A few snapshots from Toronto FC’s 1:5 loss in a friendly match against Real Madrid.

In this video, Karim Benzema scores the 4:0 goal for Real Madrid in the match against Toronto FC at BMO Field. End result was 5:1. TFC was no challenge for Real Madrid but Gabe Gala must be the happiest football player alive tonight for scoring against Real’s new “Galacticos”. It was just a friendly game but it was still amazing to see the skill and talent of Real Madrid’s squad live. Cristiano Ronaldo was a joy to watch but I agree with Steve Nash that Lassana Diarra was the man of the match.

When you are in technology PR for a long time, you can’t help but feel a little jaded about the usage of ‘innovation’. New feature? Innovation. New function? Innovation. Slight upgrade? Innovation. A little faster? Innovation. It’s easy to slap it on anything that moves in the technology world, and it is done too often.

But what exactly does innovation mean?

The standard Merriam-Webster defines it as “the introduction of something new” or “a new method, idea, or device.” The web, of course is full of contextual definitions: some say innovation has to lead to “tangible societal impact” while others believe it simply captures “the ability to deliver new value to a customer.”

The discussion history behind the Wikipedia page on innovation is an example of the challenge to reconcile different interpretations. And Bruce Nussbaum started a good debate by suggesting that “‘Innovation’ died in 2008, killed off by overuse, misuse, narrowness, incrementalism and failure to evolve.” If one thing is clear, it is that innovation means different things to different people.

In preparation for a brainstorm session, I read a few articles and online discussions about innovation. But I also wanted to get a feel for its everyday perception: “What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear ‘innovation’?” I threw this question out there through email, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and was happy to get more than 100 answers, which I put in the video above.

Now, the video is a collection of anecdotal thoughts, not an attempt at a definition. I just wanted to know the first thought that people had when hearing ‘innovation.’ People who responded are either people I know or colleagues/friends/family of people I know – with all sorts of backgrounds. It’s a quick, subjective litmus test on the perception of the word, and I was mostly wondering how many people would react negatively to it. It also turned out to be a nice visual kick-off for the brainstorm session with a client.

I was amazed by all the great, fast responses I received, and actually encouraged that the majority was positive or neutral. This should be an incentive to keep filling innovation with meaning – not just with verbiage – especially in a business context. I also found it interesting that a number of people included in their answers that innovation does not necessarily have to be something altogether new. Does an idea need to be original to be called innovative, or at what point can an improvement on something existing be called an innovation?

Scott Berkun’s perspective is that innovation is always relative : “[...] the trick to innovation is to widen your perspective on what qualifies as new. As long as your idea, or your use of an existing idea, is new to the person you are creating it for, or applies an existing concept in a new way, you qualify as an innovator from their point of view, and that’s all that matters.”

That approach is quite broad. But when push comes to shove, I’d say benefit trumps originality. If something has had a positive impact for a group of people, it may be okay to call it innovation, even if it turns out that the concept – in a slightly different form – has been around elsewhere. And one man’s innovation may be another man’s incrementalism. But it is important that the outcome of “innovation” is actually meaningful to people beyond the one coming up with the idea (or the description).

As one of the respondents to my question put it: “something others say about you rather than what you say about yourself.”

Here are links to websites and blogs about innovation:

BusinessWeek Innovation & Design
BusinessWeek: The most innovative companies 2009
McKinsey What Matters: Innovation
Business Strategy Innovation
Scott Berkun’s essay: How to innovate right now
Scott Anthony – Innovation Insights Blog
Scott Anthony – What makes a company “The World’s most innovative”?
Knowledge@Wharton: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
USC Stevens Institute for Innovation

[cross-posted from highroad.com/blog]

For some additional photos, go here.

Here are some photos from my week in Germany. Click on the thumbnails for the Flickr galleries.

Berlin

Dormagen

Bonn

Koeln

Reutlingen

Note: LG Electronics is a High Road Communications client. I don’t work on the account. But I’d love to try out that watch phone…

The first one is about blogs and marketing: All you need is a blog to market your product? You’re so wrong. More videos next week.

(High Road Communications is a sponsor of StartupEmpire)

StartupEmpire already has an amazing lineup of speakers including Don Dodge, Hugh MacLeod, Howard Lindzon, David Cohen, Austin Hill, Leila Boujnane, Lane Becker and Charlie O’Donnell. Watch the video for Jevon and David’s perspective on what they want to accomplish with the conference.

More information is available at www.startupempire.ca and on David and Jevon’s blogs.

Disclaimer: High Road Communications is a sponsor of the conference.

Let’s see for how long. In a few minutes Poland and Germany will play each other at the UEFA EURO 2008 tournament. The divide goes straight through the family with Lori rooting for the football team of her mother’s home country and me rooting for my home country.

UPDATE: Germany won. Tough times are over. For now.

Michaele and Tariq Salahi

“I belong here too,” is the message this clearly picture tells us. The beaming couple do not look like interlopers.

But how easy is it to get away with? Have you ever gatecrashed a party?

I did once unintentionally, in fact, it was a wedding reception. My husband and I were attending his cousin’s wedding and he dropped me off at a restaurant opposite the church as it was pouring with rain and he couldn’t find a car parking space.

I waited in the bar and one of the waitresses I knew asked me why I was there. I told her I was going to a wedding, and she directed me into a room where a wedding reception was being held.

I helped myself to a glass of bubbly and the room was so crowded that I couldn’t see the happy couple. I couldn’t work out why I was there, whether it was a pre-wedding drinks party. After a while, the bride came over and asked, “Excuse me, but do I know you?”

I was so embarrassed, and quickly gulped down the champagne. It’s not every day I go to two weddings in the space of 10 minutes!

I say well done to the Salahis, they will dine on this for the rest of their lives, but it certainly makes one question the president’s security.

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Mental illness is sadly still tabooed, and it is only when we hear about those who can no  longer live with their tortured minds and commit suicide, like Germany’s famous goalkeeper Robert Enke, or the beautiful Korean model Daul Kim, that this difficult issue is publicly debated.

But what can be done to help those suffering from depression, those poor, helpless souls who would rather be anywhere instead of plummeting deeper their dark abyss?

These were two young and talented people who seemingly had it all with their successful careers. But they couldn’t cope with their depression, like countless others. Their fame and fortune couldn’t save them.

Tragically, even when you work in the profession, it seems little help is at hand, as this poignant letter in today’s Times describes, written by the bereaved father of a man who was severely depressed:

Sir, Your leading article (“Working minds”, Nov 23) about the need for depression to be accepted in the workplace has particular resonance for my wife and me because we lost our son to a severe depressive illness in 2005. He was a clinical psychologist, but as his illness developed he was desperate to keep it secret from all the mental health professionals who knew him or might have contact with him in the future. He insisted that his career depended on this because there was a strong prejudice in the profession against anyone who had suffered from mental illness: they were perceived as not “tough enough” for the job.

We found this hard to believe — the mental health profession seemed the last place on earth where such attitudes were likely to be found — but we were assured by others that it was so. Not only did this worry add to the burden of an already terrifying illness, whose features are so accurately and movingly described by Giles Andreae in times2, but it made our son reluctant to seek treatment and, when he did seek it, prevented him from making use of good local facilities that might have helped him. The treatment which he did accept was unsatisfactory and, in the end, unavailing.

Surely it is clear that someone who survives a depressive illness is enhanced rather than diminished by the experience, and that the insight which results may be of advantage, particularly in the field of mental health.

Richard Oerton
Bridgwater, Somerset

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Zoe has become one of the most popular names for French baby girls, rising from somewhere over the past five years to become 17th favourite.

But some angry parents have launched an internet petition demanding that the car should be renamed, to prevent “Zoe” being devalued.

Renault has defended its choice of name, saying the it evoked values of “femininity of youth, a playful spirit and vivacity”.

I have an idea for Renault. Why not name it The Carla after the wife of the French president as she clearly has all the attributes they are seeking for the promotion of their zero emission car.

I’m sure you would sell a lot more too!

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Hey, why does the media keep insulting our residents this way? I am not alone in asking this question. The East Anglian Daily Times’ headline today points out, “Vegetables are not rooted in Suffolk.” The paper’s political editor Graham Dines reckons:

The implication is that East Anglia Tory members are a bunch of straw sucking, two headed yokels who don’t venture to the bright lights of London and therefore have no idea whatsoever what life is like in 21st century multi-cultural cosmopolitan Britain.

They’re standing in the way of the great David Cameron modernising effort to make the Conservatives liked and electable next year.

It’s natural that local political associations want to exercise their democratic right to select the candidate they feel will best represent them. They should not be insulted for requesting that local candidates are included on short lists along with the other willing wealth of talent that Conservatives have attracted.

If an analogy must be made between Suffolk folk and a local produce, I would suggest they use the apple which Suffolk is famed for with its delicious Aspall cider and scrumptious Copella juice. If it’s good enough for New York – city folk there don’t object to it being known as The Big Apple – then the good natured citizens of Suffolk will surely be able to take that on the chin too.

After one, one bite and you’re hooked; that’s the irresistible appeal of Suffolk.

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This is an extract from her moving account in yesterday’s The Sunday Times magazine:

The Spencer we have now is just as kind and lovely, but he’s different. At the time we were so grateful he’d survived, there was no time to grieve for the person who’d been lost. Spencer had been in a car with some older boys from school; the driver lost control on a corner and collided with another car.

No one was drunk, they all had their seat belts on, but the result was that the front passenger died and Spencer and his friend suffered serious brain injuries. I remember Mum and I walking into A&E in the middle of the night and seeing blood everywhere, then being shown Spencer, who didn’t have a scratch on him, yet he’d scored three on the Glasgow Coma Scale — as low as you get before you’re pronounced dead.

The urge to shake him and say “Wake up!” was overwhelming. We were told there was no brain activity at all. Everyone was preparing us to switch the machines off, but then, after about 24 hours, one of the nurses noticed a slight reaction in one of his pupils and suddenly it was “He may not recognise you when he comes round”. And we were saying: “You mean he’s coming round?”

But that initial burst of optimism didn’t last long. His brain scan was filled with black areas which were haemorrhages — he’d completely destroyed his thalamus. I didn’t leave the hospital at all for the first week. Mum didn’t come home for about a month. We willed him to breathe unaided, to swallow, to lift a finger.

He was given a board with a button to press for Yes or No, and he was so frustrated he kept banging this board: “No! No! No!” All of us thought: “Why Spencer?” He was the apple of everybody’s eye, the focus of so much love. It was more than “Why couldn’t it be me?” It felt so unfair. I’d done stupid things and taken all kinds of risks, but he’d never done anything wrong.

Considering the initial prognosis was that Spencer would remain in a vegetative state for the rest of his life, everyone’s been amazed at his progress. He still has his sense of humour, but his sense of what is or isn’t appropriate has gone. If you imagine every one of your thoughts or feelings being visible on your face, or suddenly blurted out, that’s Spencer.

Because he’s a young man, and he’s very large and direct, people think he’s drunk, and they find him intimidating. We’ve had a stream of eminent specialists here and Spencer will decide within five minutes if he’s going to co-operate or not. If they are patronising he won’t give them the time of day. I make clear to him where the lines are. If he’s being rude to me I’ll tell him. Sometimes he’ll understand and apologise; sometimes he won’t. Because he has a brain injury people tend to be too nicey-nicey with him and that doesn’t do him any good.

This is one reason why I find my work as chair of trustees with Headway Cambridgeshire so rewarding and important; it’s the fact that this kind of accident can happen to anyone without any notice. It can be the result of a fall, an attack or even a stroke or medical complication.

We were fortunate in attracting some very positive responses to my recent appeal for new trustees and I will be meeting some of them this evening.  It’s not too late to apply, so please let me know if you are interested. My press release has also been published on Ann Hawkins’ website; she is the networking queen of East Anglia and has all the right contacts

Pic credit: By Dirk Lindner, Sunday Times.

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It is surely these fractured families, with children often torn between bitter, warring parents, who particularly need help and support. The impact of divorce on children can be devastating, as this report highlights, including self-blame, rebelliousness and even suicidal thoughts.

Any attempt to reduce the pain inflicted by divorce should be welcomed, and one idea worth trying could be the introduction of compulsory “conflict clinics”, described in The Sunday Times today.

Sandra Davis, a partner at Mishcom de Reya, is spearheading a campaign to get family lawyers and politicians to think hard about how family courts work – or rather, don’t work, – to prevent further cases such as this one quoted below which is cited in the story:

Somewhere on the south coast of England an 11-year-old boy is packing his bags this morning, preparing to move to his father’s house in the West Country. One can only imagine the tearful scenes as he and his mother fold his clothes and sort through his school books.

Last Thursday, despite admitting it would be “almost cataclysmic” for the child, a judge at the Appeal Court in London ordered that the boy be moved from his mother’s care to live with his father, with whom he lived for just a few months after his birth before his parents separated.

They have been fighting over him since. The mother claims to have given her “unconditional support” to the boy having a relationship with his father, but the father told the court he found it “impossible” to build that relationship while the boy was living with his mother.

One of his relatives said it was a very sad situation: “The mother just wouldn’t let go. She yes-ed and no-ed an awful lot and sadly broke promises. But in a horrible situation like this we recognise that it is also very difficult for the mother so it has been no good for anyone, really.”

Especially the boy: the traumatised child has said his father has “ruined his life” and that he would “punch and kick” rather than leave his mother’s home. The judge gave him three days to pack his bags. That time limit expires today.

Sandra believes the court system, with its delays, costs and adversarial nature, exacerbates the bitterness couples feel towards each other and makes it harder for them to come to rational decisions.

