PR | Speed Communications Blog

September 2nd, 2010 by Rebecca Gregory

Stig, speculation and surveys – surely the ‘silly season is over?

Image via Wikipedia

It’s September, surely the ‘silly season’ has officially ended? Despite Blair’s book being all over the news today, the rest of the news has been dominated by the revealing of the real Stig (not Schumacher after all – yes, I really believed that), rabid speculation over Hague’s alleged homosexual affair (based on no evidence in particular, and should we really care?), and many surveys. In today’s Daily Telegraph, there are no less than four surveys in its news pages (which also cover Blair, the Stig and Hague).

The PR industry is often berated for a perceived overuse of surveys and so it’s interesting to see that they are considered worthwhile by some journalists – front page fodder no less. Naturally the news angle has to be strong and the stats powerful – let’s examine them:

Front page: ‘Happiness begins at 55’. The usual ‘fun’ survey. Is it telling us anything that we didn’t know? I’m not certain, but it certainly contributes to a general perception that Brits spend the majority of their life massively stressed. However, we know not where the respondents are based – are they country or city folk? I suspect the latter.

Page 8: ‘£1 a minute to eat at top restaurants’. What consumers find annoying when dining out. Hardly earth shattering, but a big name brand is behind it which always adds kudos. The country’s ability to be irritated by anything and everything no doubt contributes to general life doom and gloom, as referenced on the front page.

Page 9: ‘Fox attack leaves 1 in 5 afraid of wildlife’. A third of city dwellers now perceive wildlife as ‘dangerous’ rather than ‘harmless’. This is not Australia. With a propensity to be so wimpish it’s unsurprising we’re stressed out as a nation, thereby contributing to general life doom and gloom, as referenced on the front page.

Page 9: ‘Family meal replaced by two dinners’. Parents and children are missing out on valuable family time. No doubt that’s because everyone is so stressed and working overtime, thereby contributing to general life doom and gloom, as referenced on the front page.

Regardless of what real value these surveys bring to our general knowledge, we should be thankful they exist as a news filler – otherwise we’d have piped music (see 1930) or the test card.

Posted in Uncategorized
Tags: Blair, PR, Surveys, test card, The Daily Telegraph, The Stig, William Hague
No Comments »

August 31st, 2010 by John Brown

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

: Image via CrunchBase

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.

Gmail Priority Inbox Kills Email Overload (techie-buzz.com)
Google adds ‘priority inbox’ to Gmail (telegraph.co.uk)
Google set to unveil “priority inbox” for Gmail (independent.co.uk)
Google set to unveil “priority inbox” for Gmail (reuters.com)
Google to Roll out E-mail Prioritizing Feature in Gmail (pcworld.com)
Gmail’s New Priority Inbox Feature Knows Which Emails Are Important To You [Google] (gizmodo.com)
Gmail Priority Inbox: 5 Tips for Better Productivity (mashable.com)
Gmail priority inbox is an email PA (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
Gmail Filters Email Beyond Spam (webpronews.com)

Posted in Technology
Tags: Clients, email, Gmail, google, Gorkana, Mail, PR, Spam, Web application
4 Comments »

August 26th, 2010 by Clare English

‘Speeps’ Profiles – Marie Efthymiou

This week, Marie Efthymiou (phonetic spelling available on request) entertains us with holiday anecdotes and suggestions as to how one might explain ‘PR’ to a four year old.

You’ve just got back from your holiday. Where did you go?

I had the most amazing two weeks! We started in not so sunny San Francisco (the best bit was visiting Alcatraz). And then onto Vegas which was out of this world and one massive party! And ended up in LA, which was all about soaking up the sun and celeb hunting (I didn’t see any, but I do have some very interesting snaps of Jennifer Aniston, Simon Cowell and Orlando Bloom’s front gates if you’re interested?)

What was your best meal?

I’m embarrassed to say but it was actually in a Greek restaurant on Long Beach – you see we’re not to dissimilar to you Brits, us Greeks will always sniff out the lamb kebabs.

I also became a little obsessed with their pancakes for breakfast. Everyday I ordered a short stack buttermilk pancake with maple syrup and bacon (very yummy, but thank goodness I don’t live there as I would be HUGE, it was near to impossible to find anything that resembled fresh fruit or veg).

What’s the one thing you have done on a holiday that would most shock us?

Being the good Greek girl that I am, I didn’t do anything that risqué or shocking. But I did take a liking to Harley’s and spent most of the time travelling around LA on one (on the back that is, there’s no ways I could control one of those big, bad boys).

How would you explain PR in three sentences to Steve Earls’ 4-year old?

