Like many, I had my doubts after the firm sold part of its soul (stake) to what critics might call the devil but it hasn’t lost its, well, innocence yet. Even the 2011 AGM meeting sounds like the most fun day ever.

And Innocent is being clever again, this time for Valentine’s Day by launching a new promotion via a dedicated website that allows consumers to create their own ‘Love Label’, print it out and stick it onto a smoothie bottle to give to their special someone. The campaign is being supported by Facebook, Twitter and other online activity.

After choosing your favourite smoothie, you can complete the label by either writing your own message if you feel particularly inspired, or picking one of the not-so innocent messages. The barcode and logo also come in different shapes.

Valentine’s Day is usually the time of the year when most of the brands only seem to be able to come up with PR clichés, ideas that have been done to death or campaigns that offer no link between the season and their product, so it’s refreshing to see a new, original initiative that is both engaging and fits so perfectly with the brand.

Have a try – don’t you love these guys even more now?

Our task highlighted just what you can do with video content and how you can make your message more memorable.  If a picture is worth a thousand words then video has the potential to pack an impressive punch.

According to recent research by Google’s DoubleClick, rich media generates somewhere between a 400% and 700% increase in viewer engagement and response rates compared to static content. It’s no surprise when you can condense pages of text into a short snappy video of a minute or so.

Not only this, but it can also help cultivate your online community. The number of online video users is expected to double to more than 1 billion people by 2015. So, there’s certainly a captive audience, looking to consume and engage with video content. And with video is becoming increasingly favourable in the search engine rankings, it’s well worth investing in some eye-catching videos for your website or blog.

TMIM has featured a video series looking at using video beyond conventional public relations so that it generates leads as well.  In terms of PR, video can really bring company to life and set your company apart from the crowd. Overall it gives you license to deliver your content in a much more creative way.

But the smart thing to do is create videos that both enhance your reputation and generate leads. Existing and new audiences can be reached through a medium that has engagement at its heart, so why not make the most of it and deliver compelling content that features real life case studies that demonstrate the benefits your business brings, with personable spokespeople that can deliver the key messages?

Engaging video content presents a more credible view of your company and customer endorsements will boost your reputation and result the all-important sales.

Is this a nanny state gone mad or are there interesting points things to learn for PRs and marketers?

There’s one thing that’s obvious, it’s completely different for consumer and B2B brands. B2B brands are given almost free reign to make all sorts of claims about ‘industry firsts’ and ‘market-leading’ products and services, whereas consumers are constantly molly coddled by government run authorities. Whilst it’s true that buying a software solution for your business might not effect specific individuals if it goes wrong, why is buying a holiday based on someone else’s recommendation any different?

Perhaps they assume that the business world is more discerning. They might be right there, you’ve got to jump through a lot of budgetary, management and contractual hoops before buying a new business tool, but surely you’d do a lot of research before buying a holiday and in the case of the L’Oreal advert everyone knows that one face cream is more or less the same as another… What’s the difference? Probably mass appeal I suppose and the Government’s obsessive need to protect the consumer.

It’s a bit pedantic, but whether we like it or not, that’s the way of the world. But in my opinion tighter regulation is a good thing. It should actually make us all better marketers. Be more imaginative, more creative, gain audience and customers through being cleverer than the competition and pushing your marketing department to be braver with their campaigns. Don’t stick with the classic we have the best x formula, create your own brand by using the millions and one channels that are available. Video, podcasts, live events, social media, whatever, make your marketing and PR count.

This week it’s all about video. Do PR agencies know enough about video? Do they know how to do it right? And do they know how to make sure the content works on video? We are inclined to say that PRs do not know enough about video but we all know (or should know…) how to put compelling, written, pieces of content together. What’s stopping us from going a step further and being creative with these words?

Speed’s MD, Steve Earl, highlighted what video can be used for and examples of where it’s worked well and other where it hasn’t gone quite to plan. We also learnt the importance of lighting, framing and sound – a video without these in high-quality should really not be seen. Our resident video production company, Blueprint, talked us through some top tips, such as no fidgeting, no chequered shirts and filming next to a window – natural sometimes is the way forward! And then we were split up in teams; our team had to create a video on the value of video… oh the irony!

If you want to find out more about the challenges of video, the ample benefits and some top tips – please watch our Video PR: How To.

Thanks!

As expected, the event saw a number of major cloud services being launched with cloud infrastructure management software and services company 6fusion, announcing the release of its next generation UC6 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) federation platform; and secure cloud hosting company Firehost, revealing the launch of its European cloud. However, the real meat to the event was hearing IT experts approaching cloud computing as a maturing technology, demonstrating quality high-end and hybrid cloud services, and debating how it weighs up against competitive alternatives.

