Archive for September, 2010
What would double-dip recession mean for the PR industry?
September 24th, 2010
Earlier this week, I was asked to provide a comment for a story on PRmoment, titled: ‘How will PR cope if the economy gets even worse?‘.
The piece was published yesterday with part of my comment, but I wanted to share my full comments as I think it’s an important subject.
My initial response was as follows:
“The increasing and very real threat of a double-dip recession is always in the back of PR professionals’ minds. Recent positive results from the major PR groups, and encouraging new business movement, have been tempered by both the IMF and World Bank confirming that the UK Government’s plans to make heavy cuts could lead to a double dip.
“We are in pretty much uncharted territory, with no experience in recent history of how the PR industry might respond to a potential double-dip but I for one am hopeful that even if the economy does take a downturn, the measures taken in 2008 and 2009 will strengthen the sector’s resolve.
“Recessions are uneven and in some cases marketing spend (PR included) can stay level or even rise to combat market conditions, so it may not be all doom and gloom.
“That said, the industry will not enjoy a return to the boom days; we are in for a bumpy ride whatever happens. Agency rationalisation, along with cost-cutting and fresh investment will lead to new forms of cross-sector merger/partnership and the emergence of a different type of agency. New measurable and tangible services should see the sector ride out the worst of any downturn and hopefully come out of the other side stronger and more agile.
“To survive we must keep an eye on economic indicators, use this to inform our decisions on spending and remain cautious.”
Having reviewed the other quotes and sound bites from the piece, it seems the general consensus is that economic hardships are on the horizon again, and if the Government cuts are as bad as it seems, it will be hard to avoid.
However, I standby the point that if PRs aren’t ready for a recession now, when will they be? The tough experience of the last few years has taught us we have to work smart, and not fear the change, but adapt accordingly.
PR is a very different animal today, than it was at the start of the last recession. Most have finally embraced the need to evolve, even if it hasn’t happened for all yet.
Personally, I’m beginning to see some interesting innovation from some of the more traditional agencies, who are at least trying to change, and at best making a real difference. Has recession changed that process? I think it has helped, but the idea that positivity has come out of recession is a difficult concept to appreciate when we’re still recovering from one downturn, and facing another head on.
As an industry we’ve still got a long way to go to move beyond media relations, truly embrace open communications, and look to the next stage, but whether recession has accelerated that process or not will be something for future commentators to decide.
As I said in my initial comment, we’re in for a bumpy ride, but I hope we’re better prepared for hazardous conditions.
3 tools to help your social media research efforts
September 23rd, 2010
Social Media is all about sharing, so today Liberate Media is sharing 3 new online research tools to assist you with your research efforts.
1.URLAI is a tool that can look at any blog and tell you the gender of the person that writes it, and his/her age based solely on the person’s writing style. Great for researching blogs and finding out specific data such as gender, age, mood and tonality of the blog.
2. ReTweetFollow lets you search by keywords in URLs that have been tweeted, and to easily follow the retweeters. You can also create lists and export the results.
ReTweetFollowuses
- To find users that are interested in a particular topic based on their tweets about a specific blog post, news item or web page.
- To follow many users with a single click.
- To know more details about the users tweeting about your links without the need to visit each Twitter profile.
- To know who has tweeted about your blog post.
- To export a plain text list of users that have tweeted about a specific URL in order to use the list in another tool.
- To organise a contest based on tweets about an URL. With the export feature you can export the list of tweeters to select the winner.
- To easily thank the users who have tweeted about your blog post or web page.
- To organize users in lists based on their topics of interest.
- To easily organize “Thanks for RTs” lists, to thank the users who have tweeted about your blog post or web page.
3.Tekiki helps you brainstorm and search for URL names.
On entering one or two keywords you are presented with enough information to help you determine what your URL should be. If you still can’t decide on a name, Tekiki also allows you to ask your Twitter or Facebook contacts for help.
Neat Augmented reality (AR) examples used by big brands
September 17th, 2010
Augmented reality (AR) is one of the hot technologies to watch in 2010 and over the past nine months we have seen many major brand use AR to showcase products in a more engaging way. Below are some neat and creative way of how big brands are using it.
Not sure what Augmented reality is?
Wikipedia definition “Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable.”
Nissan Juke
Stella Artois Le Bar Guide
Adidas Originals Shoe
Matel: Avatar Toys
Esquire’s Augmented Reality Issue
Panasonic’s iPhone-powered T-shirt
Olympus PEN
Further reading:
Beginner’s Guide to Augmented Reality
Pressitt social media news release most excellent examples
September 14th, 2010
Pressitt, the social media news release creation and publishing service, co-owed by Liberate Media has now been in action for well over a year.
