Archive for the ‘Liberate Media news’ Category
Have i got news for you? The insider perspective…
June 11th, 2008
Last week, I was lucky enough to be one of the chosen few (well around 500) who demonstrated Olympian-grade precision queuing in order to gain access to the filming of “Have I Got News For You” in
E-Consultancy roundtable: Who owns online PR?
May 23rd, 2008
Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to attend E-Consultancy’s quarterly roundtable event on the topic of Online PR.
I’m told it was the busiest it has ever been - clearly Online PR is a hot subject of discussion at the moment. The room was packed out with marketing and PR managers from a wide range of sectors including finance, technology, travel and publishing etc. In attendance on the agency side were myself, Simon Collister of Edelman, Drew Benvie of Hotwire, and Karl Havard of search agency Propellernet.
At the heart of the two-hour discussion was the burning question: “Who owns Online PR?”. Although we jumped around discussing related subjects such as research and measurement, budget and resouce allocation, to name but a few…the crux of the argument repeatedly came back to how we define Online PR, and ultimately who should own it.
One brand-side attendee summed up many people’s thoughts exactly: “Are you talking about sending out your views to your audiences who happen to be reading it in an online format rather than on paper, or are you talking about SEO? SEO is often treated as a different silo and managed by a different division, who are unaware of what the marketing department is doing. That is where the definition becomes a bit blurred.”
On the PR side, there thankfully seemed to be a conscenus of opinion that what we’re talking about here is PR- whether we’re defining it as offline or online. Online PR is no more than PR in the digital space.
From my perspective, social media is taking us back to the original cornerstone of PR - that being two-way conversation. There is a danger in continuing to segregate ‘Online PR’ as something separate, that should have separate ROI and budgets attached. This will continue to reinforce the problem of Online PR existing as an afterthought or bolt-on to wider marketing and PR efforts.
Surely it’s better than we focus on breaking down these silos, as has happened to a certain extent in the advertising industry, so that we can start to achieve a truly integrated campaign that shares the same objectives and strategy?
One search expert in attendance suggested online has outpaced the traditional PR agencies, with some trying to re-position themselves to grab this online concept, and make sure they portray that they know it. “When actually the digital agencies know the online mediums and don’t know PR, while the PR agencies know PR but don’t necessarily know the online mediums,” he argued.
At Liberate Media we’re taking a collaborative approach, forging partnerships with experts who offer complimentary services, e.g. SEO, but respect our strategic communications skills. By bringing essential new skills in-house, e.g. social media/technology expertise, we have also been able to evolve more quickly into a consultancy set-up to take ownership of online PR.
iCrossing social media video release (SMVR) case study
March 6th, 2008
At the beginning of the year we developed and launched a spin-off to the SMPR, which we coined the SMVR or social media video release. We debuted the template last month for our client iCrossing UK (formerly known as Spannerworks), for its brand integration announcement.
Re-brand announcements can often be tricky - they are incredibly important to the client, but are never going to set the news agenda alight. So between the client and ourselves we came up with the idea to use and harness the power of social media, in the form of an interactive video, which bloggers could easily embed into their own blogs.
Below is the case study:
iCrossing brand integration SMVR case study
Overview:
Following Spannerworks’ acquisition by iCrossing, Liberate Media was tasked with communicating the digital marketing agency’s integration into the iCrossing brand in 2008.
Communications objectives:
- Develop a hook that would interest target audiences in the UK and US
- Educate key audiences in the iCrossing proposition in the UK
- Communicate the strength of iCrossing’s worldwide presence
- Introduce iCrossing’s vision for the future of digital marketing
Challenges:
- Brand integration alone is not newsworthy due to the acquisition announcement a year earlier
- Limited time prior to launch
- Limited availability of US and UK spokespeople
Campaign:
To deliver on the key objectives for the brand integration, Liberate Media felt that a new approach would be needed to reflect iCrossing’s forward-thinking approach. It was agreed that the communications messages should be conveyed in an innovative and easily accessible format, utilising a social media-focused strategy to assist message delivery and distribution. One option was to prepare a social media press release, but the PR team felt that a more visual and audible format was needed to communicate the intricacies of this announcement.
As part of its ongoing social media research and development, the team at Liberate Media had been developing a new social media platform that it has titled the ’social media video release’ (SMVR). The SMVR contains the key elements of a social media press release combined with interactive video, allowing the viewer to click through to supporting data such as relevant sites, key statistics and research that supports the narrative. iCrossing would become the first brand to utilise this new form of communication.
Liberate Media worked with iCrossing in the US and UK to develop the storyboard and the video element, while collating relevant evidence that would be made available via the interactive interface. Following international agreement on the storyboard and having briefed the key spokespeople, the SMVR was professionally shot, edited, coded and had links inserted to achieve the desired social media-focused announcement.
Launch:
On launch day, which was coordinated with US and UK offices, the video was launched via iCrossing UK’s blog and seeded on relevant news channels, linking all traffic back to iCrossing’s corporate websites. The SMVR was also made available to the web via interactive video site asterpix.com, and of course mainstream sites such as YouTube.