Most parents — some 70% — claim to make their children’s welfare their “top priority” during a break-up, but in a study by Mishcon, two-thirds admitted to using their children as “bargaining tools”. It also suggests that nearly one in three children whose parents divorce lose touch with their father. Many children said they felt used, isolated and alone after the divorce.

Sandra suggests establishing compulsory “conflict clinics” where disputes can be resolved.  Under the Mishcon proposals, nobody could make an application to court without a certificate saying they had been through resolution and, for some reason, failed. Sandra suggests that parents be given an incentive to use such conflict clinics by making it twice as expensive to apply for contact orders through the courts than to undergo family therapy. Under such a scheme only the most difficult cases would end up in court.

Another idea is being considered by Shadow Family Minister Maria Miller. She has been looking at Australian “family relationship centres” which offer mediation in divorce, with a view to replicating them here. They assist families to negotiate their way through separation or divorce and support parents to reach agreement on parenting arrangements outside the court system. Group sessions are undertaken to help separating parents focus on children’s needs and facilitate developing parenting plans. 

The worst unresolved cases of divorce and separation can lead to unspeakably cruel and devastating actions, like parental abductions, and even murder. Shockingly, it can also force offspring to take their revenge in the most unbelievable way, like this 18-year-old Chinese girl who murdered her parents and cut them into pieces after an argument with them about their divorce.

Does anyone have any other suggestions about how to reduce conflict during divorce? Does the present mediation system work which is offered by the courts? Not according to Guy Harrison, who is quoted in the Times report. He last saw his daughter eight years ago.

One of Mishcon’s clients, who is now divorcing and has a young child, remembers her own parent’s bitter divorce, particularly as she is now experiencing it herself:

“It was miserable. When they decided to split up I remember my dad crouching on his knees in front of me with tears in his eyes and him telling me that he loved me and he would come to collect me the following Saturday at two o’clock. I waited by the window from nine in the morning.

“The hours passed by, two o’clock came and went and I felt I’d never see my dad again. I was right, I never did.

“Now I have a little boy. I never wanted him to feel how I felt but that has gone out the window as his father and I are going through a divorce. I am doing to him exactly what my parents did to me.”

How many times has this heartbreaking scene been repeated with other families? How can divorce be made fairer for kids?

Pic courtesy of Sunday Times.

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I am a keen recycler, but was astonished to read in the latest PR Week that Defra is paying a PR company £94,000 to launch a recycling campaign for Christmas with the key messages reduce, reuse and recycle.

The government already funds a quango called WRAP – the Waste, Resource and Action Programme – to get these messages across, so why is Defra hiring an outside company as well? No wonder Conservatives have earmarked WRAP for sweeping cuts if it should win the general election.

Quangos, an abbreviation of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations, employ more than 90,000 people and operate outside direct government control despite being funded almost entirely from the public purse.

It has been reported that WRAP’s four-strong board of directors shared a half-a-million pound pay packet and £354,000 of taxpayers’ cash was used to make 20 of their workers redundant in a cost-cutting exercise.

Christmas is a key time to promote recyling, but shouldn’t WRAP be leading on this instead of Defra? Does it have the right staff to do this following its swathe of redundancies? If not, how effective is it?

The PR contract has been awarded to Threepipe, and they are using the same key messages – the same three Rs that I was promoting as press officer for local authorities on waste and recycling initiatives eight years ago in the Eastern Region.

One Christmas we were delighted when the loveable actor Christopher Biggins, who was appearing in the Cambridge panto, agreed to this photoshoot to encourage householders to recycle Christmas trees; he did this completely free of charge, out of the goodness of his heart.

The biggest problem with Christmas recycling is that contractors hired by local authorities have long breaks over the festive period and do not clear up the overflowing bottle banks until after the New Year; many recycling centres used to  be closed too, causing an avalanche of complaints in the local press.

I would suggest that Defra follows the three Rs itself by reducing the money it is wasting, reusing its team at WRAP to promote Christmas recycling, and continue to recycle its key messages as figures published this week show that the UK still sends more municipal waste to landfill than any other EU member state.

*Btw, I likedWRAP’s campaign highlighting how much food we waste. Now it’s up to supermarkets to change its special offers to help prevent unnecessary over-buying.

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My Eastern Region MEP Robert Sturdy has accused the EU of “a classic fudge” over the appointment of its first president and foreign minister, the two top jobs in Europe.

The Belgian Prime Minister, Herman Van Rompuy, is the first president elected by European leaders under the Lisbon Treaty, while Baroness Ashton,  former Trade Commissioner, is the newly appointed High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy.

Mr Sturdy worked closely with Baroness Ashton as Conservative spokesman on international trade, and in June 2007 ratified her appointed as Trade Commissioner.

He said:

“Both these appointments are a classic EU fudge. They have appointed two weak people so Merkel and Sarkozy are not threatened.

“Baroness Ashton is a very nice person and was a good trade minister, but whether she is up to this new role remains to be seen. I am rather concerned it is a question of appointing people who are not qualified.

“Belgium has a split government and can’t agree on which language they should speak. How on earth can they agree on Europe? I would have liked to have seen Chris Patten as our president.”

UPDATE: Robert has this morning had an interview on Radio Cambridgeshire and been quoted in The Telegraph. Just had an interview request too from BBC Today in Parliament.

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I was stunned by the technology and thought which has gone into the designs. For example, a patient can lie in bed surrounded by a glass screen and use a remote control to decide whether he wants the glass to be clear so he has a full view of his surroundings, or prefers privacy, and at the flick of a switch, the glass turns opaque. It’s absolutely stunning.

The pods are currently being trialled at University College Hospital, London with Dr Peter Wilson. It means that they can be erected on busy wards if there are no free side rooms. Instead of beds on either side of an infectious patient being left empty, creating “bed blocking”, which is currently the case, those beds can then be occupied. Trials demonstrate it has improved bed occupancy by 10%.

They have also been shown to considerably improve hand washing, which is indicated by a traffic light system at the door.

Mike Phillips, from the designers Renfrew Group, takes us on a tour of these amazing pods on this video.

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The City of Cambridge Association advertised for my replacement on Friday 13th. The deadline for applications is midday on 30th November.

My advice, for what it is worth is:
Live in Cambridge. If you don’t live in Cambridge now, get a local address as soon as possible. The activists are familiar with candidates promising to move in but not doing so. Voters noticed a London address on the ballot paper in a previous General Election.

Commute to the Capital. The retiring MP, David Howarth, was a commuter who avoided the entire moats, ducks and second home expenses fiasco. If you can’t make this promise, matching what the sitting MP actually did, then don’t bother applying. Too many MPs are seen as transplanted Londoners and not representative of the places they were elected to.

Slam the Congestion Charge. The TIF bid is hurting, but the mortal blow has yet to come.

Assess your time commitment. The maximum commitment ‘24/7’ candidate would be single, with no living relatives and a lottery winner. If that’s you, you’re a shoe in.

Work with the City Councillor. Chris Howell has shown how having a Tory on the city council makes a difference.

Come to Events. Andrew Bower is leading the new Coleridge Branch [visit the website http://www.cherryhintonroad.com/ ]. We are holding a dinner on 2nd December with Graham Stuart MP- get tickets ASAP. They are available from my wife Stacey, the branch secretary, for £20 (email Stacey_neary@yahoo.com).

Do Research. If you are reading this, then you probably are…

Best of luck,
Richard

I would add to that, be seen actively campaigning with your supporters. I am often impressed by the fringe parties who turn out on Saturdays to man a stall in Mill Road. Are we doing that? And on the Market Place too.

May the best man, or woman, win…..

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Johnston Press, parent company to the Isle of Man Newspapers, is introducing subscriptions fees on their websites in a pilot scheme starting next week.

The Worksop Guardian, Ripley & Heanor News, Northumberland Gazette, Whitby Gazette (all in England), and the Southern Reporter and Carrick Gazette (in Scotland) will restrict access to non-subscribers, in an attempt to create revenues from their websites.

The papers will allow access to the homepage of each paper, but stories away from the main page will require a subscription of £5 for a three month trial. Johnston Press says it will review whether to extend the scheme past this date and to other sites depending on the pilot’s success. So far, there has been no announcement concerning the Isle of Man Examiner, Manx Independent or the Isle of Man Courier.

Rupert Murdoch has been threatening to do much the same with the web content published by his news companies around the world. It’s already been introduced at the Wall Street Journal.

Will it work? I do hope so. I hate to think about the news media and publishing companies being on their knees, unable to attract advertisers or to sell hard copy newspapers.

But local and regional newspapers are going to have to raise their game if this going to work. People are not going to part with hard cash for cheque presentation stories or for information they can get free elsewhere. They will pay for quality reporting and exclusive content.

The eyes of the news media industry will be on Johnston Press to see how this pilot plays out. If it works, we’ll see a bunch of publishers introducing the paid subscription model before long.

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Warwick has more than 40 years’ continuous experience in the betting and gambling industry. He is currently chairman of the Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) and has previously served as chairman of the Bookmakers’ Committee to the Levy Board. His firm, Global Betting and Gaming Consultants (GBGC), is an independent, specialist consultancy dedicated to providing data, research and advice to the international gambling industry.

The Isle of Man Junior Chamber of Commerce is a group with an extensive range of business-related activities and events organised throughout the year. Members come from a wide and interesting range of backgrounds covering every aspect of Island business – tourism, trades, finance, agriculture etc.

Inspired by reading the Japanese comic, Fruits Basket, she fell in love with Japanese culture and videos of herself dancing to songs in the Japanese anime style.

Her video has been viewed 323,000+ times and she’s now working as a spokesperson for Asia’s largest food conglomorate, Lotte.

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Generally, people wanted to understand social computing better and get a handle on how their organisations can benefit. Participants knowledge and experience of social media ranged from ‘I’ve never even looked at Facebook‘ to ‘I’ve run effective social media campaigns’. But regardless of the starting point, everyone learned something directly relevant to them. Including me.

It was clear to me that now is the time: social media is gone mainstream.

Here’s some of the Q&A from yesterday’s workshop.

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Looking to the future Tony confirmed that social media will become key corporate communications channels in 2010. “We talk about the Internet revolution as something that is going to happen. But it has already happened. Research shows that adults in the UK already get 50% of their finance and business information through the Internet. Twenty per cent of people in the UK look at forums and blogs. It’s not something for the future, he said. “The revolution has actually hit us. So if you’re in business you need to get on LinkedIn.”

Here’s the man himself:

It’s become glaringly obvious over the past several months that those professional communicators who have a solid web development team behind them are making great strides in PR 2.0. I’m confident that together with the excellent web team at PDMS, we’ll continue to provide our clients with the smartest communication strategies along with the excellent, usable software and support services they need to engage, collaborate and converse with individuals and communities online.

Starting in the New Year, the Strive PR team will be moving to PDMS’s new Douglas premises.

We’ll have proper launch early in the New Year to the get the conversation going. Watch this space for news and updates about this new venture. I’m really excited!

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Warwick Bartlett will be the speaker. He’s going to provide an insight into the current situation of eGaming on the Isle of Man and will also discuss future issues for Island as an eGaming jurisdiction. Warwick has more than 40 years’ continuous experience in the betting and gambling industry. He is currently chairman of the Association of British Bookmakers (ABB) and has previously served as chairman of the Bookmakers’ Committee to the Levy Board. Warwick is a frequent speaker and panellist at gambling conferences around the world. His firm, Global Betting and Gaming Consultants (GBGC), is an independent, specialist consultancy dedicated to providing data, research and advice to the international gambling industry.

Venue: Cushag Suite, Hilton Hotel, Douglas
Date & Time: Wednesday 25th November at 6.00pm
Food/Drink Buffet, Tea/Coffee
Cost JCC Members £9, Non-Members £12

Book by emailing events(at)jcc.im

Image via Wikipedia

I was chuffed when earlier this week I was included in the PR Top 100 according to Edelman’s Tweetlevel.

Crowdsurfing author David Brain explains Tweetlevel on his blog: “Yet again we brutalise complex human concepts like trust, popularity, influence and engagement with our over-simplistic (but pretty bloody clever) algorithms.”

In the post’s comments, there’s a lengthy debate between digital sociologist Brian Solus and the man behind Tweetlevel Jonny Bentwood among others. The disagreement surrounds the accuracy and relevance of the algorithms and the definition of ‘influence’.

But for me the debate is beside the point. I was very pleased when I was named to the Conversation Age’s 100 PR people worth following on Twitter, a few weeks ago. I’m equally pleased to be listed on Tweetlevel.

It’s not because it’s a measure of my popularity or worth. The reason I’m so pleased is because it’s recognition that people think the stuff I post is useful or entertaining. Is that influence? Maybe.

But it makes me keep trying my best to find and post the most useful and entertaining content I can, because I feel responsible to my followers. Doing this research keeps me learning. And that helps me do my job.

So thanks Edelman and Conversation Age for including me on your lists. I’ll keep trying.

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It’s all happening at the BIC’s unit at the Tower Shopping Centre in Douglas (first floor above the cafe).

18 November

• 10.00 – 11.00 Business Start Up workshop. Thinking about starting a business? This workshop is for you – learn how to evaluate your idea, identify resources and what starting a business entails.
• 11.00 – 12.00 Drop in session for any queries about the IOM Business and Innovation Centre, pop in to discuss your ideas and see how we can help.
• 13.00 – 13.30 What Is Business Incubation? A short talk to inform you about what incubation is and how it can benefit early-stage and pre-start up businesses.
• 14.30 – 15.30 Ideas to Reality Workshop – Bring your business or invention ideas – no matter how crazy they seem – to this workshop for some initial process guidance on how you can drive them forward.
• 16.00 – 17.00 Drop in session for any queries about the IOM Business and Innovation Centre, pop in to discuss your ideas and see how we can help.

