Communicating a vital message...

Since February I've been interning in the comms department of a national charity and it's really opened my eyes to a different kind of communication. Creating awareness about a devastating and often fatal disease without resorting to scare tactics can be tricky to say the least. It's a serious matter but does that mean that the communication methods need to be all didactic and no engagement?

During my post-grad studies in PR, a lot of the main focus in textbooks and case studies was on corporations and communications of a consumer nature. Granted there was one course dedicated to fundraising but in terms of PR on a non-profit level, I distinctly remember the phrase being thrown about, "There's little or no money to be made in non-profit PR work...but it's "rewarding"...if you're into that sort of thing."

It's true that chances are that if you work for a charity in their PR department, unless its a biggie (i.e. Oxfam or Unicef), you won't have a huge budget and vast amount of resources at hand. And that's where creativity, insightfulness and social media can work wonders.

A great example of a small charity using digital communications to its full potential is Beatbullying, even their motto echoes the reasoning behind every PR initiative: "Shaping attitudes, changing behaviours."

As big charities are seen as 'wasteful' in the public eye and smaller charities are gaining much needed financial support from a substantial 40 percent of the public, Beatbullying is definitely doing something right.

Media Trust highlighted Sherry Adhami's success with Beatbullying in one of their spring conferences entitled: "What are the ingredients for a successful charity story?"

In addition to providing lesson plans to school to educate children on the dangers of bullying, they also use a potent mix of:

• their own social networking site for peer mentoring (Cybermentors)
• iTunes page offering original music written and produced by children in their BBMusic programme (over 5,000 downloads to date)
• an online learning resource for primary school children partnered up with Shaun the Sheep
• and of course YouTube, Twitter and Facebook

Sherry's impressive efforts have not gone unnoticed and Beatbullying won the 2009 Best Use of Digital Media award at the Third Sector Excellence awards.

There is so much potential in increasing a charity's message to as wide an audience as possible and to make the public more aware and socially conscious but only if charities are willing to embrace new media and its opportunities.

If charities and established corporations have one thing in common, it could be the fear of digital communications. Many charities have been around for a long time and are resistant to drastic or risky change because of the uncertain nature of financial support. It can be hard to convince a charity's CEO or trustees that social media is the way to go.

Aren't I supposed to be Twitterpated now?

In the past month, I've been paying closer attention to Twitter and trying to learn as many words I can from Twittonary*, which by the way isn't going well at all and only resulting in tweepless (not actually).

The Twitter phenomenon reminds me of when chat rooms and instant messaging clients were all shiny and new. And during that time a new language sprang up with abbreviations and emoticons that transformed anything you wrote into a confusing foreign language to those uninitiated.

The same can be said for Twitter and unfortunately there are a lot of people who suffer from Twitterrhea.

Risk of Twitterhea is a valid concern for those wary of engaging with this particular form of social networking. Organisations are scared of bombarding their stakeholders and there is a lot of pressure these days to stay fresh in the Twitosphere, where the Twitterati dominate while Twidiots are aplenty.

How does one succeed at Twitter?

Simple. Tell people what they want to hear - keep your messages relevant and interesting to your stakeholders - nobody cares if your organisation has just bought a new printer for HR, the only people who can generate such interest in mundane tweets are people like Kim Kardashian (who is in the top ten of most popular Twitter users, the list is 80% US celebrities).

Just like any communicative strategy, time, energy and genuine effort need to be invested to reap a successful outcome.

Problogger offers up some useful tips (aimed at bloggers but can be applied to anyone really) for those who want to maximise Twitter's potential. See here.

Who here actually loves Twitter? Honesty is still the best policy.

*The Twitter vocabulary used in this post is just a tiny fraction of how this "language" is evolving. I don't know about you, but I still find it all just a bit too irritating and I still feel like a poser if I say it all out loud. This means I don't ever use these words in reality.

