"They are creative and sensitive to our business needs, concerned with checking back that their suggestions fulfilled our goals. Their integrity and empathy, as well as their creative skills, are at all times impeccable. I cannot fault the service."

 

Interview with Joanne Harris

On social media and how the web is changing storytelling

Hamish Thompson - 6 September 2010

 

Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley in 1964, of a French mother and an English father. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and was a teacher for fifteen years, during which time she published three novels; The Evil Seed (1989), Sleep, Pale Sister (1993) and Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.

 

Since then, she has written eight more novels; Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners, Holy Fools, Gentlemen and Players, The Lollipop Shoes and Runemarks, and most recently blueeyedboy which was published in March 2010.

 

 

Her books are now published in over 40 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. In 2004, Joanne was one of the judges of the Whitbread prize (categories; first novel and overall winner); and in 2005 she was a judge of the Orange prize.

 

Her hobbies are listed in Who’s Who as: “mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion of the system”, although she says she also enjoys “obfuscation, sleaze, rebellion, witchcraft, armed robbery, tea and biscuits”.

 

Her latest novel, blueyedboy, is a dark psychological thriller set in the world of the internet.  I was interested to understand how she set about researching the book, how she uses social media to engage with her readers and how she thinks dwindling attention spans are changing the structure of stories.

 

 

HT: You're a relatively recent arrival to Twitter.  What prompted you to give it a try?

 

JH: I wanted to find out if it was any better or more useful than Facebook or MySpace (in my case, it is).

 

HT: blueyedboy covers some of the darker aspects of social networking.  Is your use of Twitter in part an exercise in catharsis?

 

JH: Actually it's an attempt to limit the length of time I spend on social networking sites (far too long, for the most part).

 

HT: How did you go about researching blueyedboy?

 

JH: I don't think of it as research. I just used what I found online in various communities; the in-jokes, the bitching, the friendships, the obsessives... basically the same things that already exist in real-life small communities (but without any direct proof that the people you think you're dealing with are at all what they purport to be).

 

HT: What are your tweeting habits?  On the move? At the desk?  As the whim takes you?

 

JH: Usually when I'm at my PC, though I do sometimes use my phone when I'm out and about.

 

HT: Do you get a sense that Twitter will enable you to develop a different type of relationship with your readers - less based on correspondence - and more based on more frequent bursts of dialogue?

 

JH: I mostly use Twitter to keep in touch with people I know in real-life, but don't get much chance to see on a day-to-day basis. I mostly use my website to stay in touch with my readers.

 

HT: Writers are notorious magpies and my sense is that more and more writers see Twitter as a sort of multi-faceted Muse. Do you find the conversation a useful prompt or a test bed for ideas?

 

JH: Not so much, no. I don't think my Muse is on Twitter. But it's great for disseminating ideas, and for keeping up with what's happening. Twittersearch is faster than Google news, and takes less time.

 

HT: You're a hugely successful writer and you're joining a growing number of writers, broadcasters, artists, presenters and politicians in using Twitter as a means of engaging directly with an audience without mediation.  What strikes me about writing in particular is that it is so dependent on contact with others - sharing ideas, gauging reactions, etc.  This raises two questions: Do you think that Twitter as a medium is more important to writers than to other artists and public figures and do you think that it helps to bridge the inevitable gulf between you and others that must open up as a consequence of fame?

 

JH: I don't find that I am particularly dependent on sharing ideas and gauging reactions, though it's nice to get such immediate feedback anyway. I’m not sure it would change the way I operate, though.  As for bridging the gap, yes, maybe it does help to do that - and it means that people can get a sense of what you're like as a person on a day-to-day basis, rather than in pre-prepared blog posts.

 

HT: You're also an active user of Facebook.  Which medium is the more important to you and why - and do you use Facebook and Twitter differently?

 

JH: I much prefer Twitter to Facebook - it's faster and more immediate, where responses are required. I see Facebook as just another annexe of my website and its message board (which, in terms of giving out more complete information, is far more useful to me and to my readers anyway).

 

HT: There's a great deal that has been written about the way that the Internet is changing the way that we absorb information and there have been concerns expressed about the way that it causes children in particular to absorb information more widely and more shallowly.  You've said elsewhere that blueyedboy is an attempt to subvert the conventional linear thriller.  How concerned are you about the place of the novel in the future and do you think that the way that we flit from one thing to another will have an impact on the structure of stories and the craft of storytelling?

 

JH: I think it already has affected the standard structure of the novel (as well as having a similar impact on film). Attention spans are waning, which doesn't mean that I'm worried.  These things have a tendency to follow trends, then to course-correct when the trend is no longer current.