21 November

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• Third Thursday – November 09 (owencutajar.com)

Cover of Bridget Jones's Diary

Remember that scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary where Daniel says, “You don’t have the faintest bloody idea of just how much trouble the company’s in. You swan in, in your short skirt and your sexy see-through blouse and fanny around with press releases.”?

My heart sank the first time I heard that dialogue. “That’s it,” I thought, heart sinking. “That’s exactly what people think that public relations is all about.”

I had the exact same feeling earlier when I read the Isle of Man Newspapers’ story Cost of PR in spotlight as VAT crisis takes hold.

Here’s one gem: “David Cannan (Michael) questioned whether it was an appropriate expenditure of public money to engage external consultants to draft and publish media releases.”

Could he possibly sound more like Daniel? My heart sinks.

Here’s another great sound bite: “Mr Cannan said departments with senior executives earning more than £60,000 a year were asking outside consultancies to draft and publish many publications – and he was pleased to hear ‘this nonsense is going to stop’.”

The article also makes reference to advertising agencies, government subsidies for Manx Radio and the government’s media spend with Isle of Man newspapers.

So clearly, for Mr Cannan, PR professionals do spend their time fannying about with press releases. For others, PR is a catch all term for anything remotely related to media. Also, the article focuses entirely on costs and ignores value.

This is a great same, indeed. Because now, perhaps more than ever before, the Isle of Man needs to communicate well.

Public relations professionals are experts in human and organisational communication. The best of us provide strategic advice and services so that our clients can build positive relationships with the people they depend upon for success.

I’m not saying that the government gets excellent value for every pound spent. I doubt this is the case. But at least there is recognition of the value of communications expertise.

There are people all over the world who would love nothing better than to shut down ‘Isle of Man plc’ and the battle for survival will be won or lost in the court of public opinion, not in a court of law.

Right now, for the Isle of Man, the stakes couldn’t be higher nor the communications challenges more complex.

This is no time for amateurs.

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We’re still keeping it under wraps for now, but here’s a hint: we’re looking at how the police are using social media to build relationships with young people.

Are there any issues or examples you’d like to explore in particular? Let me know.

In the meantime, let’s have a regular meet up next week, 12.3o, 19 November at Paparazzi’s in Douglas.

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• www.edonline.im Wimanx broadband is here! (nickop.wordpress.com)

The key finding: “The project also reveals that the practice of making ‘follow-up’ calls by PR practitioners is intensely annoying and ultimately counter-productive…”

This is nothing new; I’ve heard it time and again from news professionals all over, many of whom get more than 50, 100, 200+ story pitches each and every working day. If they took a call about each story pitch, answering the phone is all they’d ever do!

But here’s the rub. Based on my 18 years’ experience in the front line of media relations…the phone calls work. They do. Doing a ringround within a day of issuing a news release significantly increases pick up of the story; there is no doubt.

So what is the solution? I do feel for our colleagues in the media, and understand how they must feel undersiege. But the results speak for themselves…making that quick call to make sure the reporter notices your story helps get coverage.

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Image via Wikipedia

The Isle of Man Junior Chamber of Commerce will welcome Chief Minister Tony Brown at a special meeting next week to discuss the Island’s unprecedented financial crisis after its budget was slashed by 24 per cent by the UK Chancellor Alistair Darling last month.

Darling has confirmed that the UK government is slashing £140 million off the Island’s £572 million annual budget by reducing a 400-year-old customs revenue-sharing agreement.

The Honourable Tony Brown MHK Chief Minister has agreed to provide insight into the situation and will be happy to answer questions from the floor.

Venue: Shearwater 2 & 3, Hilton Hotel, Douglas
Date & Time: Wednesday 11th November at 6pm
Food/Drink: Buffet

The cost of this event is £10 for members and £12 to non-members. To book your seat contact rich.davies(at)RBSCoutts.com.

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• Isle of Man faces Moody’s credit rating downgrade after Alistair Darling slashes its budget (telegraph.co.uk)

1. When PR 2.0’s Brian Solis talks, people listen. And when he talks about news release embargoes (always favourite link bait subject), people comment and retweet. In this longish post, he explains the mechanics of an embargo and references a lot of current thinking. He says, “Embargoes are powerful and effective for all parties when coordinated properly and centered on information that is indeed newsworthy.” I can’t agree. I think issuing news under embargo is risky at best; a disaster waiting to happen at worse.

2. Matthew Stibbe names and shames those PR firms that continue to send him irrelevant news releases. He lists 14 releases by headline along with the agencies that sent them. It seems that 5W Public Relations likes Matthew a lot with several mentions on the list. The post has no comments from the offending agencies however. That’s not too surprising I guess. If they don’t read before sending, they probably aren’t listening anyway. I wonder if their clients will notice?

3. In Words of a Broken Mirror, Alina Popescu gives us her take on how to resource PR when budgets are tight. She looks at outsourcing, getting exisiting staff to look after PR and hiring an expert in-house as various options. One she’s missed out is getting an expert to coach, train and mentor existing staff members. I’ve been spending a significant amount of time doing this lately.

4. One objection to social media engagement that I hear often is about opening the door to public criticism. You can understand that people get jumpy about negative feedback. Here Mitch Joel offers six ways to consider how to handle it.

5. Steve Rubel has posted some interesting stats on how PR people feel about news releases, overall is seems they are falling from favour. He says, “Still press releases have their place – especially in financial situations. Also let’s not overlook the potential SEO value too.” Agreed. They were only ever supposed to be a story summary and door opener to help gain the interest of a journalist. A well written news release still does the job nicely.

Katie Delahaye Paine is one of PR’s leading measurement experts. She is the founder of KDPaine & Partners and, prior to launching the firm in ‘02, she was founder and president of The Delahaye Group, an industry leader in business and communication intelligence.

Katie was an initial founder of the Institute for Public Relations special commission on measurement and evaluation. She served as the US liaison to the European Standards Task Force to set international standards for media evaluation. And she’s a Research Fellow at the Society for New Communications Research. In short, she knows her stuff.

I first became aware of Katie last year when we were both panel guests on an FIR live phone in show. Since that time I’ve been reading her blog and have become a big fan. I like her down to earth style of writing and, it turns out, her presentation style is much the same.

She says, “Social media measurement doesn’t require new standards or new methods, just a new mindset. How the best measurement tools today are some of the oldest. Relationship surveys, content analysis, correlations and statistical analysis have all been around for decades, and we really don’ t need much more than those.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve always been against measuring tactical output and believe that the focus should be on the achievement of core objectives. All too often, companies fail to grasp this and instead want to see Advertising Value Equivalencies (AVEs) or to have detailed activity reports including every phone call made and email sent. Sadly, all this does is take PR professionals off important work while delivering little relevant insight.

What is important is engagement. And engagement should be defined by linking social media interaction to hard business or organisational objectives.

Here’s a personal example. I really do love Aleksandr Orlov, founder of Compare the Meerkat. I’m a Facebook Fan and always check out new videos and other content published there. I think the campaign is clever and entertaining. But, I’ve never visited comparethemarket.com and have not purchased any insurance through the service. Am I engaged? Not if the whole idea of the campaign is to sell car insurance, that’s for sure. Not yet anyway.

Katie makes a lot of sense because she focuses on the fundamentals of organisational communication; not the cool technology nor fun gizmos. She was kind enough to post the slides from her talk here. You can buy her book here.

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Chris Neil, co- chair of the cabinat told a local reporter that he thinks the time from age 20 to 40 is busy. “You’ve got people who are starting their careers, their families and buying their first houses. In modern times, we can get very disconnected from the community,” he said.

To add to the challenge of fundraising, there’s definitely a concern that philanthropy is not something of the new demographic, said Neil. “The concern is that the core base of donors will retire and that base funding for charity will start dwindling away,” he said. “Unless we start now by engaging the demographic and raising awareness of what’s going on in the community, that’s going to be lost.”

This is the reason that the charity has embraced social media as a primary communications channel too. It’s use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social platforms has been extremely successful is bringing the younger demographic into the United Way fold.

If last night was anything to go by, it’s working. Although I fall (slightly) outside the target audience in terms of age group, I brought along two 20-somethings who proclaimed Schmoozefest to be a great night out. I look forward to finding out how much was raised.

But missing one meeting, although unfortunate, does not spell the death of Third Thursday. In fact, we have a sponsor for November and right now I’m working on the details of a Super Third Thursday. So mark 18 November on your calendar and watch this space for news about this exciting event.

Our recent ‘Introduction to PR’ workshops were a resounding success: both sessions sold out and we had a lot of positive feedback from the people who attended.

One thing that came through loud and clear was that people want to learn a lot more about how to use online social media at work and in their businesses. So I thought it might be helpful to create a seminar for people get to grips how to use the social Internet to improve sales, marketing and PR initiatives within their organisations.

So if you’re curious about blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and how they can impact your marketing, customer relations and public relations efforts, come out on 24 November for half-day workshop.

We’ll look at:

• how the social Internet is changing how humans and organisations communicate and interact
• about the various social networks, tools and platforms
• about blogging and the democratisation of information
• policies and best practices in social media
• strategies and tips to get your organisation involved

We’ll use local, UK and international case studies to help you understand:

• where social media fits into your organisation
• what social networks can (and can’t) achieve
• the risks and benefits of the social Internet
• the art of online conversation

It’s a full morning workshop that will take place at a central Douglas location (TBD). The cost is £75 per person ping us (workshops(at)strivepr(dot)com to book your place.

Then you’re certainly not alone. In tough times past Hollywood, fiction writers and the entertainment industry as a whole have tended to do rather well as people seek to escape the harsh realities of life.

This time round folks are flocking to the internet to help forget their troubles, according to a recent study out of America.

The report entitled The Internet and the Recession published by The Pew Internet and American Life Project, a not-for-profit research organisation in the USA, shows that three quarters of Internet users have been going online to relax and take their minds off pressing economic issues.

To read the rest of this, my last ever weekly Tech Talk column, click here.

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But today, as I booted up the old desktop I suddenly remembered…I’m not doing that anymore.

That’s right. Next week will be my last weekly Tech Talk newspaper column; I told the editor a few weeks ago that I’m not going to be able to continue to contribute each week.

I’m just too busy these days and with some recent changes at Strive PR, keeping the column going just doesn’t make sense.

It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed it. Writing is the best part of my job, and often the weekly column is the only writing I get to do these days (which is probably why I’ve kept it up as long as I have). But something has to give.

The good news is that I’ve agreed to continue to write the occasional contributed column going forward. So I’ll not be disappearing from the pages entirely. Watch this space!

Two-thirds of teen respondents admitted to inserting information straight from the internet into school work without actually reading or changing it.

Perhaps even more worryingly, almost a third (28.5 per cent) deemed this as acceptable practice despite recognising that such behaviour is considered plagiarism.

Commenting on the results, Andrew Kakabadse, professor of international management development at Cranfield School of Management said: ‘Our research shows that technology obsession hinders spelling skills, implicitly encourages plagiarism, and disrupts classroom learning.’

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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Even though the pint-sized megalomaniac meant it as an insult, if he had been around today he would have probably harangued the Isle of Man for being nothing more than an island of e-tailers.

But how hard is it to set-up an online shop?

The answer is: not very.

‘But Sherrilynne’ I hear you ask yourself, ‘is it wise in this economic climate?’

Quite simply: yes. Online retailing, or e-tailing, is a growth industry in the UK, even in the depths of this icy recession.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column

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A newly published report projects that mobile advertising spending worldwide will grow by 74 per cent this year to $913.5 million and will accelerate in 2011 when advertisers are expected to boost mobile advertising spend as part of an overall shift to digital channels.

Media industry website Mediapost.com reports that by 2013, Gartner expects mobile ad spending to surpass $13 billion, with the Asia-Pacific region leading the way, followed by North America and Europe.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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This is the Facebook status line recently published by one not-so-motivated employee after a hard day’s toil.

Unfortunately for the staff member in question, the following comment is posted below hers.

‘Hi there, I guess you forgot about adding me on here? ….that **** stuff is called your job, you know, what I pay you to do? …you seem to have forgotten that you have two weeks left on your six month trial period. Don’t bother coming in tomorrow. I’ll drop your P45 in the post.’

This is a powerful example of ‘how not to behave’ for workers and employers alike.

Click here to read the rest of this Tech Talk column.

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What actually happened is that Twitter suffered from a malicious attack, it is said, by Russian hackers who were keen to silence a pro-Georgian blogger. And Twitter wasn’t the only social network to feel the impact of the attack, Facebook and Livejournal were both a bit jittery from the onslaught.

This type of aggression online is nothing new. Known as a ‘distributed denial of service’ (DDoS), hackers have been carrying these attacks almost since the birth of the Internet.

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Image by JerrySilfwer via Flickr

Public relations is all about cocktail parties, fashion shows and lunching with ‘the press’, right?

Wrong! Yes there is a social element to job, but don’t underestimate the talents and skills required to be successful as a public relations professional. First of all there are the hard skills that are fundamental.

First among these is the ability to write.

You must also:

• be a skilled researcher
• have excellent computer skills including Internet applications
• understand technical requirements and production processes, (print, broadcast and online).
• have an excellent knowledge of publishing industry and the media

Other priority hard skills include:

• photography/videography
• sound engineering/audio production
• website design/development skills
• graphic design/illustration

Softer skills are also crucial for a successful career in public relations. These include:

• the ability to work under deadline pressure
• presentation skills
• interpersonal communication/people skills
• innate creativity
• stamina (long hours are the norm)
• organisational skills
• ability to work in a team

PR is not all parties and gala lunches; that’s for sure. But it’s a rewarding career that delivers great job satisfaction. No two days are ever alike and you get to go places and meet people that you’d never thought you would. Early in your career the pay can be quite low compared to other professions, but as your skills and experience develop the sky is the limit for earning potential.

