The Bill and Steve show

January 29th, 2010

Following ‘iPad‘ week I decided to look at the differing strategies of the world’s two biggest technology competitors to promote their new approaches/products.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are the traditional hero and villain of the computer world, and of course it depends on your point of view on which is which. They have been at it for some time, as the heads of their respective super brands (Microsoft and Apple), but Bill has taken a back seat at Microsoft, although he is still Chairman and of course the world’s richest man.

As you may or may not know, Bill Gates made an interesting move to open up his communications last week, by joining Twitter on January 19th, kicking off with ‘Hello World.’ Hard at work on my foundation letter - publishing on 1/25′, in reference to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest non-profit hard at work giving Bill’s billions away to worthy causes. This has pretty much been over looked thanks to the anticipation and launch of Apple’s new best seller.

Since Bill joined, he’s been collecting followers like the Pied Piper of Twitterland. To be precise, according to figures from 20 decibels recent blog post on Wednesday (nice job guys): ‘Bill Gates has 365,000+ followers (now 376,000 +) and counting and has been added to 13,056 lists (now (13,600+) His following grew rapidly after sending his first tweet. He has a whopping 14,600 followers per tweet sent.’

Here’s Bill’s latest tweet: ‘At Davos G8/G20 panel - Spain Pres. Zapatero says meeting MDGs just as important as global financial reform…‘ (When you have $50 billion in the bank you rub shoulders with some pretty important people).

Here’s some more interesting data from the guys at 20 decibels: ‘Bill’s tweets generate a very high click through rate. He has tweeted 12 links to 6 unique sites with a total of 160,161 clicks.

‘Engagement: In additional to high click through rates, Bill Gates audience engages with his content frequently. For example, his recent Tweet promoting the Gates Foundation annual letter garnered 818 Retweets on top of 13,500+ clicks.’

Pretty impressive, but then you would expect it to be. The question is why has Bill waited so long to join Twitter when his influence and understanding is so high? Could it be just that? In a scale of normal to Bill, the influence of Twitter can only offer so much more in comparison to what he already has? I hope not, as the figures above prove Twitter can be very valuable, and more importantly it has already helped him to engage directly with more people in his first week alone.

Although the iPad wasn’t officially advertised, the buzz and leaks around the story did much of the work for Steve and Apple. Apple doesn’t really need to PR its new launches anymore, well not in the traditional sense. A few strategic mentions, and the odd review leak, and the community will do the job for them. That’s not to say it wasn’t planned though.

So how was the iPad launch received? According to Trendrr there were 177,000 tweets in the first hour after the announcement, and Crimson Hexagon revealed that the content of more than half a million tweets following the iPad announcement sentiment was split down the middle with 48% percent of tweeters reacting positively, while the remaining 52% were less impressed.

(image courtesy of iStockphoto kutaytanir)

Of the 48% positivity, 29% of people wanted to buy an iPad and of the 52% of tweets that were less impressed, the majority (21% of all tweets) had a bad reaction to the name, 19% weren’t impressed and 11% were critical of all the build-up and/or just sick of hearing about it.

But this is just a small proportion of the results Apple generated from a very tightly developed and seemingly secretive launch. You only need to look at the BBC, Guardian or FT yesterday to see Steve holding his iPad, with a nice big smile, to appreciate the scale of the hype surrounding the launch.

But was the hype as positive as he might have hoped? The reaction to the iPad has been 50/50, speaking personally the functionality of the iPad is disappointing and as a product it’s not something I’ll be investing in yet. The idea itself is probably the most revolutionary element, together with the new opportunities it presents for content and publishing. However, the hype may have in fact put the final product in the shade and made it seem a little disappointing in comparison. That said, it will obviously be a success and the next iterations will, as usual, be much more interesting and capable.

So what can we learn from Bill’s low level approach and the higher profile launch from Steve over the last week? Firstly, i’ll hold my hands up and say it’s not really fair to compare the two directly. The obvious issue is that one is a consumer product and the other a campaign of philanthropy. You could also say that both Bill and Steve are super brands in themselves, and nothing helps to build interest like a bit of fame, which is true, but it is an interesting look into the different approaches that two formally old-school technology giants are employing in a world of communications opportunities.

Apple’s old school cloak and dagger approach to product launches, although successful, potentially undermined the final product by not being upfront about its potential uses, elements and focuses. By leaving the community to build the buzz and furore to such an extent they may have in fact ended up being disappointed by the false expectancy. Would a little more engagement and actual product detail have helped to communicate the real benefits of the product and avoided disappointment?

