35 a month, to 1GB plans for a staggering £60 a month.

Being an o2 customer I was obviously a little cheesed off, but to be honest, it makes perfect sense.

I spend more of my time tweeting on Tweet Deck, reading the news on my Guardian app, checking in on Foursquare and updating my Facebook status on my iPhone than I do calling people or texting. It seems that I am not alone; Vodafone recently announced unprecedented revenue growth in its data services and expects this growth to continue.

Data access is taking over as the primary driver for mobile technology, leaving phone calls and texts by the wayside. With the iPhone 4 adding technology that further thrusts it into the Skype world; of course mobile operators are going to focus their billing on data usage rather than voice minutes.

But there needs to be give and take. By all means charge me for my data (reasonably) but then give me unlimited free phone calls and texts in return.  I can assure you I won’t use them much.

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June 1st, 2010 by John Brown

My pod partners – according to Urbandictionary.com

On my continuing quest for late afternoon procrastination, I discovered that Urbandictionary.com comes up with the most fabulous, and occasionally creepily accurate definitions of people’s personalities, simply by searching their first name.

I have therefore decided to do an evaluation of the lovely people I spend over eight hours of my day sharing a desk with. The results are as follows:

DISCLAIMER: Punctuation and spelling is taken directly from www.urbandictionary.com and does not reflect my superior writing skills.

Becca (@becdaniel): to be hit in the face with an artificial penis

Matthew (@mpwatson) : a sexy guy that likes the women and has a nice tooth brush

Me (@brownbare) : Changes moods easily; moody, greatest, most annoying person on the face of this earth..yet i still want to be with him..

Ruth (@ruthjones): Ruth’s are beautiful, fiery, inependent and very clever. Ruth’s are very beautiful and known to break many hearts. Ruth’s are upright and honest, they are not afraid to tell the truth.

Lisa (@lisa_corbridge): the name of a girl who is very pretty and is so lovable that boys fall in love with her instantly.

Katie (@klswan): A happy person who is a good listener and reliable friend. Likes to party and is always there when you need her.

Sara: A person who is very hot and has the greatest personality ever! In hebrew Sara means princess. There for you should treat her as if she was one! Sara is also a very irresistable person.

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March 26th, 2010 by John Brown

#ldntwestival great for charities not great for socialising

Last night I was at the London Twestival held at Cable Club, Bermondsey Street. This was my third Twestival so I had a rough idea of what to expect; drinking and a bit of networking accompanied by live music.

It was a little disappointing to be honest.

Now I am sure I will be savaged by those who put in such a lot of effort into organising an event which has the noble aim of raising money for worthy causes, but I will brave it. After all, social media should be about learning from and engaging with your audience, which for Twestival I represent.

For an event that was born out of social media, last night didn’t feel very…..social. The main problem was the venue. It was far too dark, which when you are trying to put a face to a username by reading a name badge, is a problem. Also no phone signal was a little frustrating, as @markhillary also points out in his blog.

I guess people would argue that I should have logged onto the wireless network and tweeted my whereabouts to all present. But going to a Twitter event in order to meet people from Twitter and then spend my night tweeting them seems, well, pointless.

But the whole thing has achieved its primary objective and the world will undoubtedly be a better place for it.

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March 2nd, 2010 by John Brown

Chatroulette – Master-bation, forni-cation and a big red flag for brands

So Chatroulette is the new live chat phenomenon that is sweeping the globe. For those that have not heard of it yet, Chatroulette randomly matches you up with strangers around the world for video, audio, and text chat.

After being told about this by a friend, I decided to spin the wheel for myself and see whether there was any value in the new online tool as a communication channel for brands and businesses. As you will be able to tell from my account below, the answer is a big fat no.

First I was confronted with a few teenagers who were quite upset at having an overweight PR guy come up on their live stream,  they quickly moved on in pursuit of better things.

However, my fourth spin of the chat wheel was a little more surprising to say the least. What appeared on my live feed was a middle aged man pleasuring himself. Clearly he was much more used to seeing shocked users than I was at seeing people like him and he paused, clicked the mouse and I was transported to another user.

Ten minutes in and a couple more naked guys later an ‘exhibitionist’ couple were performing for the camera, this I imagine was the pot of gold the teenagers at the start of my Chatroulette journey were looking for, I thought best to leave and let more appreciating users take advantage of the show.

It was not until the final moments did I meet an interesting user, a guitarist from Maine who wanted to play a couple of songs and get feedback.

So, overall my Chatroulette experience was a strange and pornographic one. I doubt I will be heading back any time soon and I am concerned at the lack of restrictions; by the looks of things anyone of any age can use the service, which is worrying.

Is there any value in using it as a marketing tool? Well French Connection thinks so as it has launched a Chatroulette competition. I am sure more will follow suit  and dive head first into the hype. Right now though I would not want any of my clients associated with it, something as unregulated and as seemingly seedy as this has the potential to seriously backfire.

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