We tell stories. And we try to make them as exciting as possible (which can sometimes be hard) so when we tell all the big bosses who work at the newspapers, magazines, TV and with computers they like them so much that they tell the whole wide world (well not always the whole world, sometimes just Basingstoke).

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title would be?

Good Greek Girls Don’t Exist

Why are manholes round?

Well it’s pretty common knowledge that round tubes are the strongest and most material-efficient shape against the compression of the earth around them. And obviously we all already know that it also needs to be round as human beings have a roughly circular cross-section.

Posted in BizComms, Consumer, Corporate, Technology
Tags: Home, Jennifer Aniston, Orlando Bloom, PR, Recreation, San Francisco, Shopping, simon cowell, Television
1 Comment »

May 12th, 2010 by Chris Measures

B2B sales – from a marathon to a sprint?

: Image by Marcos Vasconcelos Photography via Flickr

The recession has had a massive effect on B2B sales and marketing – but not just in the obvious ways. Yes, companies are buying less and projects have been cancelled or put on hold, but research by TAS into the B2B sales cycle, quoted on the Inflexion Point blog uncovers some surprising facts.

Despite the recession, successful sales cycles are getting shorter. Essentially companies are only going out to the market when they have a clear idea of what they want and the signed-off budget to proceed. So time from qualifying a prospect to signing the deal has reduced by just over 23 per cent. The flipside of this is that if the sales cycle drags on, the opportunity is more and more likely to turn to dust, wasting time and effort.

Where does this leave PR and marketing? I’d say it strengthens the overall part they play in the sales cycle. Prospects are doing due diligence and research before they call you, so you need to ensure you are providing consistent information to them across the whole marketing mix. Get into the publications they read, make your website relevant, have a strong presence in the right digital channels and keep this up on a sustained basis.

With the sales cycle moving from a marathon to a sprint preparation and warming up prospects is even more vital. This is absolutely where integrated PR and marketing delivers, and careful investment here will reap major benefits further down the sales process.

Posted in Technology
Tags: Business, Consulting, Inflexion Point, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, PR, Public relations, Recession, sales cycle, Salesmanship, Website
1 Comment »

May 10th, 2010 by Gerry Grewal

Why don’t staff love workplace collaboration tools?

Stuart Roberts in a recent Silicon.com article asks why so many organisations fail to translate people’s love for social networking into the widespread use of workplace collaboration tools.

He makes a great point. One of the biggest reasons is that IT departments rarely, if ever, first ask employees what tools would be useful and secure buy in before something gets deployed.

At Speed Towers over the past month or so, we’ve tested a number of online collaboration tools, both free and paid for, with clients and for internal projects. Overall, we think they can be highly useful depending on the project and there are some fantastic tools out there, but equally there were some which left us feeling flat and frustrated. (Contact me directly if you want to know what we REALLY thought of them!).

We’ve outlined some likes and dislikes below based on our collective thoughts.

Likes:

• Some of the tools are excellent at helping you communicate with clients, suppliers and colleagues who can’t access the same shared server; They could bring significant productivity savings for companies who regularly work with partners or suppliers outside of their IT network. We think that makes them particularly useful for PR and marketing people who can be working with multiple parties on various projects

• Most are relatively quick and easy to set up, and many offer free packages so you can trial them on smaller projects first – which we’d certainly encourage!

• Some of the online collaboration tools we tried are pretty intuitive to use. However, some are a little bit clunky. Again, trialing some of the free tools will help you get a better understanding for what’s likely to work best for you

Dislikes:

• Our biggest bugbear was with one collaboration tool which routinely failed to save changes to the documents which had been inputted by different users. This created confusion and made the process more time consuming than it needed to be. We’d suggest trialling a few different collaboration tools on a test run first, before choosing one for an important project

• Some are tools are worryingly user unfriendly. We were actually surprised that vendors haven’t created templates for workspaces to make the process easier for people who might think of trialling them. For example, for a PR or marketing consultant, an events template could be highly useful.

If you any contributions of your own please let us know.

Posted in Technology
Tags: Collaboration, Collaboration tool, PR, Workplace
3 Comments »

April 30th, 2010 by Mital Joshi Goel

PRmoment.com: how old is too old in PR?

PRmoment.com asks why there aren’t any 40-something account handlers in PR. The resulting article found that people of this age bracket are a rare commodity on the front line. Chartered psychologist, Denise Taylor, said the best move for a PR 40 year old is to another industry because it’s an industry of young folk.

Nonsense. My view, quoted in the article, is this: there is no sell by date in PR. If you’re happy in your role and working for the agency or organisation which fits in with your long-term career goals you will do well and progress. What keeps me motivated is knowing that I am working for an agency that is growing quickly and invests in its staff.

I’m 25-years old.