<shameless plug>

If you’d like to find out more about a career in PR why not attend our Introduction to PR seminar? In two days you’ll know if you have the right stuff.

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Throughout my career I’ve been subjected to a good deal of ribbing and teasing, some of it not too good natured, that being in PR means I tell lies for living. I actually don’t find it too funny but know that people’s understanding of public relations comes from what they see from political spin docters and comedy shows like AbFab and Absolute Power. Fair enough.

But now we have proof, as if it’s necessary, that public relations professionals are ethical thinkers and demonstrate similar moral development to journalists and nurses. In fact, we come out ahead of some medical professionals and general business professionals.

The research, conducted by two of the Page Center’s Johnson Legacy Scholars, Renita Coleman and Lee Wilkins, is the first to measure empirically the moral development of working public relations professionals. The paper, “The Moral Development of Public Relations Practitioners: A Comparison with Other Professions and Influences on Higher Quality Ethical Reasoning,” appeared in the July 2009 Journal of Public Relations Research.

So there you have it. We are as ethical as journalists and practicing physicians. I never had any doubt; the professionals I’ve worked with over the years have been pretty consistent in terms of professional integrity, work ethic and focus on truth and transparency.

But, convincing people of this is an uphill battle. Just this afternoon I interviewed a recent journalism graduate for a position at Strive PR and he told me his professors called working in PR ‘going over to the dark side’. When media professionals are being taught at university to believe this, how can we expect to bring the industry along in their view of the modern PR profession?

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Maybe you are trying to figure out Twitter, of have just established a Facebook Fan Page. Or maybe you’re a seasoned blogger with a long history in Digg. Everyone is welcome to come out and chat about the online world and how it’s affecting how we live and do business. 

We meet at 12.30. Everyone buys his own lunch and we are usually all back at our desks by 14.00. It doesn’t cost anything to join, (but the price of your meal) and there are no forms to fill out. All you need is an interest in social media and the online world.

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Researching EU regulations, speaking at community events, choosing domain names for clients.

These are just three things that have been keeping this PR busy over the past week. It’s the variety that keeps the job interesting. I’d not been involved in domain names for quite some time, so it seemed prudent to review the basics.

I thought I’d share the learning here because in this day and age just about everybody in business, whether you are a baker or a banker, should own a domain name.

Click here to read the rest of this tech Talk column.

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Time was, when asked this questions, I’d start to recite deadlines, copy guidelines and descriptions of newsroom teams. But that was before the Internet changed everything.

Now print journalists are producing video reports and podcasts. Radio and TV journalists are blogging. And then there are bloggers, who many say are a law unto themselves.

So how does today’s media work? The only definitive answer is: All the time.

What are the deadlines? As soon as the story breaks. Who should we be pitching?  Depending on the story. What do journalists need to cover our news? Just about every kind of content you can lay your hands on, and add to that access, exclusivity, transparency and truth.

Simples!

Well maybe not. In the online world, an organisation’s relationship with journalists is more now complex than ever before. It takes time, thought and expertise to navigate the media landscape. And as soon as you think you are finding your way, the route is bound to change.

<shameless plug>

To find out how the media relevant to your organisation works, why not come out to our one day workshop Getting to grips with PR, 06 October in Douglas Isle of Man.

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How many times a day do you hear that the media landscape is changing? Newspapers are collapsing, television news is turning itself inside out to maintain its viewership and the online world of “citizen journalism” has traditional news outlets struggling for relevancy. If this is all true, are there new rules to follow to get media attention for your nonprofit organization or small business? Should you even bother with traditional media?

Although there are some new considerations when it comes to PR and media relations, the basics still apply. Yes, the online world has opened up many PR opportunities that did not exist before, but the traditional media still play a powerful role. Also, whether you’re pitching journalists or bloggers, many of the basics are the same for both.

The media release
A number of tech-savvy PR pros have been predicting the demise of the media release for a few years now. That time may come but this basic document is still widely used as a way to initiate media contact. Sure, there are isolated success stories about pitching to journalists on Twitter but most news outlets still appreciate a to-the-point document that outlines your organization’s story pitch. What is beginning to change is the style or format of the release.

Today’s winning releases are concise and devoid of jargon and overblown claims revealed by the use of phrases such as “leading-edge”, “world-class”, and “value-driven”. You might as well write, “blah … blah … blah” in place of any of these overused phrases for the effect they have on news editors. If a reader does not come to the conclusion that your new program, service or product is “unique” or a “cut above the rest” from the evidence you provide in your description, it’s probably because it’s not and you shouldn’t be promoting it as such.

You also need to get rid of the canned quotes from your executive director or CEO. The paragraph that quotes the CEO saying, “We’re thrilled to be joining XYZ company in this partnership to provide value-driven services to our mutual clients,” has to go. Nobody talks like that and it’s a meaningless quote. Have your executive make a genuine statement about how your news is actually going to impact customers/clients, change the business/industry or affect employees.

Don’t look for the media release to do it all either. Provide media with links to Web content that offers collaboration, video and/or images that demonstrate your story and a way for journalists to follow continuing developments. The “social media release” strives to provide a format for this Web-friendly content. See the Social Media Release blog for more information.

One pitch for all will fail
In many cases, media outlets have cut back to skeletal staffs. That means that journalists are being asked to pump out more work than they use to. They’re also being asked to blog on their media outlet’s website, post late-breaking news as it happens on the site’s homepage and to engage with readers or viewers on Twitter. They have very little time to appreciate how the story about your company or nonprofit directly appeals to their readers. It’s your job to help them to see it. That means you have to tailor your pitch to the particular outlet or journalist. Know what kinds of stories they want to cover.

For example, I recently pitched a story about a fellow from the UK driving a vintage Triumph Stag across North America in support of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He had a truly compelling personal story about PTSD and was a brilliant storyteller. The story had obvious appeal on a two fronts — the PTSD angle and the vintage car enthusiast angle. I pitched it to auto section editors as well as city news editors as two different stories and got coverage on both sides. One media release trying to cover both of these angles would just not have worked.

Relationships matter
It’s a mistake to think that a reporter will cover your story just because you have a positive relationship with that person. You need to have a good story to begin with. However, a positive relationship does have weight. If a reporter knows that you consistently pitch newsworthy stories, he/she will be more inclined to pay attention to your release.

If that reporter knows that you will go the extra mile to get needed information to them before their deadline, for example, and that you will make sure your spokespeople are prepared and available when you say they will be, that reporter may be more willing to cover your story. Treat reporters with respect, recognize the mutually beneficial relationship, and always act with integrity.

Follow up to stand out from the crowd
The media release is your “entry to the dance” and nothing more. It is not enough on its own to garner media coverage unless the story is so big that it can’t be ignored. Sending out a media release without follow-up with individual reporters and editors is likely to result in no coverage at all.

It is very rare that I get a call on a media release before I do follow-up calls to the media outlets I’ve sent it to. Most often, when I reach a reporter or editor to discuss the release, they have either seen it at a glance or haven’t seen it at all. Media outlets receive hundreds of releases each day. Chances are, your release will go unnoticed unless you connect with someone directly to point out its newsworthy appeal. This doesn’t mean being pushy or asking the journalist if they intend to cover the story. It means making yourself available to answer any questions and pointing out why you thought the journalist would be interested.

The media landscape is changing. With the explosion of social media and other Web-based tools, traditional media is no longer the only way to get your story out. Landing a story in your local paper or TV news show still has influence and impact, however, and works as a complement to your organization’s other PR efforts. There may be changes afoot but media relations basics still apply.

PR people know that it’s a story that moves and motivates people whether you use it to sell a new product or new a charity. I’ve written about the power of the story in this blog before. However, there is a difference between telling a story and stretching the truth.

I just spent the last 20 minutes reading a couple of posts written by David Roodman about the micro financing organization, Kiva (which I’ve also written about). Fascinating stuff. The first post is an exposé of sorts about how Kiva operates, how loans are distributed and how it’s the power of story telling and connecting one-on-one with borrowers that makes the organization so successful. The “exposé” is partly about the fact that the money from lenders is not actually going to the specific borrowers they selected. It certainly is a bit misleading. Roodman’s second post is also interesting as it follows up on the fallout that occurred after his first post.

The whole discussion got me thinking about story telling in general. There is a huge push in the nonprofit sector to tell the stories of the people that benefit from the organization. I face this pressure all the time. The public has become accustomed to seeing people reveal the intimate details of their lives for all to see on reality TV and on social networking sites. Knowing the “gritty” details has become an expectation.

The other reality is a powerful story from a victim of sexual abuse, poverty, domestic violence, gang involvement, attempted suicide, mental illness etc. garners more donors then published research on what has been shown to be effective at addressing these issues or than the statistics about how often the issue is affecting people’s lives. The story always wins.

This pressure can lead to stretching the truth of a victim’s story so that it’s especially compelling or perhaps to leaving out details that don’t fit the “deserving victim” role. For example, revealing that a domestic violence victim has also been charged with assault on her partner is a dynamic too controversial and difficult to explain, so perhaps that gets left out of the profile included in the annual appeal letter.

But if your organization is truly using donors’ money effectively, does the level of truth in the story matter? I think it does, even if someone such as David Roodman doesn’t come along to dig up what’s really going on. When it does get found out, regardless of whether the organization is doing much good or not, the level of donor trust plummets.

What are your thoughts? Where do you draw the line on truth in storytelling?

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for November 26, 2009: A 68-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

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So, until Monday November 30…

Certainly I discover a lot of interesting news by way of shortened URLs embedded in tweets, and the recent use of Twitter to direct Central Texans to the site of a hospital treating victims of the Fort Hood shootings exemplifies the ways Twitter increasingly is being used as a news delivery vehicle. But given the speed with which tweets fly by, I’m bound to miss a lot of news if I’m not watching my monitor at just the right time. To get a comprehensive overview of the news in which I’m interested, I still need other channels.

These other channels include widgets, which continue to thrive despite a growing chorus insisting that the web widget is dead.

The argument for the demise of the widget is best articulated by Socialvibe president Joe Marchese, writing on MediaPost. Marchese writes,

What marketers need to understand is that the feed killed the widget. Feeds, like Facebook’s news feed and Twitters status update, have made the portability of content nearly irrelevant.

The web, in Marchese’s view, is a world of people “programming content for friends, co-workers and total strangers,” one in which a destination (like a website) is increasingly irrelevant. A marketer’s goal, he says, is to get people to program your branded content into the information they’re feeding to others via their tweets and Facebook status updates.

I agree with Marchese—to a point. But, does this mean the widget is dead? Hardly. In fact, with startups like Sprout building entire businesses around widgets, building and maintaining high-quality widgets has become easier and cheaper than ever. The only question seems to be whether anybody will ever again visit a web page where these widgets are housed.

If you buy into Marchese’s assertion that the feed has killed the widget, then you believe that traffic to destination websites is trending to zero. There’s no question that unique visits to destination sites—even those that historically have done the best job of attracting traffic (think Nike, for instance)—are declining. But the loss of thousands—even tens of thousands—of visitors still leaves sites with thousands—even hundreds of thousands—who still drop by. As attention shifts from static sites to the real-time web, some attention will continue to focus on sites. (If the widget is dead, then isn’t on-site advertising dead, too? Don’t tell sites like TechCrunch or any of the top mommy bloggers, who seem to be getting enough page views to be profitable with advertising.)

Traffic to traditional sites is declining, not disappearing. There will always be reasons to visit a destination website even as most of our attention shifts to content produced through social channels.

Consider tweets that contain a shortened URL. That URLs takes you somewhere, often to a blog post or a news story. That content appears on a web page, and on that page you can find all kinds of other material that may serendipitously reveal even more content in which you were interested. After all, the blog’s theme guided the blogger to write the post that motivated someone to include it in a tweet, so why shouldn’t the material that orbits the blog’s posts—including widgets—be equally interesting?

Marchese’s post also assumes that widgets contain only the kind of content that is now communicated via tweets and status updates. A widget I created contains an audio player that, when activated, presents the latest episode of For Immediate Release, the podcast I produce twice weekly with Neville Hobson. So you click a shortened URL in a tweet, follow it to a web page to read the recommended post, and while you’re there you see this intriguing widget with an audio player. Curious, you click the play button and are introduced to FIR. Many of our listeners have shared FIR with people visiting their blogs by embedding the widget on their sites.

Widgets can also contain video, images, contests, fundraising activity (the American Red Cross has made excellent use of fundraising widgets during times of natural disasters), polls, and all manner of other content. They can serve a variety of purposes, like the fundraising/CSR widget below (feel free to embed it on your site):

It doesn’t even take a shortened URL to bring someone to a web page. Despite the fact that there are multiple channels through which our community can listen to FIR, our statistics tell us that most people use the Flash media player directly from the FIR website. Why not provide additional communication-related resources for them to look at while they’re there? Knowing that people do visit our site gives us the ability to provide them with more relevant and useful content they can serendipitously discover—and maybe even embed on their own sites. Then there’s the Twitter widget, letting people who visit your site know about your Twitter activity and, possibly, resulting in the addition of one more follower.

And then there’s Facebook, where many people go to read their feeds. Services like Sprout make it as easy to create and deploy a widget for Facebook as one for a standard web page.

Marchese is right about the trend toward feeds, but there’s a vast difference between disruption and destruction. There’s no doubt that newspapers are in decline, but more than half a million people still subscribe to The Washington Post, and the Post has the fifth largest subscriber base in the U.S. With millions and millions of people still reading paper newspapers, it makes no sense to abandon them as a means of getting your story out. With hundreds of millions of people still viewing websites, it makes no sense to abandon them, either, as a channel for reaching people.