In comparison, Bill has started to take an open approach by communicating with his audience and sharing his day-to-day activity, removing this false picture of the world’s richest man sitting on piles of cash and handing it out to those that he deems fit. This is a very different approach to the path he took at Microsoft and although he has to be more open as he is the brand now, it shows evolution in thinking and perhaps something that Steve could take notice of for his next major launch.

Posted in Blog, Content, Digital communications, Digital media, Emerging technology, Industry events, PR, Useful resources | 2 Comments »

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Five on Friday - five fabulous web 2.0 tools of the week (29-05-09)

May 29th, 2009

Hello all

Your regular ‘Five on Friday’ host isn’t here today, so I’ll be your captain for the week, steering a path through the sea of web 2.0 tools.

To kick us off, we have a recommendation from a reader:

1. Twiogle - It’s a great search engine that indexes Google and Twitter, easy to use, simple and it also has nice video, book, blog, and image functionality. Top job!

2. Yasni - In at number two, and another recommendation from our loyal readers, Yasni is a people-based search engine,  with more than 10 million visitors worldwide each month. Imagine Google meets Friends Reunited.

3. Tweepler - We’re going back to Twitter for number 3, and specifically organising your Twitter feed. Tweepler is a processing tool that allows you to classify your new Twitter followers in one of two ‘buckets’. ‘Follow’, meaning you wish to follow them back and ‘Ignore’ meaning you don’t want to follow them and can archive them out of the way, reducing Twitter noise.

4. FileTwt - This is a useful application allowing Twitter users to upload a file and tweet about it automatically. It also allows users to send file links as direct messages for sharing private files.

5. Trackle -  Finally, with all of our web profiles and accounts, we need a tool to keep track, and this is it. Trackle tracks all of your personalised information on the web and then indexes it by category. The service is built using algorithms that provide a layer of intelligence meaning timely results with notification via web, email or SMS.

Posted in Blog, Content, Digital media, Industry events, Journalism, Liberate Media news, PR | No Comments »

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Can Twitter smell Google’s fear?

March 5th, 2009

When Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, talks, people tend to listen. And so they should, Google has been pushing the digital revolution, and making money out of it, for many years. However, when Mr Schmidt decides to belittle a very popular, and most would argue useful service, people begin to listen even more, because there aren’t too many things coming out of the Google corporate mouth piece that haven’t been thought through and calculated.

So when Schmidt gave a presentation at the Morgan Stanley Technology conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, and said Twitter and products of its ilk are ‘poor man’s email systems,’ we wonder what his real message is.

Analysing the statement doesn’t really help. Twitter wasn’t designed as a substitute for email, although there are of course general similarities, and the ‘poor man’ statement just seems unnecessary. So why? With the massive coverage that Twitter is receiving, it’s obvious that such a statement would be beamed around the world in an instant and not only aggravate the ever growing Twitter fan base but position Mr Schmidt as the villain. So again, I ask why?

Of course there was also much conversation on Twitter around this issue as the story broke and a theme became apparent, which is perhaps best encapsulated in Alexei Oreskovic’s post on Reuters.

Fundamentally, the quote is only half the story. What’s more interesting is why Mr Schmidt gave this response, which was apparently in answer to a question about Twitter’s real-time search capability, well known as not only a very powerful conversation mining and monitoring tool, but obviously offering Twitter a very valuable advantage if it was to go the ad-funded route and thereby pose a threat to Google.

So, behind this rather odd statement, can we sense a hint of competitive fear? Or was it merely a lapse in the usually focused Google comms machine?

Interestingly, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has replied to Mr Schmidt’s comment and said: “We think it’s important to introduce the power of a real-time network to even the weakest of signals around the world—as Twitter grows, we realise it’s not about the triumph of technology, it’s about the triumph of humanity.”

Touché! Or am I reading too much into the technology vs. humanity comment?

Posted in Blogging, Digital communications, Digital media, Emerging technology, Industry events, PR, Social media | No Comments »

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How did you become a social media agency?

February 19th, 2009

This may seem like an advert for Liberate Media but I promise you it’s not supposed to be. This post began life as a discussion between Liberate and a business prospect that we had a meeting with yesterday.

The digital brand, that shall remain nameless for the purposes of this discussion, started off the meeting confirming that they had spoken to many PR agencies in the past that have promised much in terms of social media understanding and services but delivered very little. They had obviously become frustrated by this process as usually the extent of services on offer boiled down to posting press releases online and utilisation of keywords.