Posted in Technology
Tags: age, career, jobs, PR
2 Comments »

March 11th, 2010 by Flora Turner

Anyone you recognise…?

When discussing our jobs with non-PR folk it can feel like we are constantly justifying our ‘very busy, very important’ role as a ‘real’ job by attempting to explain in 100 words or less what it is we actually do all day. Even worse, is the assumption that we’re all vacuous champagne-swilling lushes. (- It’s amazing that Ab Fab continues to perpetuate the myth of the PR professional 6 years after the series ended!)

Times have certainly changed since Lynne Franks swapped fashion for Feng Shui, and consumer PR is now a much varied and forward thinking place, full of dynamic individuals. However, it did come to my attention on my short-lived travels as a freelancer, that as an industry we do generally seem to fall into certain PR tribes:

Work hard, play hard – Works like a dog which earns them the right to party. Hard. Hard to the point where it all becomes a bit scary for those with them during said partying and those beside them at work the next day

Most likely to…have a heart attack

PR not ER – Constantly on the verge of tears and believes that without their manic micro managing and hysteria the whole company would go to the dogs

Most likely to…type through the tears because there’s no time to go to the loo for a proper cry (or a pee)

Posturing pervert – Can’t handle working in an industry surrounded by nubile young flesh and believes they have earned the right to ‘give it a go’ with the team assistant after a boozy lunch

Most likely to…be really inappropriate and summoned by HR

The bitter intellectual – Got a big fat academic chip on their shoulder because they are ‘too good’ for PR but have managed to work in the same agency for the last 10 years with minimum career progression

Most likely to…belittle the graduate trainee because they are secretly jealous of their youth and

Nice but dim – Exactly as the name suggests. It’s amazing they ever managed to get a job, let alone keep it but these twits seem to be recession proof. Probably because Daddy owns the company

Most likely to…look vacant while being given a simple task before asking for it to be put on an email so they can ‘get their head round it’

Lazy and deluded – The most infuriating group as you find yourself channelling a grumpy old person and saying things like ‘they wouldn’t know a day’s work if it slapped them round the face’

Most likely to…‘push back’ on work they are given because they are ‘totally maxed’ then leave the office at 5.30 on the dot

Nice as pie – So-o super nice and helpful. Never shouts, even if people deserve it, and can be a bit put upon

Most likely to…have a ‘falling down’ moment at the next inter-agency meeting and put a pic of their privates in the middle of a presentation to the company heads

Posted in Consumer
Tags: Ab Fab, Lynne Franks, PR, Public relations
5 Comments »

February 4th, 2010 by John Brown

Social Media Week – a hot air breakfast

As you will have undoubtedly heard Speed hosted a breakfast for Social Media Week today. The title was simple, ‘No more hot air’ and lets face it, the social media world has a bull**** control problem. It is full of PRs, online communicators, conversationists (WTF are they?) and self proclaimed gurus harping on about how social media will simply outdo all other forms of communication.

Yet the four case studies that were presented at the breakfast today all involved a blend of social media with more traditional forms of communication, like interacting with people in the real world.

The one that caught my eye the most was Nicola Savage’s work with The Cloud, the wireless broadband provider. Nicky and the team created a Facebook fan page and social media chatter to target Apple fans and industry commentators eagerly awaiting the launch of the iPhone, hopefully securing some coverage for The Cloud on the back of it all. Sure enough the branded fan page became populated and discussions were happening in the right places online.

However, it was the final personal touch that ensured the fantastic coverage for The Cloud. The PROs took to the streets and met some of the fans on the Facebook page – who by this time were all queuing outside mobile phone stores. They dished out branded hoodies and beanies to the patient consumers, brought teas and coffees, made friends, chatted to them all and headed home to await the results.

Anyone who was interviewed outside these stores had The Cloud branding literally all over them. Also, those that may have forgotten all about The Cloud Facebook page after receiving their shiny new iPhone, were reminded of the friendly folk that gave them tea and biccies and many were prompted to include at least a mention of The Cloud in their iPhone reviews.

Sure, the social media side of things gave a good foundation to the whole campaign. But it was the integration of more traditional forms of communication and PR tactics that binded the whole thing together and brought results.

Social media has opened up new communication channels. But all this nonsense about it being the stand alone platform on which all communication should take place is just trendy flatulence and nothing more.

Posted in Technology
Tags: Apple, Facebook, Handhelds, integrated comms, iPhone, Mass media, Mobile phone, PR, Smartphone, social media
2 Comments »

Stig, speculation and surveys – surely the ‘silly season is over?

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

‘Speeps’ Profiles – Marie Efthymiou

B2B sales – from a marathon to a sprint?

Why don’t staff love workplace collaboration tools?

PRmoment.com: how old is too old in PR?

Anyone you recognise…?

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