Ultimately, widgets work. They’ve been widely adopted and they have tremendous reach, according to ComScore numbers analyzed by Terra USA Research:

It’s worth pointing to the widely reported decline in traffic to Twitter; use of the site dropped 27.8% from September to October, according to Nielsen, leaving the service with 18.9 million unique visitors. While many of those are influencers, it’s still a fraction of the total online population. Widgets can still prove useful in reaching the rest, whether they’re reading blogs, websites, or Facebook.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that much of the buzz around widgets has to do with the nascent market for interactive TV widgets and widgets on mobile phones.

And it’s more than a little ironic that Marchese’s post proclaiming the death of the widget was accompanied by two common blog widgets—a “related articles” widget and a “most read” widget.

Are you using web widgets and, if so, do you continue to derive benefit from them?

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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for November 23, 2009: A 64-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #503 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday November 26…

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About our Conversation Partner

Tac Anderson is the Director of Social Media at Waggener Edstrom’s Studio D group. Prior to that he worked at Hewlett-Packard where he managed both internal and external social media initiatives. Some of his work was a featured case study in the Harvard Business Review book Groundswell.

Tac has been actively engaged in social media marketing for the last 5 years. He’s a regular public speaker and blogs at www.newcommbiz.com.

Tac has a BA in Communications and an MBA from Boise State University. He currently lives in the Seattle area with his wife and 3 children.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music - On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.FIR Interview: Tac Anderson, Social Media Director, Waggener Edstrom

The account, @InsideTheBCS, launched on Thursday and has, since then, accumulated nearly 700 followers. There’s no hint about who might be posting the tweets, although one blog suggests the BCS may have farmed the task out to PR agency HDMK, since the first two people to follow the newly-minted account were HDMK staffers, neither of whom returned calls.

One tweet seems to be signed by Bill Hancock, the new BCS executive director.

Regardless of who’s behind the account, it has been savaged in a number of quarters since it first appeared. A Twitter search I conducted moments ago produced several pages of messages, even though @InsideTheBCS itself has tweeted only 30 times as of this writing.

To the credit of whoever’s writing the tweets, several are responses to what others have said, and some are responses to critical comments. But with hundreds of comments swirling around Twitter, it’s evident that @InsideTheBCS is picking and choosing which comments warrant response. There seems to be no rhyme or reason behind these choices.

The core problem, though, is that nobody seems to have considered the inevitability of BCS haters piling on the account the instant it went public. (Disclosure: I’m no fan myself.) Outside of the NCAA, there is broad consensus that a real playoff system is needed to more fairly determine a national champion. It’s not just the fans who believe that, but also many college football coaches.

So it comes as no surprise to see a surge of criticism aimed at @InsideTheBCS for its insistence on the complex mathematical computations that it uses to determine who will play whom in the post-season. In fact, one tweet from @InsideTheBCS quoted Florida coach Urban Meyer claiming the BCS “has been great for college football. It’s not perfect, but it has been great for college football.” This led to another tweet pointing out that Meyer told the New York Times, “The system is a failure. You’ve got to blow it up and start over” and another that completed the quote cited by @InsideTheBCS: “Followed by laughing and: ‘Now I need to go prep for Fla International!’”

A third tweet suggested that Meyer’s praise was based on his even deeper disdain for the system that preceded the BCS “that screwed out even more teams because of traditional games.”

Much of the piling on has been led by Yahoo sportswriter Dan Wetzel, who has been tweeting quotes from prominent NCAA coaches expressing their disdain for the BCS and otherwise leading the attack with tweets like this one: “It’s a good thing the BCS hired an executive director to ‘educate the fans.’ This Twitter feed is genius.”

@InsideTheBCS has responded defensively to a few tweets calling for a playoff series, and has otherwise posted tweets trying to convince everone the system works.

But it’s not convincing anybody.

While the BCS may have been unprepared for the volume of vitriol the Twitter feed has produced, it hasn’t surprised anyone else. At one blog by a fan of a college team, a post introducing @InsideTheBCS reads, “Oh no they didn’t!! They can’t be serious. People are going to unload on these guys!! This will be pure comedy…” And a comment left to that post responds, “Read their posts. Total propoganda. Let’em rip!”

The BCS had two choices: Forego a Twitter account of be prepared to truly engage college football fans in a real discussion about the system. The approach the BCS has taken, however, only opens the organization up to even greater ridicule and fans the flames of discontent.

Of course, I’m willing to give the BCS time to figure out its mistake and make a mid-course correction to its approach to Twitter. So far, however, so bad.

Get FIR:

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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for November 19, 2009: A 65-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #502 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday November 23…

I would classify this under “blinding flashes of the obvious,” but it still jumped out at me because Forrester is suggesting that these industries—which include heavily regulated businesses like pharmaceuticals—will get the experience they need and move forward.

The Forrester report—US Interactive Marketing Forecast by Industry, 2009 to 2014 (which’ll set you back $1,749)—projects most growth coming from big offline advertisers, including media and entertainment, consumer goods, automotive, and healthcare. The report projects an 18% compound annual growth rate for healthcare and pharmaceuticals, which (along with the other offline advertisers) are currently being outspent by industries that routinely market directly to consumers. But the online experience these companies are gaining in their early experimentations with interactive marketing will drive future growth, according to Shar VanBoskirk, the report’s author. VanBoskirk notes:

Early social media trials for NEXIUM, Prilosec OTC, and AMBIEN CR have exceeded AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals’ Procter & Gamble’s, and sanofi-aventis’ expectations, respectively, paving the way for more investment.

The report also predicts that business-to-business investment in interactive marketing will remain strong, which flies in the face of all the naysayers who insist that social media works best in the B2C marketplace. Interactive marketing in the B2B space will grow from $2.3 billion now to $4.8 billion in 2014, with adoption of newer techniques and improved sophistication of the efforts already underway, the report says. (Social media, of course, is just one of the categories of interactive marketing, which also includes search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, and mobile marketing.)

Overall, interactive marketing will account for nearly one-fifth of all marketing dollars by 2014, representing $55 billion worth of marketing budgets. The consequences of this shift from traditional to interactive marketing include smaller budgets in general and the demise of agencies that haven’t kept pace, according to the report.

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (25Mb, 62:28)
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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for November 16, 2009: A 62-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #501 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Thursday November 19…

The question of CEO blogging keeps coming up. Opinions mostly fall in two camps:

• All CEOs should blog. As the leaders and chief communicators of their organizations, it is incumbent on CEOs to represent their companies in the social space where so much influence is wielded.
• No CEOs should blog. Because of regulations that govern the kinds of statements CEOs can make, and when, there is just too much risk that an innocent remark could result in a fine.

As with most things, though, the question of CEO blogging is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Clearly CEOs can blog, as evidenced by the number of CEOs who do.

If your CEO is considering blogging, have him or her answer these questions before taking the plunge:

Are you the best person in the company to assume this role?

In the early days of corporate blogging, GM launched one of the earliest blogs penned by a senior executive. It wasn’t then-CEO Rick Wagoner, but rather Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. The decision was based on the fact that the most compelling kinds of conversations GM could have would be about cars, not the automotive business. Since Lutz was the most senior executive with direct responsibility for the vehicles GM produced, he became the executive blogger. Wagoner did post from time to time, when it was important for the CEO’s voice to be associated with the message, using a different company blog.

The focus of the blog is also the key to the next question:

Are you willing to blog about what your stakeholders want to talk about?

Far too many corporate and CEO blogs are filled with material the company wants to push to audiences. While this may make leaders feel good about using a blog, odds are that readers won’t flock to it. These messages are being pushed to them through any number of channels. For a blog to succeed, you need to start conversations about topics your stakeholders want to talk about. Do you know what those topics are? And are you prepared to address them, even if they’re not always what you think is important? If you do focus on topics your readers care about, it becomes easier to digress from time to time with topics you want to share with them. The more the blog becomes a locus of conversation and community, the more interested your readers will be in some of the issues you want to put on the table.

Are you ready to engage your stakeholders in conversation?

The point is debatable, but I don’t believe you have a blog unless you’re publishing reader comments. Without comments enabled, you’re just using blogging software to publish a column. Leaders who blog need to be ready to pay attention to reader feedback and input, and even engage in it. This doesn’t mean a CEO needs to actually read every comment left to his blog, particularly if it becomes popular and attracts hundreds of comments for every post. At some companies, a staff reads the comments, aggregates them based on their topics and sentiment, and delivers a summary report to the executive. Some executives engage directly in the comment while others simply write a follow-up post acknowledging what he heard from readers. But to view an executive blog as just one more one-way, top-down channel is to dramatically reduce the likelihood that stakeholders will pay attention to it. These are people who have come to expect interaction as part of the blogging experience.

Are you willing to commit to posting something regularly—that you’ve written yourself?

You can post as often as you like, but you must post at least weekly (three times a week is better) in order to build momentum, to build the expectation that you’re going to be opening discussions.

This is not a task you can offload to a PR staffer, the way you could when your byline appeared under the ghost-written CEO column that appeared on the inside front cover of the employee magazine. The whole idea underlying a blog is that it’s an authentic, honest message that you wanted to deliver and open for conversation. Nothing is more disingenuous than saying, “This is my blog, I’ve started it so we can have a dialogue about our business, but I’m not really writing it; it’s just not important enough for me to commit that kind of time.”

Your blog doesn’t need to take all that much time. In response to CEOs who have told me they don’t have the time to write a 1,500-word blog post, I respond, “That’s good; your readers don’t have time to read a 1,500-word blog post.” Short, pithy observations, explanations, and reports are ideal. What’s more, you don’t have to actually type anything. Marriott International CEO Bill Marriott dictates his posts into a digital recorder, which is transcribed (word for word) by his staff. At HP, a senior executive calls his posts into a voice-mail box established just for that purpose; his messages are also transcribed by staff for posting.

Ultimately, though, your view should be that you don’t have time not to blog. You should recognize what other CEOs—like Thomas Nelson Publishers CEO Michael Hyatt—have realized: that blogging ultimately saves time by reducing the more time-consuming communications that eat into your day. If you blog well, you’ll find that you’ve reallocated much of the time you spent less efficiently with other channels to your blog.

Are you well-schooled in what you can’t say?

Bill Marriott, CEO of Marriott International, writes about topics that will never cause regulatory problems. His posts talk about his staff, Marriott’s corporate social responsibility efforts, and other topics that would never raise an eyebrow at the SEC. Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, on the other hand, does blog about the business side of Sun, but is savvy enough about the regulations that govern his words that he is able to avoid writing anything that would cause him trouble. Do you know enough about the regulations, what kinds of off-the-cuff remarks might be viewed as a material forward-looking statement or a revelation about earnings? If not, don’t blog.

Of course, if you’re with a privately held company not subject to SEC rules, this isn’t as important a consideration, although you should keep in mind that there are agencies regulating your business besides the SEC.

Are you prepared to talk about bad news and unpleasant topics?

Your blog cannot be all happy talk, even when your company is hit with bad news. Candor and credibility are contingent upon your being willing to address the issues about which your stakeholders want to hear from you. Are you ready to tackle bad news on your blog and to hear what your stakeholders have to say about it?

If you answer “no” to any of these questions, then you’re not a likely candidate for a CEO blog.

There are alternatives, however, if you’re bound and determined to have your CEO voice heard in the socialmedia space:

• Group blogs—Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly posts an occasional item to the Nuts About Southwest blog, but only when the CEO’s voice needs to be heard. The blog is ready and available to him because of the community of Southwest employees who keep it populated with a wide variety of posts.
• Facebook—A fan page on Facebook affords you an opportunity to create content stakeholders might be interested in and then add a CEO commentary only when the occasion calls for it.
• Video—If your concern is that you’re not the world’s greatest writer, you could always opt for a video blog, speaking (not reading) your comments to a camera. There’s actually a tangible benefit to this approach: Your stakeholders can look into your eyes while you’re talking to them. You can upload your videos to a YouTube channel and embed the YouTube videos in your blog, making it easy for others to spread your words across other channels.

What other criteria should a CEO consider before undertaking a blog?

Here are some other CEOs who blog:

• Paul Levy, CEO, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• John Mackey, CEO, Whole Foods Markets
• Mike Critelli, now-retired Executive Chairman, Pitney Bowes
• Richard Edelman, Edelman Public Relations

There are many other CEO bloggers. Whose CEO blog would you point to as an excellent example?

In this FIR Interview, co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz talk with Steve on a wide range of topics that stimulate his insight and commentary, including lifestreaming – what is it and why Steve’s doing it – the Posterous platform, the Micro Persuasion and Steve Rubel brands, organizations and public relations practice, his experiments with the iPhone as a unique platform, and much more.

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file 12.4Mb, 30:56)
• Get the show on iTunes
• Subscribe to the FIR Interviews RSS feed

About our Conversation Partner

Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, is responsible for keeping Edelman and its clients in the vanguard. He studies global technology, media and online trends and shapes them into actionable insights and marketing communications strategies.

In his role, Rubel has served as senior strategic advisor to Edelman clients such as Dannon, HP, PepsiCo, Zagat, Unilever, Microsoft and many others.

Rubel supports the account planning processes, intellectual property development and the firm’s innovation and business development efforts. He is a member of the Edelman Digital senior leadership committee.

His writings on emerging technology has been called must-read by the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNET, PC Magazine and Forrester Research. In addition, he is actively followed by more than 28,000 on Twitter, writes a bi-weekly column for Advertising Age and is often sought by the press and as a keynote speaker.