Photo courtesy of adele.turner

Wedding Planning 2.0

Digital communications has truly made a lot of life's tasks easier and wedding planning is definitely one of them.

I'm getting married this year in July and after getting engaged last April, I've been furiously planning nonstop.

Sure, that sounds like every other bride-to-be doesn't it?

Did I mention that I'm getting married twice within one week, once in Toronto, Canada and a week later in Munich, Germany? I've also been living in the UK, specifically Bristol, since last August.

Planning two ceremonies and receptions on two entirely different continents while living in neither of those continents would be near impossible if it wasn't for the internet, social media and everything in between.

Wedding industry experts are saying that using social media and the internet is the best thing right now to make the most of your time, energy and money.

Any vendors worth looking into are on Facebook and/or Twitter and it makes asking those pertinent questions so much easier, no matter the distance between.

Online forums on sites such as The Knot and Martha Stewart Weddings are indispensable when you want to get opinions and advice from other internet-savvy brides. Although The Knot can be quite scary as some of the people on the forum aren't engaged or married, or even in relationships!

Blogs are great to gain inspiration, get in touch with vendors (a lot of the bloggers are actually wedding photographers, event planners, designers etc.) or just for when you want to escape in some absolutely gorgeous photos of perfect weddings. Some of my favorites are: Style Me Pretty, 100 Layer Cake and Kiss the Groom.

My fiancé and I have also created our own wedding blogs (one in English and one in German) so the guests can access all they need to know at their own convenience. In turn it cuts down paper costs as maps, directions and hotel information (things that used to come with the invitations) can be easily posted and archived online.

Google Docs has also been an amazing tool to help get us organised. Search "wedding templates collection" and there are tons of spreadsheets available to download and use. They are also rated by others so you can see which ones are worth using.

I really don't know what I would have done if there weren't so many great tools at my disposal to help with the whole planning process. Perhaps eloping to Vegas would have been our only option...

Photo courtesy of artgyrl

Will print soon be extinct?

The iPad, Apple's latest style-savvy gadget on offer, has created quite a divided stir. Since its unveiling at the beginning of the year and with its official release date in the US being this Saturday, some are preparing themselves for queues around the block and the occasional cat fight for last dibs. Others have been wary and cynical from the start and think: "Great – it’s an oversized iPod Touch that also displays eBooks and runs more robust productivity applications.”

Whether you are an iPad cheerleader or a skeptic, there's no doubting its impact on the future of printed material. eBooks are nothing new, in fact they've been around for the last ten years but devices such as Amazon's Kindle and the iTouch have really launched eBooks into the realm of popularity.

Tomes with beautiful covers, gilded pages and seamless bindings might soon be relegated to archaic symbols of literature past and now glossy print magazines could very well suffer a similar fate.

Big name magazine publishers will be armed and ready to launch their best-selling mags into the eager iPad owners and have been working tirelessly for months to unveil eVersions that will deftly showcase the iPad's capabilities with their own technology savviness.

These issues, (GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired, Glamour, and The New Yorker) will most likely feature interactive features, videos and other multi-media additions and will take flipping through a magazine at the dentist to a whole new level.

Joan Solà, president (Europe and Latin America) of Zinio Global, producers of electronic magazines for major publishers, says: "We believe the iPad is just the start of the migration from paper to digital for magazines."

Scanning the pages of your favorite glossy won't just be for your handheld device of choice either, as Zinio is also working on a magazine application for TVs.

The digital revolution for magazines is surely on the horizon but is it really something that will take off and persevere over traditional print?

I will admit that electronic versions of newspapers are a godsend - no more smudgy black fingerprints or grey stains on light jackets and coats. But I've always loved the smell of a fresh shiny magazine, hot off the newsstand or from its protective plastic shell plucked from my postbox. Flipping through the pages with a glass of Merlot is one of my favorite past times. It's just not the same when it's all digitalised and for me, not worth the eye strain of looking at a screen...