 

HT: Have you ever had a "pressed send too quickly" moment?

 

JH: No way. I check things.

 

HT: Any exciting discoveries?

 

JH: Always. Many of my recently-discovered enthusiasms in film, TV and music come from Twitter and people I talk to online...

 

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Interview with Ben Watt

The role of social media in his life as an artist

Hamish Thompson - 18 August 2010

 

Ben Watt is a musician, songwriter, producer and DJ. He is the owner-founder of Buzzin’ Fly Records and Strange Feeling Records and half of the alt-pop duo Everything But The Girl (EBTG). I’ve been a fan of Ben’s since *cough* the early 1980s.  It’s a listener relationship that has lasted, inspired and rewarded for nearly three decades and outlived a string of catastrophic hairstyles on my part. 

 

Ben’s career began as a singer-songwriter in the early eighties with a clutch of folk-jazz solo recordings on London independent label Cherry Red Records (‘North Marine Drive’ album, ‘Summer Into Winter’ EP with Robert Wyatt). In 1982 he formed alt-pop duo Everything But The Girl with singer-writer-partner Tracey Thorn. They recorded nine studio albums (1984-1999) over a fifteen-year period, winning one UK Platinum and six UK Gold disc awards which yielded several UK Top 40 hits. High points include their debut album ‘Eden’ (1984), the multi-platinum global Number 1, ‘Missing’ (1994-95) and their best-selling interpretations of electronica in the late nineties (‘Walking Wounded’ album, ‘Protection’ and ‘Better Things’ with Massive Attack, ‘Temperamental’ album).

 

 

Ben is now an acclaimed DJ and a central figure on London’s club scene. He DJs regularly in the capital as well as all over Europe, Australia and North America with regular sell-out shows.

 

He lives in London with partner Tracey Thorn and their three children.

 

Through the magic of Twitter I connected with Ben recently and he was kind enough to share with me his views on the role of social media in his life as an artist.  Here’s what he had to say:

 

HT: What prompted you to sign up to Twitter in the first place?

 

BW: I liked the named 'Twitter'. I was intrigued.  It sounded better than Google Wave and Bebo.  I'd heard from American friends it was the next leap forward after Facebook for linking friends and like-minded souls.  I logged on fairly early and liked the interface.

 

HT: How and when do you use it?

 

BW: I tend to use it for two things.  One is cheap online marketing for the independent labels I run - I use it to try and draw attention to a few things we are up to, breaking news, highlighting new URLs to visit.

The other use belongs to my belief that we all need to be able to say, 'I feel this, do you?' and find corroboration and support in the things that take up the hours of everyday life.

 

HT: What do you think of it – and do you think it will endure?

 

BW: I like its apparent impermanence.  It is like opening the pub door, hearing a conversation, joining in for a bit, then leaving.  It is very fast-moving.  I think that will be its one saving grace.  Little is written in stone.  Shooting from the hip is commonplace. It can be witty, instant, topical, but people also cherish the well-turned tweet.  And when you least expect it something truthful and pithy gets said that can then stay with you for days. It can be both nimble and weighty. That will keep it going for a while yet I think.

 

HT: A lot of people are put off by the pressure of polishing up their daily minutiae into something approaching interesting prose.  As a born songwriter, does it feel like a natural medium – and do you ever find that you hold on to lines once you’ve composed them – ie, “that one feels too good to waste on a tweet”?

 

BW: I do like the restricted palette of characters. 140.  That's it.  Keeps you focused, and yes, it must appeal to the same restrictions that are in force when I am trying to cram an idea into a couple of lines of verse. It has also revived the art of the aphorism. Oscar Wilde would have loved it. So many message boards are dominated by windbags. Twitter is the opposite. You need to be quick and sharp. Also, if you are hoping for a retweet you have to subtract the letters that make up your twitter name so people are able to retweet your comments intact, which makes you have to be even more concise!

 

HT: The constraints of the format are a great leveler – everyone has an equal say – and yet some people who are well known tend to view it as a broadcast medium.  What’s your view on that?

 

BW: I think it can be used both ways. Sometimes it is good to simply shout: 'guess what, my album is out tomorrow.' some people will appreciate the reminder, while some will subject you to a barrage of gentle sarcasm or simply ignore you. Other times, twitter is best used in a more subtle way - joining the flow of other conversations, being less dominant, more uncertain, making unexpected new friends.

 

HT: Writers and artists are magpies.  Have you made any particularly interesting discoveries on Twitter – and if so, what?