Rubel has been named to several prestigious lists, including: PR Week’s 40 Under 40, The Forbes.com Web Celeb 25, PC Magazine’s 100 Favorite Blogs, Media Magazine’s Media 100, the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 and the CNET News.com Blog 100.

Prior to joining Edelman in 2006, Rubel worked for 15 years in a variety of marketing communications positions in corporate, non-profit and small/mid-sized PR firms. Most recently, he spent five years at CooperKatz & Company where he pioneered the use of blogs as a marketing vehicle for clients such as the Association of National Advertisers, simplehuman, and Vespa.

Related FIR Interview podcasts:

• FIR Interview: Steve Rubel, Edelman – December 22, 2006
• An Open Conversation with Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion – March 21, 2005.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the twice-weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music - On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

I’m watching Michael Phelps win another gold medal on CBC and notice that the 2008 Olympics are in Bei-JING (as in jingle all the way). I watch diving on NBC and the Olympics are in Bei-zhing ( “j” like the French pronounce it in words such as “jupe” or “jolie”).

So…is there a right way to pronounce this city’s name or is this a case of “I say tomato, you say tomato?”

Barenaked Ladies frontman Steven Page was charged with possession of a controlled substance after New York state police found him with cocaine and marijuana, as reported extensively in the Canadian media yesterday. Apparently, he had just finished snorting the stuff with a Canadian dollar bill when police entered his apartment. Why media reported that he was using a Canadian dollar bill is a little weird to me…like at least he was showing his Canadian pride while he was committing a felony offense. Good for you.

If this had happened to another rock musician, Keith Richards let’s say, it might have come across as an incurable bad boy up to his old tricks. However, Page’s image is clean-cut and quirky. Not only that, the Barenaked Ladies have just released a children’s album no less and are scheduled to appear at a benefit concert hosted by Disney and Playskool on behalf of four children’s charities next month. Disney, Playskool and cocaine use…which of these three does not belong with the others?

Needless to say, this is an image crisis for the Barenaked Ladies. Page admitted to police that he was indeed taking cocaine, however, on the band’s website, it issued a statement saying that “the validity of the charges against Steven will be strongly contested.” These two messages are contradictory and it will be interesting to see how the band and Page manage their reputation going forward.

They might want to follow the example of another celebrity whose image was hurt by his drug use: New York Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte. His name was among the many baseball players mentioned in the Mitchell Report for using illegal substances, in Pettitte’s case human growth hormone. Unlike others such as Mark McGwire and Roger Clemens, Pettite was very upfront about the whole issue. He admitted that he had taken HGH and testified to this as part of a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Governmental Reform.

This past spring training, he apologized to baseball fans for his drug use and spent nearly an hour in front of media explaining the whole mess. Over and over again after giving answers, he asked reporters “Did I answer your question?”.

Since then, very little has been reported on Andy Pettitte and his drug use. Life has moved on and a quick search on Google News has Pettitte in more news stories involving sports than his past drug use. Even those stories are more about a possible court appearance involving his past trainer Brian McNamee and his (former?) friend Roger Clemens.

It might just be best for the Barenaked Ladies and Page that they own up for what happened and apologize. There might be some short term costs but in the long haul, it will serve their interests.

What do you think Page and the Barenaked Ladies should do? Is apologizing for the mistake the best option available?

I’m continually interested in how principles of good communication between individuals can easily be applied to organizations. Prime Minister Harper’s apology yesterday to aboriginal Canadians is a case in point. In his statement, Harper apologized completely and took responsibility for the terrible way that aboriginal children were taken away from their parents and forced into residential schools throughout most of the 20^th century. It was unequivocal in its tone, and he appeared sincere and humble as he spoke. Especially interesting is the gracious manner in which the aboriginals accepted the apology, and the apparent goodwill that was generated. While the hurt and suffering was not completely undone, there were even moments of humour as they responded to the apology in the House of Commons. It was clearly a step in the right direction to heal divisions between First Nations and the rest of Canada.

Apologizing for hurting others is an idea that even young children understand. For individuals, it is clear, albeit very difficult sometimes, to apologize for a wrong-doing. You say what you did wrong, you understand how it affected that person and say you’re sorry. For larger organizations, taking this sort of action can be muddled by legal considerations and how the organization will be held liable. From a public relations and a moral point of view, apologizing quickly while taking responsibility is the right thing to do.

It’s amazing how gracious and willing people are to forgive when they are apologized to as shown by the aboriginals’ response. Conversely, people get very annoyed when a wrongdoing has been committed but there is no apology or no responsibility taken. The anger expressed and suffering prior to Harper’s apology was indicative of this. With this whole and complete apology, relations between First Nations and the rest of Canada can begin to move forward. It will be interesting to see how this relationship continues from here on out.

Last week, senior Barack Obama advisor Samantha Power made the following comment to The Scotsman reporter Gerri Peev about Hillary Clinton: “She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything.”

The interview was for a book that Power had published but the conversation drifted into the U.S. presidential campaign and out came the “monster” as it were. Power tried to take it back with “off the record” but that was to no avail. Subsequently, the article Peev wrote focussed around this quote and the book was nowhere to be seen. The comment drew a huge backlash from the Clinton camp and not long after, Power resigned from the Obama campaign. Peev defended her reporting of the comments as “off the record” happened in the middle of the interview and not at the beginning (see above video).

The situation brings up the question of whether “off the record” should be respected by journalists. As a PR professional, I advise all my clients to never EVER consider a comment to be off the record when speaking to a journalist. There is absolutely nothing to stop a reporter from using such a comment, even if it’s at the beginning of the interview. I suppose one could put their faith in a reporter they know well but the stakes are too high to risk something like that.

It is very easy for interview subjects to think that a conversation with a journalist is like one at a party, with your neighbour or a friend. It is not. It is a business meeting where both the interviewee and the reporter have their own agendas. The interviewee has a message to get out and needs to be responsible for comments that accurately reflect his or her public position. The reporter has a news story to tell and has the right to use comments made by the interview subject. Each should stick to their respective roles while appreciating the others’ goals. Friendly as it may be, a conversation with the media can have huge consequences which need to acknowledged by all involved.

What do you think? Should “off the record” be respected by reporters? Does it ever make sense to bring it up with a reporter you know well, for example?

Yesterday, CBC reported on the Canadian Defence Department advising its soldiers to not post personal photos or information on social networking sites such as Facebook due to security concerns. It highlighted how these sites are popular with soldiers to stay in touch with their families back home.

I can definitely see why terrorist organizations, such as Al-Qaeda, would want to check out soldier Facebook profiles. A soldier post of a battalion moving in a certain direction could have deadly consequences. At the same time, I can also see this as a very convenient reason for the military to exercise censorship over its personnel, something the CBC segment also highlighted.

Military culture is completely different social media culture. In military culture, command and control is the rule of the day whereas in social media, control is very decentralized. There is certainly no censorship, at least imposed from an external source. The social media issue the military faces is the result of a clash of cultures whose values are fundamentally different.

Social media poses a very real problem for the military. The wrong people obtain secret information and soldiers die unnecessarily, simple as that. Simultaneously, social media is increasingly ubiquitous and I can understand why a soldier in Afghanistan would want to use Facebook to connect with his wife and kids in Canada.

The military could impose penalties but I’m not if that would really work. How would soldiers be monitored? Would the military spend time roaming Facebook to see who is posting information? There is a limit to how much it can impose its will on its staff in this area in my mind. Training soldiers how to use social media responsibly should definitely be a part of basic training but to ban the use of these sites is probably unrealistic and likely ineffective.

After a couple of people on Twitter wrote about Radian6, a tool for tracking issues in social media, I thought I would call them up for a demo. After that, I decided to try it out for a free 7 day trial.

It took about an hour of training by salesman Tim Tozer for me to really get it but afterwards, I was pretty much ready to go. After entering key words in much the same way as you would in Google, the software allows you to keep count of blogs that contains those terms. You can search back up to 30 days although I’m told that you can go back 90 days in the next month or so. From this list of blogs, you can see a description of the first few words and how many comments have been left. You can also delve deeper into this search set to see which terms come up the most often. For example, if I did a search for the terms “Obama,” “Clinton,” “McCain,” and “Romney, I would get a list of blogs that pretty much all relate to the 2008 US presidential campaign. From that list of blogs, I could then look to see how often the terms “economy,” ” immigration,” and “healthcare” come up. By seeing which words are most popular can start to give me a sense about what bloggers are discussing the most. There is much more I could talk about here but this gives you an idea of what Radian6 does.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with the software. It’s pretty easy to use and I found myself looking up more and more stuff as I became more comfortable with it. I could see which blogs are the most influential in any search and see spikes when certain topics became more hotly discussed over time. It’s a tool that would be very helpful to scan which issues were percolating under the surface before they caught the attention of the greater public. By catching issues as they develop in their initial stages, it would allow more time to handle issues proactively rather than playing catch-up once an issue caught on fire. This is definitely a tool worth checking out and worthy of attention from PR professionals.

I’ve been reading David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing & PR upon the suggestion of Joseph Thornley and his social media bookshelf. It’s very readable with some good info.The chapter that has me nodding my head repeatedly is his section on good writing…or the lack thereof…in business communications. He advises against using jargon-laden phrases. This sort of thing tends to happen in the technology business and he refers to this language as goobledygook. Having done some work in business-to-business PR, I knew exactly what he was talking about. These words and phrases include groundbreaking, industry-standard, cutting-edge and let’s not forget the ever-popular next generation.

In a study he conducted of North American news releases over a nine month period, there were 388,000 news releases distributed and over 74,000 mentioned at least one gobbledygook phrase. The winner was next generation with 9,895 uses and there were over 5,000 uses of the following terms: flexible, robust, world class, scalable and easy to use. Other phrases of note were cutting edge, mission critical (never saw that one before), market leading, industry standard, turnkey and groundbreaking.

I have to admit that in the past I have used a few of these phrases. They are extremely tempting to use. I had my face slapped (figuratively, of course) by a senior consultant who reviewed a news release I wrote caught one of these words and quizzed me on what I meant. The reality was I didn’t really know.

It can be very difficult to describe how a technology works but what’s even more important is describing why the technology is important in the first place. What difference does it make and to whom? Why should I care? Why should the person on the street care? This can be one of the challenges when working with engineers and others who are deep into the inner working of devices. It’s a question of being to close to see the forest through the trees. It’s the job of PR practitioners to take a step back and really think what this means for the given audience and write in language that is easily understood.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted so it’s good to get back on the keyboard. My wife recently had surgery to have her thyroid removed and I took some time off to be with her. The surgery went well although she’s still recovering and can’t pick up our 3 month old son. All I can say is…Thank goodness for grandmas!

Last night, I watched 60 Minutes’ Mike Wallace interview Roger Clemens about his alleged steroid use.

It wasn’t exactly the most thrilling interview I had ever seen and Clemens isn’t exactly eloquent. In response to Wallace’s question about former trainer Brian McNamee injecting him with human growth hormone or steroids, Clemens answered, “My body never changed. If he’s putting that stuff up in my body, if what he’s saying which is totally false, if he’s doing that to me, I should have a third ear coming out of my forehead. I should be pulling tractors with my teeth.” Not exactly the key message I would have written for him.

Nonetheless, Clemens is doing something that no other Major League Baseball player alleged of taking steroids has done: execute a PR strategy. He posted a video denouncing the claims made in the Mitchell Report on steroids and mentioned that he would be interviewed on 60 Minutes in the near future. He did the interview with Wallace who asked him questions like he was lobbing softballs to a 7 year-old. It wasn’t hard for Clemens to hit them out of the park (I had to use a baseball analogy somewhere. Sorry!).

This is in stark contrast to Barry Bonds’s approach to allegations of his own drug use. As you might be aware, Bonds broke baseball’s all-time home run record this past season while under a huge cloud doubt. The rumours about his steroid use had been circling for several months and he was recently indicted on perjury and obstruction of justice charges for his testimony in the BALCO case. For the most part, Bonds treated reporters with about as much respect as for a garbage can. His relationship with the media was combative even in the best of times. The disdain he has for reporters is palpable in every media interaction I’ve ever seen.

Both of these players will have issues to deal with when their candidacy for baseball’s Hall of Fame comes up. With Clemens’s PR strategy, he will have a much better chance of entering than Bonds or at least an easier time of it. Who knows if Clemens is guilty of taking steroids or not. All I can say is that he cares what baseball fans think and he was pro-active in getting his message out to them.

As challenged by David Jones at PR Works, here are 8 facts you probably didn’t know about me.

1. I lived in Kathmandu, Nepal when I was 15 years old which really opened my eyes to how the other half of the planet (or other 85% of it I should say) lives.

2. I was born in Toronto but moved to Ottawa as a baby and stayed there until I graduated from high school.

3. I went to high school with Alanis Morissette and majorly helped her twin brother, Wade, with grade 10 math.

4. I have competed in volleyball, baseball, swimming, basketball and track.

5. I lifeguarded for a couple of summers at Lac Phillippe, just north of Ottawa, in Gatineau Park.

6. I had an screenwriter agent represent me in L.A. as I tried to make it as a sitcom writer. I’m not entirely clear anyone at all saw my scripts though.

7. I did some radio reporting for CFMU when I went to McMaster for my undergrad in Sociology.

8. My favourite TV show is Mad Men on AMC. If you haven’t seen it, check it out!

There you have it…

Not that I’m going to do this too often but it had to happen eventually. Here’s a pic of me and my son Ittai who is just over 2 months old. We put him on his stomach every once and a while to help with his physical development.

Other online and retail giants, namely Wal-Mart and Google, have been eyeing Amazon’s success for some time. In the Globe article, Forrester analyst, Sarah Rotman Epps, notes:

“Amazon and Wal-Mart have been competing for that consumer for a long time. The reason why this is important now is that whoever has a strong relationship with the book-buying consumer today is well-positioned to keep that customer tomorrow.”