But there is something to be said about the eco possibilities of digitalised publications - but in all honesty will the production of such eBooks and eMagazines really save energy and resources as opposed to the production of traditional printed materials?

Until it has been proven so, I'll be sticking to my risk of paper cuts, thank you.

What are your thoughts? Are any of you eBook readers? How do you feel about the digitalisation of all things read?

Photo courtesy of Longzero

Social Media 101 - neccessary or superfluous?

Again inspired by Nestle's recent social media/PR fiasco, read about that here, here or here, I've been prompted to think about the importance of education and training in social media for organisations and communications professionals.

There are countless courses, workshops, seminars, pow-wows etc. dedicated to the better understanding of social media on offer. From the CIPR to publications like Communicate to recruitment agencies like AdLib and let's not forget about the PR Digital Conference, there are plenty of opportunities for social media virgins to get down and dirty with the ins and outs of digital communications.

Does sex sell thoughts on PR issues as well as denim? Hmm...

But I digress.

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So my question for this new and potentially lucrative educational niche is this: is it really worth it?

Echoing a previous post of mine between the divided opinions on the validity of PR degrees and qualification, does having done some official course really make you a social media expert? Will it have any leverage on the CV? Or does just using common sense and an appreciation of professional decorum when it comes to social media enough?

In an article in last week's PR Week, Matt Cartmell wrote about how corporations are increasing emphasis on using social media in their crisis communication strategies.

But it all acts in a Catch-22 fashion because it is also shows how corporations are complaining about how social media is to blame for the defamation of their reputations. A quite significant number of 70% actually!

The biggest success stories of social media done right come from individuals or organisations who just "get it" - they never took a special set of courses or workshops to explain the difference between Digg and Twitter. They dove right in with enthusiasm and a passion to make this exciting new opportunity work for them and their message. Take Stanley Tang for example. He rose to fame at just a tender age of 16 and is now a best-selling author and internet entrepreneur who harnessed social media (amongst other things) to allow him to earn a "comfortable" living working online.

And then there's Mashable's list of 10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media and 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them. Looks like some people are definitely getting it.

But is that kind of social media success for an individual or organisation taught? Or maybe more importantly, can it be taught?

Would you sign up and pay for an education in social media?

"A social environment for the asocial individual..."

In light of a recent major social media fail that even a chocolaty coating can't mask the taste of, are brands more susceptible to unfair and dirty slandering by the masses empowered by social media?

The PR Wire highlighted Nestle's defamation due to a Greenpeace allegation that led to a viral Youtube video circulation which spawned high numbers of venomous reactions on FB and Twitter.

But does that kind of reaction just mean that it's citizen journalism at its most modern?

Just as blogs are giving organisations and individuals a supposed "face" and "voice" (according to Trevor Cook's Can Blogging Unspin PR? in Uses of Blogs) - is it that time to question whether those faces and voices are really that individualistic and original?

Interestingly enough, just a week before Nestle's global reputation began to melt into the ground, an article in PR Week popped up revealing that brands are vulnerable to web attacks provoked by a "lynch-mob mentality".

Sure, the glorious internet provides society with a sense of freedom and anonymity, but does that truly mean that we can say whatever the hell we want, regardless of whether it's proven true of not?

According to a research study by Euro RSCG Biss Lancaster, 23% of UK adults would lash about and out at companies because of the facelessness of today's social media.

So it looks like there are quite a lot of people who aren't afraid to say anything, as long as it's not face-to-real face.

It's actually quite similar to the whole spiel your mother used to tell you when you committed an unsavory act because of peer pressure, "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you?"

As Euro RSCG Biss Lancaster chairman Graham Lancaster said: "What you find is that once people get the idea that everybody is doing it and having a go, then it snowballs...anonymity is making those of us that are timid join in and feel they are part of a counter-capitalist community online."