 

BW: I am impressed by people who are free with their good ideas.  I like people who see it as a platform as valid as any other. For instance, if I see a comedy TV writer deliver a good joke on twitter it makes me seek out his TV work. It is not a lesser medium. It is actually perhaps more influential because on the surface it seems so throwaway. But I am impressed by erudite or witty people on Twitter.  Alexis Petridis also used Twitter to remind me how good some of the mid 70's singles by Hot Chocolate were the other day. 'Emma' is a stormer.

 

HT: You have a wide and diverse fan base and I guess what interests me most as I see your occasional tweets pop up is getting a sense of the things I had no idea that you were interested in (“Ben Watt likes bird watching?”).  Someone described Twitter as a prime example of the growth of “ambient intimacy”.  Most Twitter users don’t have a fan base and therefore don’t really have to concern themselves about the consequences of these glimpses into their personal lives in quite the same way.  Are you wary of what you say (and the risk of being pigeon holed) or are you comfortable with saying what you want and the element of surprise?

 

BW: I think an element of transparency and intimacy is the name of the game these days, and what we have discovered is its not something to get too uptight about. Before social networking, the character traits of public performers were either unknown or mediated and shaped by record companies and publicists. It made artists seem distant and exotic. For some artists this exoticism was to their benefit. But for others, for whom expressing intimacy was actually a part of their art (and I count myself in this) the previous era was a hindrance. The songs seemed confessional but the public persona could seem a little cold. Social networking has counteracted this. You can talk direct to fans.  A lot of what I also do now is DJing where the communal experience is the centre of the event. The DJ is on a level with the audience. Talking to fans through Facebook and Twitter keeps this relationship going. Also, when we decided to release my partner Tracey Thorn's album on my indie label, instead of on a major label, one of the first things I said to her was 'Join Twitter and Facebook and be yourself.' I knew there was a side to Tracey that had not really been seen by the public - her funny, intimate, dry humour in particular. The new album 'Love And Its Opposite' is very personal, and I felt that Twitter would be a perfect vehicle for helping it get understood and appreciated. She has become a minor Twitter celebrity just by being herself. Yes, it is important to hold some things back - I don't believe in internet exhibitionism - but revealing enough to prove you are as much as human being as the next person links people in and is fresh and liberating.

 

HT: The demographic seems to be late 20s and upwards at the moment.  The same (ish) could have been said for Facebook a year or so ago.  My kids used to say, “Dad are you using Facelift again?”  Then they deserted myspace and invaded Facebook.  Do you think the same will happen with Twitter?

 

BW: I am not sure about the demographic. I think most of us on Twitter are only really aware of the few hundred voices around us who we have largely picked because they chime with our own view on life, and that normally means they are around our own age. But sometimes I click on a trending topic and realise there are millions of voices out there twittering incoherently about all manner of crap.

 

HT: Any “pressed send too swiftly” moments?

 

BW: Yes, I was at the centre of a Twitter firestorm for inadvertently breaking the news that London nightclub Fabric had gone into administration. I thought it was common knowledge but I suddenly realised I was the messenger and no one else knew.  I was villified on a couple of dance forums, some people were extraordinarily vicious, I was actually quite shocked. Some people thought I was shit-stirring. Four days later the truth came out and I was quietly exonerated. There were a few people who stood up for me, but it was a miserable four days.

 

HT: Twitter kills the idea of six degrees of separation.  There is no separation – or at least for the digitally included.  Good or bad in your view?

 

BW: I think the effect of the internet on subcultures in general is open to a lot of debate. Yes, it helps throw light on obscure underground scenes but it can also kill with sudden overexposure. Plants thrive best with patient nurturing. Suddenly shining a light on them or over-watering can kill them. I worry about this a lot at the moment.

 

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Oil be seeing you...

Hamish Thompson - 28 July 2010

 

There’s an American TV programme called Fringe in which the action flips between two parallel universes.  Both are broadly the same, but there are visible differences.  Let’s step into the parallel universe for a few minutes….

 

There’s a global oil company called Big Oil.  Let’s call them BO.

 

BO has a major crisis on its hands.  A deep water well has sprung a leak and oil is gushing into the sea off one of the world’s richest nations and beaches are blackened.

 

 

An ocean of vitriol is poured on the business, its share price plummets, the oil continues to gush and there is seemingly no answer.

 

Mr Machiavelli from communications has a plan…

 

The CEO of BO is hauled before a congressional committee and is asked to account for his actions.  He performs dismally, failing to answer questions and attracts almost universal media and political criticism.

 

The CEO visits the blackened shores and complains about the impact of the crisis on his personal life.

 

The CEO takes time out from the crisis to sail in the relatively clean sea around his home nation. Cue more vitriol.

 

Suddenly the public and politicians are more interested in the CEO than they are in the business.