The battleground is heating up. Amazon and Wal-Mart are now in a fully fledged price war, selling many popular books and e-books for under 10 dollars. While they may not be turning an actual profit on book sales, they are able to promote other items and sections of their site leading to increased sales overall.

In similar news, HMV, a store that up until a few years ago I visited weekly, has finally decided to enter this century and offer their content online—gasp! Since most people have already become accustomed to using iTunes or just downloading everything for free, is this move too little too late? The new site (HMV Digital) offers all MP3s free of digital rights management (DRM) and includes a “My Downloads” section which stores recently downloaded songs and allows users to access them remotely. The site also aims to make customer service a top priority with a visible help section, a comments section on their blog, and by providing contact details of the editor. Time will tell, but I feel that even with these features HMV will have to make some serious marketing and advertising efforts to gain back their market share.

No matter who comes out on top, a little healthy competition is good for the soul, and great for the consumer. Let the games begin!

When I speak to student groups these days, I tell them that when I was in university, I didn’t have a mobile phone. They’re shocked by this, and don’t really understand how I got in touch with my friends. (And c’mon, I’m not even that old: I graduated in 2004, which was right on the cusp of when university students started using mobile phones.)

Ten years after 9/11, and the security theatre at airports is part of our culture and threat levels of various colours are part of our vocabulary.

In all three of these cases, we almost look back at the recent past and laugh about how we used to live our lives. “I can’t believe people used to smoke in restaurants!”, “How did I ever meet up with friends without a cellphone in university?”, or “Remember when you only needed a driver’s license to cross the Canada-US border?” are all pretty common comments about “the good old days”.

Is our current state of pandemic panic going to persist as well? Will I be telling future generations that they used to send out memos to people reminding them to use hand sanitizer?

-Parker

PS: If anyone has suggestions for a brand of swine-flu preventing face masks that look good with a suit, let me know.

I say it was difficult decision because CNW has been more than just an amazing place to work. I spent the majority of my waking hours since 2007 at the company’s Bay Street headquarters, and the people here have become more than just colleagues. I mean, I’ve probably talked on the phone more with people in CNW’s Western Canada offices than I have with my mom in the past few years.

CNW, and the people there, gave me a ton of great opportunities that I might not have had elsewhere, and for that I’m truly thankful. When I was just a guy with a tan, sleeping on my friend’s couch, Laurie Smith (now CNW’s VP of Culture and Communication) took a chance on me and offered me a position as a Communications Coordinator. Since then, I’ve had a few different roles in a couple of different departments. In each case, my colleagues and managers were always supportive of what I was doing.

I will always look back at my time with CNW fondly, and while I certainly enjoyed the work I did there, I’m going to miss the people that worked there more.

Thanks for the great time, CNW. I hope we keep in touch.

Yours Truly,

-Parker Mason

P.S.: As sad as I am to be leaving CNW, I’m also super-excited to start the next stage of my life and career. I’ll fill you in on the details in a week or so (I’ll still be in Toronto). You can always reach me via e-mail (parker@blogcampaigning.com) or at Facebook.com/ParkerMason.

I was wrong. I’ve thought about it, and I now recognize that that person’s comment was uninformed and thoughtless, and I had no reason to apologize. I don’t want to insult him, and I hope this response doesn’t simply come off as petty. I have a far more appropriate response in mind, and it is basically a brief description of the nature of entertainment media today.

In his passive-aggressive note, the commenter appears to make three points:

1. DJs who use iTunes (or similar software) don’t deserve to entertain club or bar crowds.
2. Whatever happened to DJs who can match beats by simply listening to songs (as opposed to using software to digitally and automatically beat-match)?
3. DJs today suck.

Where to begin?

First, the nature of DJing has changed completely in recent years, and “disc jockeying” is basically an anachronism in the same way as “film processing” or “going to print”. With digital music collections advancing far faster than physical collections, and the ease of collecting and transporting digital music, it should be no surprise that DJs are turning to software solutions. And now, there are hardware solutions, as well, to replace bulky turntables and CD players. Everyone who wants to be a DJ has already got a laptop. A DJ starting out now would almost be a fool to choose physical media over virtual. As for iTunes, well, as I said in my original post, it’s not good for DJing, and it’s not appropriate for DJing, but in a pinch, which is where I found myself on that night, it will perform the required function.

What software or hardware one chooses to use, however, is basically irrelevant—a simple matter of pleasure or circumstance. I started DJing on a kit hobbled together from whatever bits of stereo equipment my friends, Josh and James, and I had at home—and later some rented gear. Even when MP3s came around, I only used them to create mixes that I could play on CD decks. But if the software existed at the time, I almost certainly would have chosen to use a laptop over CDs. (Vinyl is always a special case.) The only relevant question is: how well does the DJ entertain the crowd?

So, complain all you want, but this mode of DJing is just the way it is and will be. Frankly, these days I’d be more surprised to see a DJ using turntables at a club than using a laptop—with or without some extra hardware.

(I’m not saying I fully approve of the rise of the laptop DJ. As with photography, and journalism, and any other medium that has found itself in a similar situation, not everyone who performs as a DJ deserves to call themselves a DJ. There is a core skill set that one must develop, and no software or hardware can allow a person to bypass that process. No doubt many DJs today never bother to acquire those skills; but this has ever been the case.)

The other thing is that the digital revolution has caused a tsunami of DJs, just as it has turned everyone into a photographer, and a web designer, and an illustrator, and a journalist, and a media expert, and so on. There’s more to this: I don’t want to get into the details, but the expanding middle class has somehow achieved a sort of critical nexus of leisure time and disposable income that practically compels their young to go to bars and clubs and dance. In Toronto, at least, new bars, clubs, and restaurants open all the time and everywhere. Each one of them needs to entertain their clientele—ideally at a low cost—and more than ever now the common factor is the DJ.

More venues + more leisure time and money = more DJs

Unfortunately, as I touched on above—and in this I agree with the commenter—more DJs doesn’t mean more quality. In fact, it almost definitely means lower quality overall; but it doesn’t simply mean that all laptop DJs are awful or that the club owner has hired his inexperienced cousin who just downloaded some trial software and wants to give it a go. There are certainly many experienced and skilled DJs who use (and choose) computers over traditional DJ gear.

You know what, I’m not even ashamed to say that I have played a song here and there from YouTube when I haven’t found it in my collection. I would never do this in a club or bar with a high-quality sound system, but for a private party or a standard bar night, why not? If you can mix it and make it fit, and it sounds good, that is really the only issue.

You’ll probably be better off paying attention to what music the DJ is playing and how well she does it, rather than the gear she is using. If you find it still doesn’t live up to your standards, you can always try your hand at DJing yourself.

Thanks for your comment.

Give up? It’s a computer’s hard disk drive (HDD) with a measly 5 MB of storage.

I came across this picture a few days ago and it made me stop to thank the rapid advancements of technology and geekery.

In September 1956, IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with an HDD. It weighed over a ton and only stored 5 MB of data. My appreciation for my 8 GB memory stick, which holds the equivalent of 1,600 of the units you see in this picture and fits on my key chain, has definitely increased.

“I’d rather raise nerds than raise gangsters”, the hip-hop star says as he talks about his interest in new music-creating software, and that hip-hop has a lot of geeks amongst its ranks.

I’ve been saying that the Wu-Tang Clan were huge needs for a while now. Last year, I wrote that that they were huge nerds (”36 Chambers of Social Media“) due to the fact that they were obsessed with Kung-Fu movies and Voltron, and I’m glad that the RZA has confirmed my thoughts.

For examples of some of their music and its relation to nerd culture, check here.

For the past few weeks, my employer CNW Group has been hosting a series of informal “Coffee Break” webinars aimed at educating people about our various products. (CNW is WAY more than just a newswire.)

Laurie Smith, CNW’s VP of Culture and Communications hosted all of theses sessions, and I joined her to talk about Social Media Releases and CNW’s MediaRoom product. I kinda like to think that if we’d done more of these we could have had a chance of becoming the Regis and Kelly of the newswire circuit.

Most of them are now archived on the CNW Group website, and you can access them in the Events section.

Last week, Sony did a Social Media Release to launch its new touchscreen computer. ( “Sony Delivers New Touch Screen HD-TV/PC“). I didn’t actually see it until it went live, and when it did I was impressed.

Besides the basic text of the release doing a great job of actually explaining the product, it also included a clear shot of the product that can be easily used by the media (ahem, bloggers) and an equally informative and usable video (embedded below, from the release).

I don’t know how this factored into any of their other communications plans, aside from the fact that Sony Canada Tweeted about it from their @SonyCanadaNews account.

What I do know is that both Engadget (”Sony’s VAIO L 1080p all-in-one PC is perfect for rockin’ moms“) and Gizmodo (”Sony’s VAIO L works as a full PC or simply a TV“) wrote posts about this new PC/TV, and both embedded the video from the release in their posts.

That is great visibility for Sony and their new Vaio L, and I don’t think anyone can argue that this wasn’t a successful Social Media Release. It shows a real possibility for what bloggers can do with the additional content provided to them.

-Parker

Imagine this: you’re the DJ at a bar—the night’s entertainment. You’re using a laptop; you’ve got some software that you’ve tried out before and you like better than anything else you’ve tried for the purpose.

Things are going pretty well, until right in the middle of the tenth song or so the application quits unexpectedly with no warning and no message—what! You scramble to switch to another program (iTunes is all you’ve got available) and find a song quickly to fill the gap. Then you load up the application again—it probably just crashed, right?—surely it won’t happen again. But no, it does happen again after another ten songs, and you realize it’s because you’re using a trial version of the software. Well, bloody hell, a little warning somewhere would have been nice, you think, and you spend the rest of the night cueing songs in iTunes and hoping nobody notices—and of course, cursing the company that made that other application.

Well, that happened to me about eight weeks ago at The Painted Lady—the first time I played at that bar—and, man, was I unhappy about it, by which I mean Embarrassed. I won’t name the application that closed down on me, because I don’t want anyone to use it, which is a shame, because otherwise it’s a decent lightweight laptop DJing app.

I might sound like an ass for trying to use a software trial to DJ a party, but, you know what? To me, that’s the purpose of a trial: to try the product out—not for ten songs, not for 100 songs, but until I’m ready to buy it. I would prefer to have the functionality of the application somehow restricted rather than face a completely unexpected shutdown. All I’m asking for is a warning here software developers, that’s all I’m saying.

It turns out that iTunes is an acceptable—if very weak—substitute for bare bones software. (You might laugh—please feel free—but I can say this confidently because I’ve had to use it exclusively on three occasions now.) And by adding a few features, it could actually be good—yes, iTunes could be a reasonably good (basic) DJing application, with the addition of greater crossfading control, current song protection, and two music windows. That’s all. It would be far from great, but in a pinch, I wouldn’t worry about using it.

Of course, none of that can take away the fact that I’m using a laptop and a mouse (or, worse, a trackpad) to DJ, but that’s another story.

So, maybe you can help me find a good free/open source mixing application for Macs?—the simpler the better. And if it’s compatible with the M-Audio Torq Xponent, I like that too.

-Adam Gorley

Check out Gorley’s playlist from that night on 199x.org

It’s interesting to hear their thoughts on the relationship music bloggers have with the Public Relations people in the record industry, and there is definitely some take-away for all PR pros there.

Matthew Perpetua, who writes Fluxblog.org, says, “I am glad to get records sent to me because sometimes I get something that I really enjoy.” However, as a hat-tip to the growing importance that PR pros are placing on reaching bloggers rather than traditional media, Perpetua adds, “I work for the regular press too, and aside from my experience with New York Magazine and Pitchfork, the difference seems to be that no one really cares about what I write for money, but they are sometimes very invested in what I do for free.”

When asked if they read other music blogs, the panellists said almost universally that they did not. I feel like this kind of mentality is what has set them apart from other music bloggers and is similar to my suggestion that PR props stop reading PR blogs.

And as great as all that is, I think that this round-table discussion is more important to understand the opinions of these bloggers about giving away content for free and the future of the music industry.

It is slightly depressing to hear Andrew Noz complain that CDs will “be all but unattainable to towns with only one Wal-Mart” without him acknowledging that a) the CD is essentially a dead format and b) thanks to blogs like his, people in towns of all sizes have access to way more music than they would have ever discovered before.

I also disagree with Sean Michaels and David Gutowski, who both think that the future of music is in paying for subscription services packaged with our phone and internet plans. To think that the way for artists to make money off of the art they make (whether it is music or film or writing) by sharing their revenues with wireless and internet providers is ridiculous. All that does is replace one inefficient middleman (today’s record companies) with another.

However, some of the bloggers do seem to get it. “I believe pretty strongly that the next frontier lies in monetizing live performance”, says John Seroff. In fact, his suggestion that perhaps we’ll see something “along the lines of $20 for an album, four live shows and access to ongoing projects” sounds pretty Masnickian and forward-thinking.

Andrew Noz and Oliver Wang seem to support this line of argument by saying that physical products in the form of deluxe or limited editions of albums will help fund artists’ careers.

Later on in the discussion, as the topic veers towards the “free culture” movement, John Seroff does a great job of comparing his writing being shared online with the way music is being shared online: “I figure anything I write or make that ever hits the internet is gone and I don’t resent people doing what they want with it… that’s the internet, and that’s how it works.” He also goes on to say that, although some artists might not like this new way of doing business (giving away their content freely, making a profit on things like live performances rather than individual CDs), “it might not jibe with your professional/creative goals, but thus has it ever been.”

His basic point is that you should adapt to the new internet economy. Things have changed, and artists should change with it.

