If you’re in marketing or public relations you need to ‘get’ mobile. Period. So I was chuffed to be able to host a conversation on CIPR TV yesterday with Simon Liss , Managing Director of We Love Mobile , and David Murphy , Editor of Mobile Marketing Magazine . Thanks Simon. Thanks David. For information about upcoming CIPR TV shows, simply skip on over to www.cipr.tv . ...
[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup .] “Public relations is a strategic communication process that builds mutually beneficial relationships between organizations and their publics.” And so concludes the PRSA’s Public Relations Defined (#prdefined) initiative. Launched 30th October last year, the initiative has garnered considerable interest, both positive and negative. On the positive front, I have seen considerable interest from practitioners, predominantly but not exclusively in the US as one might expect given the PRSA’s geographic domain, grappling with the question of how to define what they do for a living with sincerity. No bad thing, particularly when some practitioners’ perspective turns out to be, well, a little far off the mark. ...
[Originally written for The Guardian Media Network .] If media is interesting because it facilitates communication, whether that communication is mediated or disintermediated, then communication is most interesting when it facilitates influence. You have been influenced when you think something you wouldn’t otherwise have thought, or do something you wouldn’t otherwise have done. Simple as, although you wouldn’t think it now that influence is the hot word. The capacity to change hearts, minds and deeds is considered the mark of the great communicator, the compelling personality, the charismatic politician, and ultimately no one wants to communicate without influence; that wouldn’t be a good use of the communicator’s time and energy, or indeed that of those on the receiving end. The focus on making sure you’re influenced back is vital too. Individuals (and organisations) that best absorb the zeitgeist are heuristically more able to respond in ways their audiences (stakeholders) might well appreciate. Influence is complex, and I mean that in the full “complexity science” sense of the word. Complexity is the phenomena that emerge from a collection of interacting objects. The interacting objects could be molecules of air and the phenomenon the weather. It could be vehicles and the phenomenon the traffic. ...
[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup .] This week has been Social Media Week with events taking place in over twenty cities around the world. No-one can hope to take it all in, but I’ve done my best to keep abreast of the themes, big and small. But there was one thing I was keenly looking out for yet did not see. If you did, please let me know. Machined media – or at least that’s my term for it. I define machined media as content that’s automatically discovered, presented and published by machines for humans, and I introduced it at last year’s CIPR Social Media conference. Machined media has had a fairly ignominious start in life. Anyone online will have stumbled across it. You will have seen some weird looking text in spam emails, and spam websites just looking for any and all traffic they can entice a search engine to send their way. The text has been generated automatically to try to by-pass spam filters, and then to encourage you to click so the spammers make money. The content hasn’t had to aspire to Shakespearean fluency because one click in a million will do just fine thank you very much. But semi-machined media has entered prime time, and pure machined media is on the cusp. ...
Yes, you read the title to this post right. Are you in business? In the UK? Online or use email? Then you apparently owe the Newspaper Licensing Agency some money. I first expressed my interest in an increasingly aggressive Newspaper Licensing Agency in a 2007 blog post suggesting a more appropriate title for the body – Newspaper Licensing Anachronism. Please note that I have nothing against the monetization of copyright content (hey I’m an author!), I just think the way the NLA conducts its business is all rather 20th Century. And this week, we’ve had a Copyright Tribunal Interim Decision . [The square brackets below reference this decision.] The NLA’s relevance in the 21st Century has been tested, as far as the law is open to interpretation, by the innovative media monitoring company, Meltwater . Actually, the description the Copyright Tribunal uses to describe Meltwater, or rather Meltwater’s witness, is “unnecessarily combative” [35]. Well, talking of combat, the latest battle in this war concluded yesterday. The result is a mixed affair, with neither the NLA or Meltwater coming out on top. I’ve just recorded an interesting conversation with Meltwater’s JP Glittenberg about this week’s decision… do take a listen, particularly if you work in media, PR or copyright. [audio:/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Meltwater-interview-15Feb2012.mp3|titles=Meltwater interview 15th Feb 2012] Now the Tribunal is quite restricted: by law; by precedent; by previous adjudgements in this ongoing case; by its own terms of reference. Generally, on reading the entire 60-page decision, I find the Tribunal to be most diligent, but given my background, I get a bit uptight every time I read something that indicates a lack of technical understanding of the Internet and the World Wide Web (yes, they are different things!) Despite some stumbles however, they get somewhere interesting in the end. In fact, they end up showing up UK copyright law for the shambles it is. ...
[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup .] I delivered the inaugural CIPR Strategic Management Series presentation this week on the Influence Scorecard . We explored the future developments of social media, related information technologies and business strategy development and execution, all three of which are massively transformed in the past decade and a half, and continue to change rapidly. And we discussed what’s encompassed exactly by the increasingly heard phrase, “socializing the enterprise”. The following question, asked during the Q&A part of the evening, is perfectly formed to offer up a slice through the future as I see it: “What does all this mean for PR agencies?”. Let’s set the scene… ...
The PR industry view and ‘Big Ask’ - Philip Sheldrake , uploaded by Gorkana Group on Vimeo . AMEC – the international Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication – launched its social measurement consultation exercise with European members and in-house and agency PR professionals on November 17th 2011 at the ‘Big Ask’ conference. I spoke at the conference and the videos of the day have just been posted to Vimeo. In the egocentric nature that is personal blogging, I’ve embedded the video of me above, and videos of the other speakers can all be found here . ...
[Originally written for the CIPR Friday Roundup ] What does the Wikipedia entry for your organisation / client / brand say? What about brand references in other entries? All cosy on the Wikipedia front? And recognising that a neutral point of view (NPOV) is one of Wikipedia’s “five pillars” , you have resisted editing anything where your neutrality is questionable. Right? Let’s face it, Wikipedia is amazing. I had the pleasure of attending the Wikipedia 10th birthday party in London last year and I wasn’t the only one there who admitted to not appreciating Wikipedia’s potential back in the day. Seriously? A website anyone can edit?! Yeah right, that’ll work. Not. And yet today Alexa ranks Wikipedia the sixth most popular site on the web. Search for a company or brand in Google or Bing and there’s the Wikipedia entry tempting you with its neutrality, familiarity and ease of use. The Wikipedia community plays a significant role in brand reputation. This week, one of my favourite Conversation contributors, Stuart Bruce, spotted Member of Parliament Tom Watson’s interest in Wikipedia and PR practice . He found Watson’s contribution, Wednesday, to a Wikipedia talk page: ...
CIPR TV goes from strength to strength. As part of the hosting team, I had the pleasure this week to host an extended show – sort of a two-for-one. CIPR TV is only possible courtesy of the team at Markettiers4dc , and it was about time we invited Howard Kosky, Markettiers4dc founder and chairman, on the show. Howard walks us through how the broadcast landscape has transformed over the past decade and a half, and gives viewers some tips for the top and pitfalls to avoid. In fact, when you consider the role broadcast plays in the public relations mix, I can’t believe we haven’t addressed the topic before! ...
I’m typing this post sitting on the front row at the CIPR’s PR 2020 event at Russell Square HQ. To my left, Stephen Waddington . To my right, Julio Romo . On stage we have CIPR CEO, Jane Wilson , Dr. Jon White , and ComRes Marketing Manager, Simon Thwaites. ComRes annual survey ComRes conducts an annual review of key market stats for the UK PR industry, and Simon is running through that right now. Interestingly, in light of the PRSA’s current Defining PR initiative, which the CIPR supports, only 44% of ComRes poll respondents agreed with the statement “My friends and family understand what I do for a living.” ...