 

In tandem, furious efforts are made to repair the leak.  Eventually there is a seemingly successful outcome.

 

The company makes provision for reparations and issues a trading statement declaring the impact on profits.

 

A day before the announcement, news is leaked that the CEO is leaving the business.  No clarification is issued, leaving the media a full day to write history / blame pieces and declare that the CEO has finally succumbed to pressure and will be leaving the business.

 

The news is confirmed the following day and there is a fuss about the CEO’s severance package.  Company spokespeople point to his long-term history with the company and the fact that his pension pot has been accumulated over decades of exemplary senior service.

 

Returning to Mr Machiavelli, it is worth pointing out that the CEO’s departure, his missteps and PR gaffes were all carefully choreographed on about day 3 of the crisis with the CEO’s full consent.  The plan was to personalise the crisis, shift blame from company to individual then sever the link and move on.

 

Now, back to the real world.

 

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Expert Views #4 In conversation with Tim Weber

Hamish Thompson - 12 July 2010

 

Next in our series of social media perspectives comes from Tim Weber, Business Editor for Radio and online at the BBC.  Tim has day-to-day editorial control of all business radio programmes in addition to his role in charge of the award winning BBC Business website.  Tim's views on the way that discussion and distribution of news via social media compresses the length of a news cycle are particularly interesting. 

 

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Expert Views #3 In conversation with Judy Astley

Hamish Thompson - 30 June 2010

 

I met up with Judy Astley, bestselling novelist at Tate Britain recently.  We've been Twitter friends for about a year and we caught up in person for the first time a couple of weeks ago for a chat about Twitter, social networking and the ways that writers can use these brilliant tools to find out about pretty much anything they want to online and much besides. 

 

It was great to meet her and what really struck me was how much you can learn about someone via Twitter despite the limitations of 140 characters.  Now Judy is self-evidently a very accomplished writer, but it did make me wonder if the condensed format of Twitter can actually tell you more rather than less about the Twitterer.  Here's Judy with her description of her journey through various forms of online communication.

 

 

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Expert Views #2 In conversation with Alastair Campbell

Hamish Thompson - 11 June 2010

 

Alastair Campbell, former director of communications and strategy to Tony Blair and now a writer, broadcaster and strategist, took time out from launching the first volume of his diaries to talk to me recently at his North London home.

 

He shared his thoughts on a range of issues - amongst them the changing media landscape, the role of social media in the recent election campaign, Twitter's ability to neutralise the impact of political advertising, the rise of the citizen journalist and his own social media habits as a creator and consumer of content.

In the introduction to the first volume of his diaries he writes:

 

"This volume.focuses a good deal on my and our dealings with the press and the broadcasters at a time when the media age was becoming a reality..My obsession was ensuring that the British people heard from us on our terms, and not on the terms of a media that was changing more quickly than any of us fully realised."

 

The pace of change in the media, if anything, has accelerated since the period covered by the diaries (1994-1997) and it is interesting to get a sense of how one of the most accomplished communications strategists of our times views these changes and is adapting his own approach to reach and engage with a constantly connected audience.

 

Having trouble watching this? Please try here at http://1238kmh.blogspot.com

 

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Expert Views #1 In conversation with Vicky Taylor

Hamish Thompson - June 2010

 

This week's expert view on the impact of social media comes from Vicky Taylor, Commissioning Editor, New Media at Channel 4 News.

Vicky discusses the implications of social media for news gathering and delivery and the role that social networking sites and services have in creating new audiences for the station's news output.  She also talks about the ways in which the programme's presenters, Jon Snow and Krishnan Guru-Murthy, use services like to Twitter to reach and interact with the audience.

A consistent theme in all of the interviews that we have conducted to date with journalists is the rapid shift away from set-piece news delivery.  As Andrew Marr, a self-confessed "slow adopter" said recently in a blog on the BBC News website, the days of news consumption have changed irrevocably:

"I felt I was the last of the news romantics, only at home with a mound of coffee-stained newsprint, always on the sofa for the Ten O'Clock bulletin.  Now "they" have got me - the shaven pated, T-shirted, Maori-tattooed gauleiters of the digital future."

The lesson for communications professionals is that we live in an age of "always on" engagement with the media.  No wire service can compete with the immediacy, the reach and the conversational intensity of a medium like Twitter.  By my reckoning, more than 80% of the UK's opinion formers now have some sort of presence on Twitter and are engaged in a never-ending discussion about the issues (from the serious to the prosaic) of the day.  Are you?

 

 

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Sometimes you get it right

by apparently getting it wrong

Hamish Thompson - 26 March 2010

 

When, a few years ago, I was director of media relations at the parent company of Dixons, I wrote a two-page press release announcing that we were going to stop selling video recorders.