It's not just a UK-specific concern, Lee Siegel, respected writer, cultural critic and author of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob sums it up quite nicely as it being the v.2.0 of an old term, "the mass man - the man who is formed by the crowd" . The online crowd could very well count as a representation of the entire public, even outside the confines of the internet.

In this video, Lee talks about how the majority of people are losing the ability to think for themselves and how damaging this is.

He emphasizes that "it's not the judgement that is the problem but really how people arrive at that judgement."

Now this is by no means a direct opinion on the truth of Greenpeace's allegations against Nestle for unethical business practice, but rather it brings to mind the issue of the validity of "truth" on the internet.

Does social media really give us the freedom to be ourselves or are we all just one big mouth with nothing original to say?

First photo courtesy of Will Lion.

Second image courtesy of Jennifer Daniel

Pass me the remote, uh I mean mouse...

There's no denying that the internet has become an indispensable realm of access to anything and everything one could possibly want.

According to The Digital Future Project, created and organised by The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenburg School for Communication, "In 1994, fewer than two of every ten Americans used the Internet; in 2009, more than eight in ten Americans go online."

Inspired by Kathryn's "Illegal versus legal" post at Stirling PR Student, I thought it would be interesting to delve deeper into what the internet has now become, an all-in-one, one-stop shop for all your entertainment needs.

In her post, Kathryn talked about how illegal music sharing has taken over the music industry and that musicians and labels haven't really gotten a grasp on how to tackle this problem that results in loss of album sales and decline in popularity.

Not all hope is lost if you want to make it big in the music "biz" because there are some artists who are definitely taking the gamble of releasing free album downloads and it looks like it's paying off.

Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead both released free versions of their latest albums on Bit Torrent sites and their websites for a limited time. People were so receptive to this gesture of good faith, they reciprocated by actually purchasing the albums. In 2008, NIN and Radiohead were among the best selling albums on that year on Amazon. See the full article on ReadWriteWeb here.

The same "give a little, take a little" approach has been applied to television as well. Live streaming and video sharing in the form of torrents and files has become the new way to catch up on your favorite shows or to see why everybody and their mother is obsessed with LOST. All you need is a computer and a fast internet connection and the world of bad reality TV is at your finger tips.

TV networks haven't missed out on this opportunity. All major networks have archives of full high-quality episodes of popular shows so you don't have to resort to sketchy foreign sites anymore or clog up your hard drive with huge torrent files. BUT every time you click on that link to watch last week's Grey's Anatomy, you are still watching through ABC.

So it's a win-win situation right?

What will be the evolution of entertainment (TV, music, films, books etc.)?

Photo courtesy of Bond Girly

Reality TV and PR Tips - together at last?

I suppose since this blog is to be a revelation of my own personal ideas and opinions, it's a good opportunity to come clean.

Reality TV is almost everyone's guilty or not so guilty pleasure. There are some who relish in the latest season of "The Bachelor" etc. and can't wait to gossip about last night's episode around the water cooler and then there are those who secretly watch dated episodes complete with dodgy Chinese subtitles. I fall in the latter group.

I had heard of fashion and entertainment PR firm, People's Revolution before but in the last few years the firm has gained international mainstream fame, not through its PR work but primarily through its participation in MTV reality shows such as The Hills and The City.

People's Revolution founder and head, Kelly Cutrone quickly became the epitome of a PR domina - aggressive, ruthless, taking no prisoners and seems to enjoy the suffering of others. Intimidating to all but just really just knows how to be damn good at her job. She's definitely not out to make friends - as she often says herself.

Because her no-BS attitude towards work and life has become so entertaining - she now has her own reality spin-off called Kel on Earth. But it isn't all reality TV fluff - there could be some valuable PR lessons to be learnt in the end - especially when so many people seem to be so enthusiastic about Tweeting. Just saying...

Photo courtesy of Lubs Mary

The Validity of PR Qualifications?