Below are some of the most recent social media releases that Pressitt’s users have created, incorporating video, images and all the other elements found in a feature-rich Pressitt social media news release:
ROCK’N ROLL MAYHEM RETURNS AS ARBOR LIVE KICKS OFF SEASON 2
NEA President meets with Tampa-area educators on the heels of ‘Race to the Top’ announcement
Relief Efforts Continue for Victims of Flooding in Pakistan
Stephen Fry reinvents the autobiography on iPhone
September 13th, 2010
Stephen Fry, with help from his friends at the Dare digital agency, has launched an iPhone app today that reinvents the autobiography. ‘MyFry’ is a rather splendid app that allows users the freedom to dip and delve into Stephen’s second instalment of his autobio The Fry Chronicles, published by Penguin.
What makes this so appealing, fresh and engaging is the visual index. I won’t blather on because the promo video does a much better job but simply say that surely this the way newspapers, magazines and other texts could be re-imagined online. Even ’socialPR ‘ might engage and influence through research papers and case studies apps. If there was an elegant way of connecting the app with updated content, so much the better.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the Greatest Living Englishman (c Stephen Fry :)) explaining how his app works:
Internet/web history in 140 characters
September 7th, 2010
At Liberate Media towers we have decided to have a little bit of fun today, and we’d love you to join in.
If you would like to take part, all you need to do is describe the last 10 years of Internet/web evolution in 140 characters. You can add events like the dotcom collapse in 2000 or the launch of various influential sites (such as Digg in 2004), or anything that you think has shaped the Internet’s development in the last 10 years.
Use this hashtag to play #0010inthist.
Here is mine as an example: in order from 2000-2010
Napster | Wikipedia | myspace | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | iPhone | Obama #0010inthist
Here are some sources to help you research your internet history.
A Brief History of the Internet
The History of the Internet - Internet History Timeline
The History of the Internet in a Nutshell
Hobbes’ Internet Timeline
The History of the Internet, Visualized
10 Years of Broadband Timeline
Will social media agencies exist in the future?
September 6th, 2010
Over the last few years social media has evolved into an important part of the marketing mix. Many traditional marketeers initially ruled out social media as a passing fad, before eventually trying to embrace it, or at least hire an ‘expert’ or agency that could help, with varying degrees of success.
Today, we still have a knowledge gap in the market between those with a real lack of understanding and knowledge, and those that have experimented, researched and tried to investigate how social media may be able to help their brand/organisation.
This knowledge gap will soon vanish as the “new breed” of savvy marketeers take their first tentative steps into the world of brand communications. These will be the new generation that have spent their youth Tweeting, adding status updates to Facebook, uploading video to YouTube and photos to Flickr.
So that begs the question “Will social media agencies exist in the future?” Will there be a need for their specialist skills? The reality is it’s unlikely that social agencies will exist in the same guise as they are now, they may well have moved on to the next big thing or developed more of an Integrated approach to communications.
As always let us know your thought on the subject: Will social media agencies exist in the future?
Le Meur’s video branding series. 30 videos, 30 days
September 2nd, 2010
The founder of Seesmic and LeWeb, Loïc Le Meur will be releasing 30 videos over the next 30 days via YouTube and iTunes as a podcast.
The videos will be focused on building an online brand and related subjects.
“After many presentations on social networking around the World, I found myself getting the same questions all the time so I decided to share everything I learned in a series of 30 HD videos. They aren’t aimed at experts but rather anyone who would like to learn from scratch how to make the best from social networking and building their brand”
Below is the first, second and third of his 30 HD video series. The rest can be found over the course of the next month via his YouTube Channel http://loic.tv/
September 1st, 2010
As part of my job at Liberate Media, I am constantly reviewing blogs, online news outlets and similar for our clients and Liberate’s own ongoing R&D.
Two things really annoy me!
First is the huge amount of effort that some blogs/news outlets make you go through to add a comment. It’s really off putting!
To read more on this subject check out the Tamar’s excellent post entitled, Dear bloggers – if you want interaction, make it easy…
There are some great blogging comment solutions out there which are incredibly easy to use and install, so there are no excuses not to have one, i’ve included a few below:
I feel commenting should be a simple three-step process.
1. Add your details such as:Name, website and email address, all of which should be displayed only if you give permission, or alternatively sign in with Twitter, Facebook or via your LinkedIn profile.
2. Add your comment, preferably through some sort of WYSIWYG editor, and post.
3. Your post goes into moderation and is then added to the site. SIMPLE!
The second thing that really annoys me is:
No dates on posts.
It’s incredibly frustrating when you have searched for a blog post only to land on it and discover it has no date, this makes it hard to work out how recent it is.
Personally speaking, if I find a blog post that isn’t dated I will avoid it in favour of a dated version, I wonder if that’s a turn-off for others reading similar blog content as well?
Is there anything that really annoys you when reading a blog post or commenting on one? Please let us know via the comments section of this post.