 

I remember issuing the press release under embargo on the Friday afternoon and having that feeling that the tide might be with this announcement. About ten minutes later I had my first call from the press association and in the course of the call I was handed messages to call a broadcaster urgently as well as a national newspaper.

 

Fast forward to the Monday and the first call that I received when I got to my desk at around 6.30am was from the buyer responsible for video recorders. It was pretty obvious that he was concerned, responsible as he was for shifting the 200,000 video recorders that he had in stock. It was a pretty challenging conversation and I think to begin with that he was probably alternating between the two colours of the Dixons logo.

 

The announcement had of course been carefully orchestrated. The business had taken the decision to remove video recorders from the range and the senior marketeers and the MD of Dixons had sanctioned the announcement.

 

So, why take such a seemingly reckless decision, given that there was something like £2 million worth of stock in the business and we were effectively consigning video recorders to the dustbin of history? It was what happened next that bore out our hunch and made sense of the decision. The story was a worldwide hit, making front pages, leader columns, all UK and many international broadcast outlets. It was the one and only time in my career that I have done an interview for Khazakhstan Radio. The story reached a global audience of 3.25 billion and the media value was estimated at £2.45 million.

 

So much for the exposure - what was the impact on the brand?

 

The underlying purpose of the story was not to talk about video recorders but to signal the importance of a new technology, the DVD player. It was also to position Dixons as a business less associated with the old and more associated with the new. In the wake of the story, two significant things happened. DVD player sales boomed and video recorders sold out. The "get them while they last" message on the latter smoked out customers concerned that they wouldn't have equipment to play their videos on when their existing equipment wore out. The story turned out to be a major commercial success and was the precedent for a series of announcements that for their time changed perceptions of the brand.

 

Today, as an advisor to many national retail brands, the central logic of this story is something I return to frequently. Not so much the demise of a product, but the idea of doing something apparently counter-intuitive. Last year, for instance, we proposed to John Lewis that they work with their 28,000 partners to rewrite the wartime classic "Make Do and Mend". A booklet was published and we created a Twitter account, feeding top tips about how to make the most of what you have and how to economise. The booklet was a huge success, selling out three times over, raising money for charity and generating huge amounts of online, pres and broadcast coverage.

 

To most retailers, the idea of offering advice to customers that might cause them to think twice about a purchase - especially in the teeth of recession - might sound like anathema, but the tactic paid off. The book and the advice was consistent with the John Lewis ethos of exceptional service. In the months that followed, the department store chain was rewarded with all-time record sales, an incredible achievement in one of the most savage recessions for decades.

 

The common denominator in these two anecdotes is that they're about the authentic and honest voice of business. On many occasions, both in-house and as an advisor to businesses, I have seen executives back away from an announcement because they are worried about the outcome. Sometimes these worries are legitimate, but there are many times when an announcement ought to be made, even if the precise outcome is a little unpredictable. Businesses owe it to themselves to think the apparently unthinkable from time to time and at least pressure-test ingrained assumptions. Acting on an educated hunch or counter-intuition can create real opportunities for a business that simply don't exist if you take the well-worn path of least resistance.

 

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Is your Mum one in a million?

Hamish Thompson - 6 December 2009

 

I had the great fortune to be the guest of Sarah Brown at Downing Street on Friday night for a Christmas party in aid of the Million Mums campaign by the White Ribbon Alliance of which she is the Global Patron.

 

 

Among the attendees were patrons of various other charities, campaigners, political bloggers, people connected with Million Mums, celebrities and a clutch of obsessive twitterers (my category).

 

Every minute of every day, a woman dies of pregnancy related complications, which makes more than half a million women each year.

 

The White Ribbon Alliance is an international coalition bound together by a common goal: to ensure that pregnancy and childbirth are safe for all women and newborns in every country around the world.

 

How many times have we written cards to our mothers with the inscription "you're one in a million, mum." Consider that, and then reflect for a moment on the loss, every minute of every day, of a mother somewhere in the world.

 

The idea that so many women die in pregnancy or childbirth TODAY defies comprehension. It is the sort of statistic that you would expect to find in a history book about mediaeval times. Million Mums and White Ribbon Alliance are working hard to assign these levels of unthinkable mortality to history.

 

 

The situation is at its worst in the developing world, which accounts for nearly all pregnancy-related deaths, and there the White Ribbon Alliance works to hold governments and institutions to account for the tragedy of maternal mortality.

 

The Downing Street reception was an affirmation of the vitally important work that the White Ribbon Alliance does every day to improve conditions and reduce risk.

