March 13th, 2010 by Wadds

Phil Sheldrake on the InVinceCable campaign in Marcom Professional

InVinceCable, the apolitical campaign that is seeking to instigate conversations around the need for a qualified candidate to hold the position of Chancellor, now comprises 20-people (including myself) from across the industry. By the end of the month there will almost certainly be 50-people working on the campaign.

It’s a very real application of social technologies. Here’s Phil Sheldrake in this week’s leader in Marcom Professional:

“I’ve had the pleasure in the last two weeks of working with a dozen of the finest Brits in PR, branding, digital / Web, public affairs and news distribution. We’ve joined up to work voluntarily on an apolitical campaign in the run up to the UK general election (invincecable.org.uk if you’re interested).”

“I’m telling you this because, having blogged about the convergence of marketing disciplines over the years (as distinct from “integrated”), this campaign of ours has revealed just how far the best practitioners’ expertise is now “converged”.

“Sure, there’s still the need to pause to explain the occasional aspect or define a particular piece of jargon or inevitable acronym, but generally the group just understands what we’re trying to achieve and how we can all work together to make it happen.

“There is no bewilderment, misconception or diffidence.

“And this is despite the fact that we haven’t actually all met each other. That doesn’t stop us. We’re Skype’ing, IM’ing, emailing, wiki’ing, posterous’ing, tweeting, and quickly assembling the resources, ideas and timetable for a cracking campaign. And all in the open. And all whilst earning a living. Awesome.”

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March 12th, 2010 by Wadds

Upcoming Speed speaking gigs

Steve and myself are out and about speaking at the following events in the next month or so:

14 April – Social media and the media
Strategic Social Media London, Westminster

21 May – Anti-social media
Social Media in Business, Richmond/London

20 and 24 May – The great print debates
PIRA, Birmingham

Do give us a shout if you’re attending any of these events. It would be great to catch-up for a coffee or a beer.

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March 9th, 2010 by Wadds

Ben Cotton on the benefits of blogging for comms students

Ben Cotton started a blog in his final year at Leeds Metropolitan University and recently landed an award from the European Public Relations Education and Research Association – and a job in the digital team at Edelman. Here’s his view on the benefits of blogging for communication students.
“I started blogging in 2007 during my final year at Leeds Met. However, in Oct 2009 I wanted to change tact and produce something more social media orientated, in order to try and land a social media agency role. I’m a firm believer that having a sound grasp and recorded opinion on industry issues is a great way to differentiate yourself when job hunting.”
“I also wanted a fresh start using WordPress and to get away from the student angst posts e.g. will I get a PR job and focus more on wider industry issues. It has proven to be a wonderful place to collect my thoughts as was initially hoped, however one of the unintended consequences is that it has been an absolutely brilliant networking and personal PR tool.”
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March 9th, 2010 by Wadds

Students: how to kickstart your PR career

Communication students leaving university have never had so much opportunity as the current workplace.

This is generation that has grown up with the technology and the tools that so many businesses have yet to embrace. They already have many of the skills that agencies and communication teams are striving to build.

But there is more that the current generation of PR graduates could do to kickstart their PR careers. Developing and demonstrating your digital communication skills will improve your employment prospects and may even enable you to demand a higher starting salary than your less digital savvy counterparts.

This was my message to students on the International PR MA at the University of Cardiff. I ended my session yesterday with a three ideas for ways in which students could kickstart their careers.

Build personal online networks
Create a profile on LinkedIn and include details of your course and any work placements. Start to build a network with people on your course and contacts you make through work placements. Likewise Twitter. Build connections with future employers.

Generate content and conversations
Sunderland journalist student Josh Halliday’s SR2 hyperlocal blog is an extreme example of this strategy but no future employer is going to be left in any doubt of his skills. Demonstrate your expertise by contributing comment and content to hyper local blogs, forums and blogs.

Blog
There is ultimately no better way of demonstrating your ability to build networks and generate content than a blog. Ben Cotton’s is a great example. He started a blog in his final year at Leeds Metropolitan University and recently landed an award from the European Public Relations Education and Research Association – and a job in the digital team at Edelman.

Kickstarting a career in PR

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March 9th, 2010 by Wadds

University of Cardiff digital communication masterclass: media trends and PR skills

PR is the management of reputation. That used to exclusively mean using media relations to build trust between an organisation and its audiences.

But traditional media is in turmoil: ad revenue is at an all time low thanks to the recession and the internet has reduced the cost of publication and distribution to almost zero.