Moving beyond product and technical features, it finally feels like the ‘cloud haze’ for many vendors has cleared and they are refocusing on the real issues, the business benefits and what role cloud has as part of the wider business strategy. As with any trend, the issue for many vendors now is how they will differentiate themselves as aggressive competition rises. Unsurprisingly, the datacentre market was one that was out in force at the show, with key players Equinix, Interxion and Telehouse all launching new cloud offerings and initiatives.

Steep competition amongst datacentres has been spurred by advancements in virtualisation frameworks from VMware, Red Hat, Citrix and Microsoft. Those who attended the show with a clear objective to find a solution to make that transition to the cloud will have left with more questions than answers, due to the sheer number of new and sophisticated services now being made available in the cloud.

What last week confirmed for the IT industry is that as the cloud market matures, some aspects will become clearer but as cloud enters the phase of reality, competition from hybrid and traditional technologies will still place a vital role in business.

This week saw the surprise announcement that Lynx were launching their first fragrance targeted at the female audience. But why would women buy into a brand that has to date, so boldly targeted men – and phenomenally successfully so?

The creative geniuses at Lynx must be commended, for they’ve delivered some of the most impactful and memorable campaigns of recent years – you would be hard pushed to find a person who hadn’t heard of the ‘Lynx Effect’. No one can argue that they don’t understand the male consumer (their use of scantily clad models herding towards Lynx-wearing men proves this) but as a twenty-something female shopper who spends an average of fifty pounds a month on beauty products, I’m not convinced that the launch of a sister product is right. Lynx as a brand is known for pushing the boundaries, but this may be one too far.

Lynx is a ‘lads’ brand, its whiff reminds me of my 17 year old brother’s bolt hole. If I think back to my adolescent years, my friends and I were continuously seeking some sort of common ground with the opposite sex, so perhaps this product will do well with the girls. But then again, as a brand that is so recognisably owned as being ‘male’, couldn’t bringing out a female counterpart actually damage its reputation?

So on that note, I’ll be sticking to my trusted Dove roll-on, after all it’s beauty for ‘Real Women’.

The Dove Real Beauty Campaign is memorable – if not by most people, then at least by most women.

In 2004 when these advertisements started to appear on billboards, in magazines and on TV (remembering, of course, this was back in those hazy days when social media hadn’t truly arrived)   women everywhere must have breathed a collective sigh of relief.

For perhaps the first time a major, instantly recognisable brand had abandoned casting the typical ‘model’  and instead recruited six women of varying age, shape, size and race.

This campaign was hugely successful and piggy-backing off its success Dove built campaign after campaign, feeding into these same values – challenging the common perception of beauty which continues today.

Back to 2012 and the Ann Summers Find a Face Competition . The winner, Lucy Moore, a student from Portsmouth was selected from a group of ten finalists after winning 22% of the voting of 30,000 people.

Lucy was the only ‘plus-size’ model within the finalists and at a size 16, she looks fairly different from your average underwear model. However savvy Chief Executive Jacqueline Gold had said the finalists were selected as Ann Summers wanted someone who ‘oozed sexiness and confidence’ and looking at the pictures of Lucy this certainly cannot be denied.

Jacqueline Gold revitalised her father’s David Gold, chain of stores when she came on board in the business back in the 1980’s and the brand now has over 140 stores in the UK alone and employs over 7,500 party organisers.

Embracing ‘real women’ is perhaps not the oldest trick in the book but it’s certainly a good one and in the current shaky economic climate, offering up a model who looks, if not like the average customer, then like one of their friends or relatives is giving people something they can relate to. After all the average UK woman is now a size 16.

With so many recent catastrophes on the high street, one has to admire a retailer which not only continues to deliver on the fundamentals (there have been no reported store closures as with so many other retailers),  but is embracing the norm that epitomises its customers.

Speed sponsors the monthly section that asks questions like:
If you were leading the Sunday Times’ comms team when they were hoaxed into publishing a faked Adolf Hitler diary, how would you restore the paper’s reputation?
and
What comms advice would you give the 1816 British government to repair its standing following accusations of vandalism, pillage and looting when removing the sculptures from Athens?

The next issue’s topic is again interesting:
From 14 to 28 October 1962, the world was gripped by the Cuban Missile Crisis, which threatened to thaw the Cold War and bring about nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. It ended in an uneasy, partly-secretive truce between President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev – but how could the US government convince the American population that the threat had truly subsided, and that mutual assured destruction was no longer a possibility?