 

Against such overwhelming statistics it's easy to think that little can be done by individuals, but the reality is these days that it is the knitting together of small individual actions that makes arguably the biggest difference to movements for change. Think for example of the impact that we will all have to make on climate change by flicking switches, choosing to walk instead of drive, choosing to insulate...

 

Social networking is now an incredibly potent force in disseminating information about causes, issues, concerns, joys and opportunities. Think back on the year we've just had and think about how the sharing and shaping of news and opinion has been influenced by social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. News has broken via Twitter, ahead of the largest media organisations in the world. Twitter, especially, with its "without walls" ability to converse with many, has taken issues from obscurity to prominence, sometimes in minutes, and has shone a torch on many of the darker aspects of our world that we might well have been ignorant of.

 

 

There isn't an excuse any more for compassion fatigue or for thinking that there's nothing we can do. Sharing information can be enough. If you're unable to help materially but you're able to pass a message on, then you're capable of affecting the success of this important global campaign.

 

Sign up for Million Mums http://millionmums.org/ and learn more about its work and about the actions that you can help take to make the world a safer place for mothers today and in the future.

 

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Winners, Outstanding Small PR

Consultancy of the Year Award

for the 2nd year in a row

Hamish Thompson - 1 December 2009


Great news. At an industry dinner on Friday night we received the Outstanding Small PR Consultancy of the Year Award for the second year in a row. It's a great honour and we've taken the opportunity to update the front page of our website with a slideshow of some of the campaigns that we're proudest of.

It has been a difficult year for British business and we're hopeful that the new year will be better for all of us. As businesses look at their objectives for the year ahead, I'm reminded of an equation that I learned from a wise former colleague: "Perception minus reality equals value." The case for investing in building the perceptions of a brand was never more succinctly expressed.

 

 

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Good news for broadcasters,

business and the PR industry:

Government to lift ban on product

placement on commercial television

Hamish Thompson - 13 September 2009

 

Good news for independent broadcasters, businesses and the advertising and PR industries today: the government is likely to overturn the ban on product placement on television programmes, perhaps as early as this week. The Telegraph reports that the move "could lead to celebrity chefs promoting supermarket products in their cooking programmes and soft drinks manufacturers placing their beverages in television talent shows".


The news will be welcomed by independent broadcasters who will see a rise in revenues through paid-for product placements in their programmes. It ought also to have a positive impact on the PR industry.


Whilst product placement will almost certainly not be allowed in news or current affairs programming, it is worth noting that under the current regulations editorial staff at commercial news outlets have had a tread a very careful line when covering consumer announcements from retailers, manufacturers and others. In our experience, the existing regulations have created a climate in which news editors and producers have been nervous of being accused of offering back-door product endorsements masquerading as news. This, in our view, has often led to the counter-intuitive spectre of stories of legitimate consumer interest finding a home on the BBC and not on commercial television. The decision ought to lead to a reduced level of editorial nervousness when covering announcements which are of real public interest from commercial organisations.


The expected change in the rules this week will only apply to commercial broadcasters, with the BBC still restricted from promoting products, even in programmes made by independent production companies.


Advertisers, broadcasters and the PR industry have long argued that the rules are unnecessarily draconian and that increasingly sophisticated consumers are unlikely to be swayed by brands that are placed in programmes, however overtly.

 

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Shortlisted for Outstanding

Small PR Consultancy 2009

(the second year in a row)

Hamish Thompson - 4 September 2009

 

We're delighted to have been shortlisted for the Outstanding Small Consultancy of the Year Award again this year in the Chartered Institute of Public Relations PRIDE Awards. We won the award last year in what was our first year of trading.

 

The news follows a notable success for us last week with the launch of a new version of "Make Do and Mend" for John Lewis. All 28,000 John Lewis Partners collaborated on the creation of an entirely new version of the famous wartime publication, updated to reflect the needs of 21st century homes. The launch attracted extensive media coverage, including BBC Breakfast, BBC News Channel, the Today Programme, The Daily Mail, Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph and Daily Express as well as massive amount of online coverage. We have thoroughly enjoyed working on the project with the John Lewis team.

 

Here are some other highlights from the year:

1. Creating the Reevoo Customer Choice Awards

Reevoo.com publishes authentic customer reviews on the web. We proposed a national awards concept based (uniquely) on feedback from genuine owners of products.

We led the announcement on news that a £16.49 Tesco hi-fi had won the customer choice award in the audio category, beating competition from rival products costing several hundred pounds.

This attracted widespread coverage, including page leads in most tabloids and an appearance on BBC Breakfast for Reevoo's CEO. We followed up with sector-specific announcements and placed an exclusive in News of the World.