The rise of social networks has led consumers to fundamentally change their media consumption habits. Consumers are becoming contributors.

The impact on the PR profession has been dramatic. Command and control media relations no longer works and increasing brands are building direct relationships with their audiences using compelling content and story telling.

These changes formed the core of a guest lecture I gave on digital communication to the International PR MA course at the University of Cardiff yesterday.

The slidedeck cites five trends in the media and the rise of social media – and five areas where I believe PR professionals need to skill-up as a result.

University of Cardiff digital communication masterclass: media trends and PR skills
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March 3rd, 2010 by Wadds

BBC Strategy Review: BBC 1 – commercial sector 0

Almost every speaker during the last two days at the FT Digital Media & Broadcast conference has spoken of their plans to grow their digital business.

BBC Director General Mark Thompson was the exception. In his strategy review of the BBC set out yesterday he proposed that the BBC pull back its online effort. The review calls for a 25 per cent reduction in the budget for bbc.co.uk and half the number of sections on the site. Savings will be reinvested in the generation of content elsewhere within the BBC under five new editorial priorities.

Whether or not this will be sufficient to pacify critics in the commercial media sector only time will tell. John Ridding, CEO, Financial Times, said that the BBC web site hadn’t helped publishers in their bid to build revenue around news online.

James Murdoch has traditionally gone further. He has been fiercely critical of the scale of the BBC’s free-to-access new web site.

Speaking at the conference yesterday Thomson said that the proposed strategy review will “create spaces for others to fill”.

The proposal also calls for the closure of the BBC Asian Network and BBC 6. Both measures have already resulted in fierce opposition from the audience with a variety of forums, Facebook groups and petitions already in circulation.

By attempting to pacify the commercial sector with its proposals yet also keep its audience onside the BBC has created a smart leadership platform for the ensuing three-month consultation period.

The Financial Times chief media correspondent Ben Fenton has suggested yesterday that the timing of Thompson’s review is incredibly shrewd.

The three-month period of consultation on the proposal means that it has been kicked out beyond the date of the UK election meaning that the BBC charter is unlikely to be an election issue.

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March 2nd, 2010 by Wadds

PR Week League Tables: stand up and be counted – the industry needs you

PR Week has extended the deadline for its Top UK Consultancies League Table. Speed submitted its numbers last week.

March 2009 saw Speed created from the five PR agencies owned by Loewy. The headline number of the sum of the parts is more than 30 per cent down as a result of less than a handful of client decisions to cut budgets.

But we remain adamant that it was the right year to pursue the strategy we did to build Speed around a fragmented media proposition. The new business has scale, is strong and fit for purpose – and crucially is attracting good people and clients.

We thought long and hard about whether or not we should participate in the league table. I’d rather not reveal our underwear to the rest of the industry but that’s not sport and it would have been gutless for a business that prides itself on transparency.

Last year the Top 150 list was characterised by no-shows presumably because agency bosses felt that their results were less than impressive. Is PR Week giving us early notice that the situation will be worse for 2009 by dropping ‘150’ from the title of the league tables and extending the filing deadline? I hope not.

There has been lots of talk over the last 12-months of the industry benefiting from the downturn in 2009. Folklaw says that public sector spending, digital and a shift in budgets from other areas of marketing have all worked to benefit the industry.

At the PRCA and CorpComms Conference in October PRCA chairman and Ketchum boss David Gallagher was upbeat. “Although there is still a quarter to go, member agencies are reporting anecdotally that 2009 will either be flat or slightly up,” he said.

If you are an agency leader please submit your numbers whatever your outcome for 2009 so that PR Week is able to produce an accurate picture of the state of the industry and we can scrutinise and plan the long term future of the industry.

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March 1st, 2010 by Wadds

Reputation Online: Copyright, defamation and privacy online vs. traditional media

Here’s an article that I’ve written for Reputation Online based on a presentation by media litigator Gideon Benaim, partner, Schillings Lawyers, at the CIPR Reputation Management conference in Manchester last month.

Mr Benaim made the case that social media is not beyond the reach of copyright, defamation or privacy laws. He cited cases where injunctions had been served on multiple ISPs as a defensive strategy to avoid the publication of sensitive corporate material and cautioned that rapid response was crucial.

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February 26th, 2010 by Wadds

Welcoming @danhowe

I am delighted to welcome Canadian Dan Howe (@danhowe) to the Speed crew. He joined the tech team this week to bring his digital comms prowess to bear for Symantec and Virgin Media Business, among others.