Asterpix - The main SMVR interactive site, and url (embeded code) was forwarded to all relevant bloggers and key journalist. It has had 566 views at the time of publishing.
Youtube - 1839 views up to publishing date
Metacafe - 139 views up up publishing date
Honours:
#34 - YOUTUBE - Most Viewed (Today) - News & Politics - United Kingdom - 28-01-2008
#36 - YOUTUBE - Most Viewed (Today) - News & Politics - United Kingdom - 29-01-2008
Page click results:
from the Spannerworks / iCrossing announcement blog post can be found here.
Example coverage:
- NMA - http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/36623/Spannerworks+rebrands+as+iCrossing.html
- Media Week - http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/779818/Spannerworks-icrossing-rebrand/ -Travolution - http://travolution.co.uk/Articles/2008/01/29/1241/Spannerworks+becomes+iCrossing+UK.html
- Brand Republic - http://www.brandrepublic.com/login/News/779670/
- ClickZ news - http://blog.clickz.com/080128-113619.html
- http://www.hortal.com/2008/01/28/roberto-the-video-star/
- http://seokeywordsnews.net/2008/01/28/icrossing-integrates-british-search-brand-spannerworks/
- http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=670
- http://www.linkedin.com/answers/marketing-sales/advertising-promotion/internet-marketing/MAR_ADP_INM/162961-3827188
- http://nilhan.co.uk/2008/01/28/the-day-spannerworks-became-icrossing/
- http://news.stpwebhosting.com/news/search-engine-optimization-news/icrossing-integrates-british-search-brand-spannerworks.htm
- http://www.projectbrighton.com/2008/01/28/goodbye-spannerworks-hello-icrossing-uk/
- http://open.typepad.com/open/2008/01/i-dont-work-for.html
Feedback from Arjo Ghosh, CEO and founder iCrossing UK
* How did you find the process of producing the video?
“If I’m honest I found the filming process a bit stressful. The format would have worked much better for us if we were being interviewed. Talking ‘to’ camera is really difficult if you have no experience of it.”
* What did you think was most interesting/innovative about the SMVR?
“Links interwoven into the talk. Asterpix and YouTube as the platform.”
* What results have you been most impressed with?
“Over 2000 people viewing is impressive.”
Social Media And Web 2.0 Online Resource And Research map
January 29th, 2008
At Liberate Media we feel strongly that social media should be free and accessible to all. A big part of social media is being able to access information/stories/videos photos etc, take that content, and place it and share it where ever you want whenever you want.
Which is why Liberate media wants to give something back and show that there are a couple of PR companies digging trenches and filling the sandbags! We are going to share our research work into social media and web 2.0 over the last 12 months with you.
There has been a lot of talk recently about how PR folk just don’t get social media, don’t know what it is, don’t know how to harness it and don’t know how to measure the results. This is true to some extent, but for us a new form of communication is always at the forefront of our thinking. So to help our fellow PR professionals and anyone else who is interested in social media and web 2.0, please take a minute to check out our archive of posts. You might even learn something!
The archive is set out by topic, and in each topic there are relevant posts for that heading. It will make more sense when you actually look at it. New headings are added all the time and a round-up of new links added will feature in a blog post every Friday (make sure you subscribe to our blog to you don’t want to miss it).
VIEW THE RESOURCE/RESEARCH MAP HERE:
The code for the map is below - please feel free copy and paste this and embed this into your blog.
<iframe id=”mapframe_id226″ name=”mapframe_id226″ frameborder=”0″ style=”border:1px #B9B9B9 solid;” scrolling=”no” src=”http://www.glinkr.net/site_media/DebateMapClient
/html/map_content.html?graphId=226″ height=”500px” width=”95%” ></iframe>
If you have any more ideas on how to improve the resource, research archive or think any headers are missing, or would like us to add any relevant posts, please get in touch.
Liberate Media relaunches in WordPress
January 25th, 2008
This week, the Liberate Media website relaunched in WordPress.
The old website was little more than a year old, and had received very good feedback…but over the past six months in particular we had realised the need for a website platform that could grow dynamically with us, and respond better to the socially networked environment that we’re operating within.
The decision to use WordPress was an easy one. Not only is it a very cost-effective way of building a new site, but if offers some great functionality including:
- The ability to easily add and update pages
- The control to administrate the site ourselves
- Easy integration of third party plug-ins and software
- Tools to password protect areas of the site
- Better search engine visibility
- Freedom to import embedable content on the fly such as videos, podcasts, games etc
WordPress is a social media platform, and in today’s digital age, it’s crucial that we’re transparent about our presence online and the conversations we’re engaging in. The ability to do this leaves an important digital footprint for the company.
Please take a look at the new site in your own time, and let us know what you think. We hope you feel it offers a breath of fresh air within the PR industry in particular. If you’re interested in finding out more about WordPress, please get in touch.