The results:
More than 40 million opportunities to see/hear.
Page leads in the Sun, Mirror, Daily Mail and News of the World.
Hundreds of online reports.
Manufacturer announcements generating more coverage.
The Tesco hi-fi sold out immediately, with further stocks on order.

2. Campaigning to reclaim and rename the Hot Cross Bun

For St Albans Cathedral we took on an assignment:

To raise the profile of the Cathedral among tourists
To identify a commercial opportunity for the Cathedral

We discovered that the Cathedral was the source of the modern Hot Cross Bun. The original "Alban Bun" was baked and offered to the poor by Father Thomas Rockliffe, a monk, in 1361. We advised the cathedral to run a campaign to reclaim and rename the Hot Cross Bun. We negotiated a partnership with Sainsbury's to bake the buns for the Cathedral, which would keep the proceeds.

The campaign was covered by the Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, BBC radio stations, ITV lunchtime news, London Tonight, in regional press and online.

The buns sold out within hours. The Cathedral saw a flood of visitors and both parties are negotiating an agreement on national sales of the bun in 2010.

3. Scoring a PR goal for Screwfix with a tongue-in-cheek lookalike competition

Screwfix sponsor the Masters Football tournament on Sky Sports. Screwfix customers are tradesmen. Our task was to engage them with the sponsorship of the tournament.

We launched a tongue-in-cheek search for tradesmen who look like famous footballers to play in a charity football match at the National Masters Final. We announced the search with photos of early entrants alongside actual footballers for comparison. We filmed the match, along with pre and post-match interviews and uploaded the video to YouTube.

Highlights included full-page coverage in the Metro and the Daily Star and a half-page in the Daily Sport, all strong tradesmen's papers, and 15 regional radio interviews. Hits to the Screwfix website soared and the story generated a huge volume of entries.

The story generated more than £150,000 of publicity, a return on investment of around 25:1.

Outstanding achievements

There are two areas in particular in which we have exceeded expectations:

1. Attracting a disproportionately large number of national, market leading clients for an agency our size.

2. Generating high impact media coverage. Nine in ten announcements this year achieved national press coverage, up from 8 in ten last year, and 1 in 2 were page leads, up from just over 3 in ten last year. One quarter of announcement received national broadcast coverage.

All in all, it has been a great year, despite the challenging economic environment and we're more confident than ever that our approach is the right one to build on our successes to date.

 

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When it all goes horribly wrong: six old world rules for handling a dispute with a journalist

Hamish Thompson - 30 July 2009

 

These are in fact, the six things that you shouldn’t do online if you find that the business you represent is caught in the midst of a row with a journalist. These apply, in my view, whether or not the journalist is right, wrong or whether there are shades of grey. What I have learned over time is that all disagreements with the media ought to be handled privately until such time as the matter is resolved or until you are clear that there is no resolution. At that point, you can review your options, having gained distance and perspective. There is no place in the rapid-fire worlds of digital media or social networking for anti-social networking.

With very few exceptions, journalists act with integrity and pride. Questioning that pride and integrity publicly is a very bad idea. The media industry and the methods of engagement are changing at an unparalleled rate and a new generation of digital PR professionals is on the rise. There is still much to learn from old-school media relations, though, and I offer this list as a battle-scarred veteran of many skirmishes with the national media on behalf of brands and as someone with a foot in both the old-school and new-school camps.

1. NEVER engage in a public debate with a journalist if you are a brand guardian, especially if you are refuting the legitimacy of their criticisms of your brand. This will not end well.

2. DO NOT see a conversation with a journalist in a public forum as an evenly-matched contest, especially if you are conversing about something you disagree on. At best you will win the battle but lose the war. You’ll be marked down as a trouble-maker – and the only value to a journalist of a trouble maker is the negative news value.

3. Relationships with journalists that have an element of acrimony to them should be developed and improved at all costs, but onlyIN PRIVATE.

4. Journalists are representatives of media organisations and they are bound by all sorts of processes for fact-checking, due diligence and testing for libel or defamation. THEY DO NOT MAKE NEGATIVE ASSERTIONS LIGHTLY. Think eight times and check with others before you react or respond – and again, when you do so, do it directly and privately.

5. Do not personalise your unhappiness with a journalist or impugn his/her honesty publicly. They will fight back and willMAKE MATTERS CONSIDERABLY WORSE.

6. Bear in mind that if you are mad about what a journalist has said about your brand, your level of crossness is usually directly related to their clout. If you wreck the relationship in public, it is very difficult for either side to find a way back. YOU lose a potentially powerful advocate. THEY simply move on to the next story, having perhaps had another go at your brand to validate their position.