I always find myself flipping, rather enthusiastically, to Communicate's @loggerheads feature each month to devour what industry issue is served up to debate amongst two PR practitioners via email correspondence.

My appetite began to feel quite suppressed as I read last month's topic of debate: "Do PR qualifications have any real value? Or is on-the-job learning the only worthwhile form of educations?"

As I, and quite a number of others I know, am currently enrolled in postgraduate studies in PR/communications, this could be hard to swallow...

The PR practitioners chosen to participate in the debate are Matt Stewart, associate director at Bite Communications and Kevin Taylor, president of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).

Some interesting bites from their debate:

• "I wonder whether PR graduates knock on the doors of agencies or in-house PR teams through consequence, and not self-motivated design." - Matt Stewart

• "PR is a strategic business function with its own specific skill set and knowledge base. So while you can't beat experience, some things are better learnt from a base of formal instruction, guidance and acquire knowledge." - Kevin Taylor

• "Communications remains more art than science...PR may sometimes be textbook material or something a lecturer could teach, but a good PR practitioner will require considerably more than to have read the requisite pages of a book or attended a certain lecture." - Matt Stewart

• "PR degrees and qualifications are vital to our future. They underpin the industry's professionalism. In turn valuing PR degrees too lightly undermines our credibility as a profession." - Kevin Taylor

Read the entire debate here.

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Being a current student of PR studies, I have to agree more with Kevin's argument (am I so predictable?), but I also cannot stress the importance of having on-the-job industry experience to act as counter balance.

PR has been and will continue to be a fast evolving industry and it's not just in the development of newer channels of communication, but also in its establishment as a recognized profession.

More and more educational institutions are offering PR and/or corporate communication programs and courses - this can't be a sign that PR agencies and in-house PR teams aren't interested in hiring those with formalised education in PR.

It would be safe to assume that many communication pros in executive or managerial positions do not hold PR-specific qualifications or have educational backgrounds in PR, but this is fast changing in the new generation of communicators.

Why else would associations like CIPR be offering an impressive list of training workshops in topics ranging from "Introduction to PR" to "Writing for the Press"?

I would like to think that I, like other forward-thinkers, am preparing for a serious career in communications and it's something that I feel passionate about. It won't be a job that I "one day found myself in by accident since I studied something obscure like Robin Hood Studies* **."

Any thoughts?

* Actually a legit program at Nottingham University - MA in Robin Hood Studies

** This is not me taking the piss at anyone who chooses to do this MA, frankly I think it's quite cool!

Photo courtesy of Lowry Lou

Brand domination

Check out this animated short film: Logorama

Really makes you think what defines Western culture, that is if you can even call it culture...

New month, new perspective

With the sun and a gentle breeze, the month of March makes its entrance (at least here in the Southwest of England) and also marks my first trip into the official blogosphere.
Gone are the days of Livejournal (which I will admit, I was an LJ-addict in high school) and emo-ridden rants amongst close friends. The idea of opening up my ideas, opinions and thoughts (mainly PR-specific) is absolutely terrifying.

Blogging has become an art - extremely high standards have been set and there are those who flourish and many who fail. According to Technorati, as of June 2008 there are over 112 million registered blogs.
How does one even begin to successful navigate such a vastly new realm? And more importantly how does one fit in?

At the end of the day, isn't it really just having a way with words?

With more and more organisations acknowledging the sheer power of blogs (along with other forms of social media), how are PR professionals handling their requests? What kind of results are standard? Who can call themselves experts in such new mediums?

I suppose I have a lot of questions about it all, but in my opinion (here we go...) blogging success comes from a balance of online persona and an established identity in reality, all wrapped up in charisma. Multi-tasking within two worlds all the while staying relevant and interesting.

I'll end my first official post with a some amazing blogging tips from one of my favorite artists and bloggers, Nubby Twiglet.

Looks like I have an interesting journey ahead of me...