To be honest this shocked us. Not just because we know there are other agencies out there doing a great job, but more because we thought that the PR industry had started to move away from this rather depressing problem. You may be reading this thinking - ‘err no, we come up against this every day’, and with hindsight it was far too early for me to write off this issue. However, in the end this approach helped us to quantify exactly why we were the agency for the job and developed into a discussion on why and how agencies with different focuses have developed in this sector.

This got us thinking: wouldn’t it be interesting to find out where we all came from originally? Not just PR agencies, but all those involved in social media communications? I know the sector is still very young, but the different approaches and back stories to the various agencies helps everyone to understand who we are.

So, in the interest of sharing, I wanted to offer an insight into the original thinking behind Liberate Media and how that has developed into the agency we are today. If it proves to be of interest, it might be good to start a meme on ‘how you became a social media agency’ which could become a great reference for all.

Therefore, to kick things off, a bit of a Liberate Media history lesson: feel free to add your own story as a comment, or send me a link to your story via Twitter or email.

At Liberate Media we came at the social media challenge not through necessity to exploit a new area, and not as a result of playing catch up, but because we believed PR needed to evolve and social media would be a real instigator of this change.

We were founded in 2006, and at the beginning of our journey social media communications were still very much experimental. The Dell Hell campaign was the most recognisable example of how brand conversations were ongoing, with or without the brand’s participation, but more examples of brand success and failure in social media quickly followed.

We realised that it was the theory of open conversation that would take the lead in social media PR, not the medium through which it is delivered. After all, it is this theory, the re-emergence of conversation and its importance in brand communications that is the key. Not the tools and tactics used to achieve it.

We had an advantage in this respect, as Liberate Media was founded by a PR consultant and a journalist, each with an intimate understanding of communications, but from different perspectives. Both brought valuable insight to the development of the agency, but both were aware that somewhere inbetween their specialisms lay the essence of social media communicators.

To help us on our way, we hired a digital native, someone who understands the web and its networked nature from a development perspective, with a pure research remit. We asked him to go out and absorb the socially connected web, to play with the tools, to communicate with authorities and look for openings to join in and be useful.

As this research grew and our experimentation turned into strategy, Liberate Media’s work became more focused on building online campaigns and tools, learning first hand that the best way to get involved is to listen first and then join in with useful content and conversation.

This knowledge and our varied skills allowed us to develop our own tools, and partner with a network of like-minded digital experts to offer a range of campaigns.

We’ve hired more journalists, more PRs and more net natives, their one common trait being an understanding of the theory of community, conversation and how to consult within this environment.

Posted in Blogging, Digital communications, Industry events, Journalism, PR, Social media | 3 Comments »

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Short mobile film awards with Kevin Spacey at Mobile World Congress

February 16th, 2009

I’m feeling more confident right now about the creative future of mobile than I have for a long time. I thought that while there was no shortage of talent, the industry seemed challenged to move ahead and open up to new forms of expression.

This week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, there will be no shortage of innovation on the technical side (music DJ handsets, touch screens, platform developments …) as well as some breathtaking creativity.

And at the end of the week, Kevin Spacey will be announcing the winners of this year’s global mobile short film festival awards - MOFILMS – people attending the congress can download the 12 finalists’ films to their mobiles before the winners are announced on Friday.

Delegates will also have a chance to win a Chevrolet Cruze by recording a 30-second MOFILM about how they have broken the rules to achieve something great. The winning UGC (User Generated Content) Film will be announced on Friday as well.

Also shouting out loud in Barcelona this week is m.LOVE  a movement with a passion for mobile from around the world. It aims to work in small format conferences, local meet-ups and by-annual gatherings, uniting mobile passionistas through communication, learning and understanding. It’s making strident early calls for debates about the future of mobile and how little things can make the world a better place.

Maybe Sony CEO Howard Stringer was onto something last month when he said that mobile devices would be a focus for dealing with the poor economic conditions around the world. His upbeat Tokyo message was: “We will tap our unique strengths in gaming, entertainment, digital imaging and telephony to fast track a line-up of next-generation mobile devices.”

I wonder if PR can pick up on this creativity in the next year and not only join the conversation but also lead the development of mobile PR creative services. 

Posted in Digital communications, Emerging technology, Industry events, Trends and research | No Comments »

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