Here’s a Q&A and dodgy snap that has just done the rounds of our internal newsletter. I thought it worthy of a wider audience.

Welcome Dan. Its really great to have you on board.

Q. Why isn’t Canada part of America, wouldn’t that be simpler?

A. It couldn’t happen. There are too many distinct cultural differences like poutine, beaver tail, touques and the metric system. Besides, Canada plays an important role as America’s hat.

Q. Who has most caught your eye at Speed so far?

A. John Brown (@brownbare) and his warm, welcoming smile.

Q. If you bumped into Ashley Cole in a pub tonight, what would you say to him?

A. I’m a bit ignorant when it comes to British celebs, I had to Google him. Perhaps I could ask for some mobile phone photography tips.

Q. What has been your biggest career embarrassment to date?

A. A dodgy webmail error caused journalists and bloggers to receive the same press release numerous times. It resulted in a lot of funny email exchanges and a #danhowe tag in my name, but I managed to turn it around and even secure a few briefings. The client thought the whole event was hilarious. No really.

Q. What, in your humble opinion, is the weirdest thing about British people?

A. Umbrellas and wellies when it snows. Do you know how silly you look?

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February 24th, 2010 by Wadds

The Speed school reunion

Speed celebrates its first anniversary in March.

We’re organising a reunion party on Tuesday 23 March – think of it as a school reunion for the BMA, Custard, Lighthouse, Mantra, Rainier PR alumni. A chance for you to laugh at how old everyone looks now.

The format will be after work at the office in Leicester Square from 6.30pm. We’ll fix-up drink, food and music. We’d love you to come – please drop me an email or leave a comment if you can make it – and pass this on to those to any of the old gang.

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February 24th, 2010 by Wadds

Speed launches fast growth technology team led by Ruth Jones

Please shout, clap and cheer as we announce that Speed’s Ruth Jones has taken up a new role leading a team focused on Fast Growth Technology markets. We’re also delighted to make room at the boardroom table for her straight talking brand of Yorkshire comment.

Ruth’s five-person team will be focused on developing communication strategies for companies moving into the next hot technology cycle, including areas such as virtualisation, cloud computing and unified communications.

Congratulations Ruth. Bring it on.

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February 23rd, 2010 by Wadds

Investor communication improving in response to shareholder activism

Shareholder activism is forcing the senior management of public companies to become more open and better skilled at communicating with their institutional shareholders. This is the view of Co-operative Asset Management’s Abigail Herron, speaking last week at the CIPR Reputation Management conference in Manchester.

Herron, who is herself no stranger to calling the boards of public companies to account, cited the recent case whereby investors have successfully tabled questions at the forthcoming Shell Annual General Meeting in May about its approach to Canada’s tar sands.

In the past 12 months protests from vocal shareholders have resulted in the remuneration proposals for senior executives to be rejected at Provident Financial, Bellway, Shell, Punch and Royal Bank of Scotland.

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February 22nd, 2010 by Wadds

Reputation Online: ‘Blogging is broken’

Here’s an article that I’ve written for Reputation Online based on the content from the corporate blogging workshop that I ran last week at the CIPR Reputation Management conference.

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February 20th, 2010 by Wadds

Show me the money: PR salaries

Never one to shy away from straight talking my oppo Steve Earl spotlighted yesterday how you can improve your chances of a salary rise if you work for a PR agency.

“There are […] three levers in a PR agency: staff costs, overheads and profit. That is it. These aren’t complex businesses,” says Earl.

  • The money must be there – growing businesses have more room to flex their staffing costs; demonstrate your ability to win and grow business
  • Benchmark salary levels – seek out your agency’s salary scales versus roles and skills – and build your skills. If this data doesn’t exist within your business you’ll get it from any industry recruiter
  • If you’re a specialist your earning potential will erode over time as your specialism becomes a mainstream skill – enjoy the wave but in the short-to-medium terms agencies must skill-up across the board

Check out Steve’s post in full. Its well worth a read and could even make you some money.

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February 18th, 2010 by Wadds

CIPR Corporate Reputation blogging workshop

Here’s my presentation from the CIPR Reputation Management conference which took place at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester today.

I led a workshop on corporate blogging that examined why blogging was broken amongst UK corporate organisations, looked at examples of good corporate UK blogs, examined how to generate authentic content and the process required to kick start a corporate blog.

Many thanks to Ged Carroll, Stephen Davies and Rob Fenwick for their help in putting the session together. And to Speed’s Caroline Allen and Clare English.

Stephen Waddington Corporate Blogging
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