Have an answer? Drop an email to Molly or summarise it in a tweet with the hashtag #commsrewind. The best responses will appear in the magazine and one will win a bottle of champagne.

The question isn’t necessarily if  O2 is going to fix this? It will no doubt resolve the issue in the next 12-24hrs, but it’s more about how it communicates the steps it’s taking to the people like Matt who broke the news, or influencers like Ewan MacLeod (Editor and Founder of Mobile Industry Review) who has been tweeting about it since the story broke.

If it were me, i’d make sure that i bring these guys in to everything being done to fix this problem, have an open conversation with them about how this happened in the first place and the company’s next steps. People like Matt and Ewan have a huge audience, specifically in the mobile industry and by talking with them, it can help spread the word of action far quicker. They both write for widely read news sites, but perhaps just as important is the fact that they’re both extremely active across a number of social media channels, be it to cross-publish stories, or to simply deliver thought.

Just my thoughts, but needless to say i’ll be keeping an eye on this.

UPDATE:

As what usually happens with these things, first the news is broken by a digital news site (in this case The Next Web), the community and industry influencers then test and verify what’s happening, then the national journalists start investigating (around 3hrs since it broke). At this point, it’s just a matter of when a national will run with the story. Around the same time, broadcast journalists put their reports together and then the issue comes to the consumer from a number of different channels and O2 will have a whole lot more explaining to do…

As far as i’ve seen there has been little or no update from O2 aside from the slightly varied message of “we’re looking in to it” tweeted around three times a minute. If it had been able to bring those who initially broke the story in to what it’s been doing to fix the situation, it would have several platforms to communicate to the industry as a whole – which would have undoubtedly filtered through in to any stories national newspaper journalists would be writing.

Update 2:

O2 has now published a Q&A blog post to help answer some of the questions customers might have about what’s been written.

http://blog.o2.co.uk/home/2012/01/o2-mobile-numbers-and-web-browsing.html

For too long measurement has been an after-thought to the creative PR idea. It’s been the Achilles heel of an industry that’s historically battled to claim its place in the eyes of marketers and boardroom decision makers as a valid return on business investment.

The PR industry knows how to talk about the challenge of breaking away from the time-warped tradition of measuring success by column inches and become more analytical in our approach as the digitisation of media becomes ever stronger – but there’s been little action to applying the science.

In an industry that’s finding the measurement journey from adolescence to adulthood a challenging one, what’s the framework that PRs need to implement in order to create a powerful weapon in their armoury, and that of the marketers and brands it serves?

What do we need to do to get closer to proving that the quality of the campaign or editorial has compelled someone to think differently about a brand, made them more open to buying it in the future, or created on opportunity to sell and immediate reason to buy?

Here’s some of Speed’s core rules of engagement for inching towards a more commercially mature and resilient approach for evaluation:

Action first, execution second

Too often we pitch or plan campaigns around an idea borne out of our understanding of a business’ challenge and audiences. This is flawed.

The place to start for any business and PR agency is to determine the approach to evaluation right at the beginning of the process. This can only be done by looking first at the outcome the business is challenged with achieving and for the PR agency to have a complete view of marketing spend and activities. No longer can PR be activated in silo if it is to help drive the influence of reputation and commercial gain.

Data mining the influence flow of audiences

The pursuit of charting the power of influence is something that Speed’s Steve Earl and Stephen Waddington cover in their soon-to-be published book, Brand Anarchy. They go on to say ‘By understanding not just how people are networked but why they are networked, we can get closer to applying science to the way in which they exert influence. We can begin to measure that influence. And by knowing what buttons we might want to press there, we can make influence a more commercially-tangible component of reputation management’. The incorporation of a solid audience insight and planning tool service is vital to any PR core offering.

Develop a framework for greater standards and visibility

PR requires more than one metric and those metrics need to be aligned to the business objectives. Finding an appropriate solution will vary from business to business, but should be anchored in a framework that sits at the very heart of an agency’s proposition.

 In summary, I’ll leave you with a few final sound bites from Brand Anarchy: 

• The public relations industry has been obsessed with counting things so that the volume of output can be assessed

• But that doesn’t really tell you whether what has been invested in managing reputation is having the desired effect for the organisation. It doesn’t correlate with the degree of influence exerted

• Search technology makes this even more complicated, as perception can be formed and judgements made on the basis of a mechanistic evaluation of relevance, and even of reputation

• The public relations industry is responding with initiatives to modernise measurement to increase its commercial relevancy

• Absolute clinical measurement of reputation is impossible, but measurement of influence is becoming far sharper