 

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Seducing the twittering classes

Hamish Thompson - 24 June 2009

 

Some very interesting analysis from Robin Goad at Hitwise here about the downstream traffic from Twitter versus Google, Facebook and Hotmail. It shows that traffic to retail sites is relatively low from Twitter and that most of it goes to news or entertainment sites.

 


This fits with Twitter’s pure, raw conversational style. It may be verbally transactional, but it isn’t a shop. Because it is hyper-networking (you can be talking with many at the same time) mood also spreads amazingly quickly. The community is very spam averse, as evidenced by the Habitat story this week (Habitat were said to have attached unrelated hashtags – a way of categorising tweets for easier consumption - to commercially orientated tweets with the sole objective of getting a bigger audience for their message and thereby driving traffic to their site. Instead, Habitat was driven into retreat by a none-too-happy community and the story made the national media.)

There are a few interesting lessons emerging from the Hitwise data and the Habitat experience.

Firstly, overt promotional tactics will never work in the Twitter community. It’s a bit like interrupting pub chats with enforced commercial breaks. It just won’t happen.

What’s as interesting is what this says about how brands and brand advocates work on Twitter. It’s too early to say perhaps, but my feeling is that the only promotional tactic that will work in the Twitter universe is the expression of genuine opinion, and then:

a) only if expressed in a raw and compelling way, and
b) only if Twitter is seen to be a secondary or even tertiary influencing tool rather than something more overt and direct.

If a shop sets up a Twitterfeed, for instance, who is going to want to follow it if the content is just about products on offer, however compelling they are? That’s advertising.

The shop needs to create an unspun voice, offer genuinely interesting content and build a community of advocates over time – and time really is the killer punch. This is no overnight medium. Anyone who believes that Twitter will pay rapid commercial dividends for their business is mistaken. It’s a long haul project, based on nuance, as anyone who is familiar with it will know.

The sensitivity with which Twitter must be handled was brought home to me the other day. I was interested in gauging the reaction to a programme on television that had focused heavily on a brand (a sort of crowd-sourced TV review, if you like). I searched all Twitter for references and looked at them chronologically. During the minutes prior to the programme and immediately after it started there were plenty of tweets pointing to the fact that Twitterer A, B, C, etc was about to sit down and watch, to paraphrase, “an interesting programme about brand x on channel y.” These died off after the first 10 or so minutes of the programme to be replaced by reactions to the programme, which in the main were less than favourable and had some pointedly critical reactions to the brand. The point is that the change in mood was very clear - moving from what looked like the staged tweets of relative automatons to the real views of people watching the programme.

I can’t be certain, but it seemed to me that a highly paid digital media consultancy was probably stacking Twitter with references to the programme in order to promote it. And then the real voices came in. What all this says to me is that the raw and unfiltered world of Twitter will be un-exploitable by brands unless their advocates are truly interested in, and able to express a candid, interesting and engaging view about whatever brand they are advocating. Only the unvarnished truth will stand any chance of applying any gloss to a brand’s bottom line.

 

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Bad taste

Hamish Thompson - 9 June 2009

 

Another cautionary tale, this time involving Gordon Ramsay the chef. He was interviewed on one of Australia’s leading current affairs programmes recently and in the days that followed is alleged to have said some unsavoury things about the programme’s presenter.

This video is the prologue to her next programme, during which she took the opportunity to respond to Ramsay’s alleged comments. Her response has attracted the support of the Australian PM.

 

 

Whether the furore will turn Ramsay’s trip down under into more of a demotional tour than the promotional one that he had intended remains to be seen. Some argue that notoriety is a pretty efficient way of promoting your product. By any measure, though, his alleged comments appear to have been in particularly poor taste, which, let’s face it, is not a happy brand association for a purveyor of fine food.

So-called celebrity is a dangerous affliction and needs to be managed carefully. When arrogance creeps in, there is a temptation to believe that people will like you “warts and all”. Trouble is, most of us are more discerning than that. We’ll see the warts and skip the main course.

 

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A masterclass in handling a confrontational interview

Hamish Thompson - 8 June 2009

 

Here's a textbook example of how to handle a potentially difficult interview. Peter Mandelson performed quite brilliantly on the Andrew Marr programme on Sunday morning. From the outset he was in complete control of the interview, setting the mood and the pace.

Andrew Marr is a fine interviewer and the subject matter provided much scope for confrontation, but Mandelson was controlled, precise and unflappable throughout. His use of language is forensic and he does a great job of setting the pace, asserting his right to control the length of his answers and of deflecting those questions that he chooses not to answer. A classic.

 

 

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