The whole discussion is worth a serious read, as these guys talk about everything from their favourite music, to their actual blogging process (and how to avoid burnout after 5+ years). Read the Music Blogging Roundtable on The Morning News.

-Parker

So, as we approach 2010 and the anticipation of The Economist’s latest ‘World in 2010’ (because I know, like me, you can’t wait either) I thought I’d have a stab at crystal ball gazing myself.

Nothing to do with social media

If you’re anything like me you’re probably sick of the end-of-year surplus supply of ‘what’s next in social media’ predictions being bandied about by the gurus. I prefer to use the social media that’s with us here and now in the real world. Navel gaze about that stuff all you like but it’s not going to help your clients much.

Recovery, recovery, recovery

It’s safe to say that the worst of the financial crisis is behind us. That’s not to say we don’t have a tough time ahead however. Government debt is rampant, deficits are high and unemployment is improving, but only in the sense that the rate of unemployment has plateaued. All that said, and despite the delicacy of the situation, we’ll begin to see an improvement in confidence as private companies begin to unbatten the hatches, make investments and begin to take on new staff. The public sector (in Britain at least) will be face cuts as governments try to repair their heavily damaged balance sheets.

Prediction:

A ‘V’ shaped recovery. The time it takes to get back where we were, though, will be long.

BRICs get a greater say

As world power continues to shift from West to East (it’s happening) emerging economies including the so called BRIC countries (the moniker given to the rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China by Goldman Sachs) will get a seat at the table and a greater say in world events. Some countries like China have already raised concerns of the unfair workings of the G20 system.

Prediction:

China begins to accept its world/super power status and stops thinking of itself as an emerging economy.

Britain and Russia seek to warm cold ties

Over the last few years the relationship between Britain and Russia has been, to put it mildly, somewhat cold. A number of controversial incidents in recent times have caused the two nations to do battle in political rhetoric and undiplomatic gestures. An alleged assassination by an ex-KGB operative, the war against Georgia and the deportation of British diplomats in Moscow are considered the three main catalysts for these sour relations.

Lately, however, both countries are engaging on friendlier terms as both share a common interest in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear power. In a joint press conference at the beginning of November, both Britain’s Foreign Secretary and Russia’s Foreign Minister made a joint demand to Iran to respond to the United Nations on questions regarding its nuclear fuel.

Prediction:

Relations between the two countries continue to improve as both realise their joint vested interests.

Europe: not exactly water tight

At a time when it soon elects its first permanent President of the European Council, British opposition leader, David Cameron, concedes defeat on the Lisbon Treaty and the two of its wealthiest nations, Germany and France, show unity during the financial crisis, you could say the European Union is stronger than ever. And you’d be right. That’s not to say it’s in perfect harmony though.

There are still underlying issues as one might expect when trying to unify a group of nations with self interests. Britain perhaps the most maverick of member states has often been the least cooperative as it seeks to protect its interests in the financial industry. Nevertheless progress has been made and the announcement of the new president in January will only help solidify the European Union’s status as a superpower.

Prediction:

The President of the United States will have a single number to call when he wants to speak to Europe.

There’s a Facebook application called Zoosk, which is essentially a dating site within Facebook. You add the application to your profile, upload some nice pics of yourself and before you know it you’re cyber-flirting and have the ability to email other users of the application. Easy eh? And free too. If you don’t mind using Facebook as a dating tool, that is.

Like all Facebook applications, before you add it you can see which of your friends are currently using it. And this is where it gets a bit iffy and doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the point I’m trying to make.

Before you make any presumptions, however, bear in mind that people get invited to add applications from their friends all the time without paying any attention to them whatsoever. They never use them or look at them again. They just simply added it because they received a request from their friend.

But, still, if this is the case, Facebook should warn people about the application they’re about to install. I can’t imagine it being too pleasant seeing your husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend/whomever listed as a ‘friend’ using it.

Ouch!

This is one I delivered in Newcastle at a NEPA (North East Publicity Association) event on Monday night. It contains one or two UK social media examples in. Enjoy!

RSS subscribers please click through to see the presentation if it isn’t visible from your reader.

For anyone who has me kindly linked to their blogroll I’d appreciate it if, for SEO purposes, you change it to the new URL. I’ll probably email a few people about it as well.

Onwards and upwards.

Basic, but at the same time quite handy.

Needless to say, the Twitter community has been creating lists like there’s no tomorrow. There’s also a new site called Listoria which showcases the best Twitter lists (apparently, it seems US-centric to me) and where you can submit your own.

Given that on Wednesday I published a blog post which essentially is a list of UK journalists on Twitter it seemed apt to add it use it to create a Twitter List. You can find the UK journalists Twitter List here.

I considered creating individual lists for, say, broadsheet journos, tabloid journos and the like. Thing is, though, people move around and switch jobs so it would quickly go out of date. It would be easy to create a list for individual publications too; such as a Guardian List, Times List, Telegraph List, Sun List and so on but, again, people move around and the publications themselves should own those lists to keep it accurate.

About a year ago I carried out a piece of research that looked at UK journalists using Twitter which was positively received from both PRs and journos. In fact, I’m going to stick my neck out and say it probably helped a couple of people in our respective industries establish relationships with one another over on Twitter. I know it helped me.

With this in mind, and because everyone likes a list, I’ve created this follow up post almost one year on. By no means is it exhaustive and it’s very likely I have missed some people out (I mean, really, it’d be quite difficult to find every UK journo given Twitter’s so mainstream these days).

Before you start here’s a short Q&A:

Q: How come I’m not included in the list?

A: Sorry, the research was done manually and I am only human. Send me an email, leave a comment or ping me an @reply on Twitter itself and I’ll happily add you.

Q: Why have you included me in the list? I don’t want to be, thank you very much.

A: Sorry, my bad, but all this is publicly available. Send me an email, leave a comment or ping me an @reply on Twitter itself and I’ll happily remove you.

Q: Why am I in the ‘Other’ section?

A: Simply because you are the only person on Twitter that works at your publication (or that I could find).

Q: You idiot, I left Acme News Journal six months ago! Why am I still down as working there?

A: Sorry! I did check, but it was late and I was tired. Let me know and I’ll change it.

Q: Anything changed since the last time?

A: Aside from an increase in numbers which, given Twitter’s growth and exposure this past year is obvious anyway, I suppose the most noticeable thing is the uptake of tabloid journalists using it. Last year there were none.

Q: Woohoo! I’m a PR person and now I can start following all these journos and push out spammy tweets about my clients to them!

A: Er, no you can’t. Read this blog post first to see how some journos feel about being approached on Twitter. If you do you’re an idiot and the other 99.9% of the UK PR industry that practice good Twitter etiquette will laugh at you when you’re outed.

————————————————————————————————-

BBC

Tom van Aardt – http://twitter.com/tomVS
Richard Sambrook – http://twitter.com/sambrook
Tania Teixeira – http://twitter.com/taniateix
Jon Fildes – http://twitter.com/jonfildes
Declan Curry – http://twitter.com/declancurry
Dave Lee – http://twitter.com/davelee
Rory Cellan-Jones – http://twitter.com/ruskin147
Gill Penlington – http://twitter.com/GillPenlington (Question Time)
Paul Mason – http://twitter.com/paulmasonnews (Newsnight)
John Pienaar – http://twitter.com/JPonpolitics (5 Live)
Laura Kuenssberg – http://twitter.com/BBCLauraK
Peter Henley – http://twitter.com/Peter_Henley#
Joe Lynam – http://twitter.com/jblynam
Peter Cardwell – http://twitter.com/petercardwell (The Stephen Nolen Show)
Johnny Minkley – http://twitter.com/johnnyminkley
Connor McNicholas – http://twitter.com/ConorMcNicholas (Top Gear magazine)
Tim Reid – http://twitter.com/TimReidBBC
Raymond Snoddy – http://twitter.com/RaymondSnoddy
Paul Addison – http://twitter.com/pauladdo
Cornelius Lysaght – http://twitter.com/CorneliusRacing
Anna Adams – http://twitter.com/annaadamsBBC
Johnny Morris – http://twitter.com/mojo90
Mario Cacciottolo – http://twitter.com/SOTMario

Birmingham Post

Marc Reeves – http://twitter.com/marcreeves
Richard Padgett – http://twitter.com/richardpadgett
Mike Hughes – http://twitter.com/mikehughes
Tom Scotney – http://twitter.com/TomScotney
Andy Walker - http://twitter.com/andywalker82
Jonathan Walker – http://twitter.com/jonwalker121

Channel 4 News

Garry Gibbon – http://twitter.com/GaryGibbonBlog
Oliver King – http://twitter.com/oliverjamesking
Benjamin Cohen – http://twitter.com/benjamincohen
Cathy Newman – http://twitter.com/cathynewman
Alex Thomson – http://twitter.com/alextomo
Ben King – http://twitter.com/kumquatkid
Krishnan Guru-Murthy – http://twitter.com/krishgm
Ed Fraser – http://twitter.com/frasere

Company Magazine

Kirsty Hathaway – http://twitter.com/kirstyhathaway
Tracy Ramsden – http://twitter.com/Tracy_Ramsden

Computerworld UK

Mike Simons – http://twitter.com/ITjournalist
Siobhan Chapman – http://twitter.com/SiobhanBon

Computing

Bryan Glick – http://twitter.com/bryanglick
Angelica Mari – http://twitter.com/angelicamari
Mark Hillary – http://twitter.com/markhillary

Cosmopolitan

Rosie Mullender – http://twitter.com/mullies
Clare Smith – http://twitter.com/claresmith84
Natasha Guitto – http://twitter.com/natashaguiotto
Bridget March – http://twitter.com/bridgetmarch
Kate Creasey – http://twitter.com/katecreasey
Fiona Cowood – http://twitter.com/deskface
Lizzi Hosking – http://twitter.com/lizzihosking
Jacqui Meddings – http://twitter.com/j_meddler

Daily Express

Gabriel Milland – http://twitter.com/gabrielmilland
Paul Vale – http://twitter.com/PaulVale
Richard Palmer – http://twitter.com/RoyalReporter

Daily Mail & Mail on Sunday

Kirsty Walker – http://twitter.com/kirstywalker1
James Chapman – http://twitter.com/jameschappers
Suzanne Moore – http://twitter.com/suzannemoore197
Daniel Martin – http://twitter.com/MCLegolas

Daily Star

Nigel Pauley – http://twitter.com/nigelpauley
Mick Booker – http://twitter.com/MickBooker
Mike Ward – http://twitter.com/mikewardtv
Susan Hill – http://twitter.com/SuseHill
Mick Booker – http://twitter.com/MickBooker
Gemma Wheatley – http://twitter.com/GemmaWheatley

Digital Arts

Alice Ross – http://twitter.com/almostidealist
Neil Bennett – http://twitter.com/neilbennett

Engadget

Vlad Savov – http://twitter.com/vladsavov
Richard Lai – http://twitter.com/richardlai

E-consultancy

Chris Lake – http://twitter.com/lakey
Linus Gregoriadis – http://twitter.com/linusgreg
Graham Charlton – http://twitter.com/gcharlton
Patricio Robles – http://twitter.com/probles

ELLE

Lorraine Candy – http://twitter.com/lorraineELLE
Laura Davies – http://twitter.com/lauradavies

Financial Times

Tim Bradshaw – http://twitter.com/tim
Chris Nuttall – http://twitter.com/ftchris
Peter Whitehead – http://twitter.com/peterwhitehead
Richard Waters – http://twitter.com/richardwaters
Kate Mackenzie – http://twitter.com/kmac
Gideon Rachman – http://twitter.com/gideonrachman
Stefan stern – http://twitter.com/stefanstern
Ben Fenton – http://twitter.com/benfenton

Handbag

Debbie Djordjevic – http://twitter.com/scaredcrows
Anheke Hak – http://twitter.com/AnnekeHak

ITV News

Lucy Manning – http://twitter.com/lucymanning
Alex Forrest – http://twitter.com/alexforrestitv
Daisy McAndrew – http://twitter.com/daisymcandrew
Toby Castle – http://twitter.com/tobycastle

Journalism.co.uk

J Townend – http://twitter.com/JTownend
Laura Oliver – http://twitter.com/LauraOliver

Loaded

Andy Sherwood – http://twitter.com/AndySherwood
Jeff Maysh – http://twitter.com/jeffmaysh
Andrew Woods – http://twitter.com/woodsyloaded

London Evening Standard

Paul Waugh – http://twitter.com/paulwaugh
Mark Prigg – http://twitter.com/markprigg
Henry Hitchings – http://twitter.com/henryhitchings
Sri Carmichael – http://twitter.com/sricarmichael
Danny Brierley – http://twitter.com/dannybananas
Ellen Widdup – http://twitter.com/EllenWiddup

Macworld

Mark Hattersley – http://twitter.com/markhattersley
Karen Haslam – http://twitter.com/kazzzee

Management Today

Matthew Gwyther – http://twitter.com/MatthewGwyther
Hannah Prevett – http://twitter.com/hannahprevett

Marketing

Lucy Barratt – http://twitter.com/marketingeditor
Richard Abbott – http://twitter.com/RichardAbbott

MSN UK

Peter Bale http://twitter.com/PeterBale
Katie King http://twitter.com/ktking
Jane Douglas http://twitter.com/msntechjane
Nik Taylor http://twitter.com/msntechnik
Monica Stylli http://twitter.com/msnstylemonica
Matt Ball – http://twitter.com/thisismattball
Colleen Last – http://twitter.com/colleen_msnuk
Paul Carn – http://twitter.com/paulcarm
Matt Farrington-Smith – http://twitter.com/winlivematt
Mike Lok – http://twitter.com/theordinarychef
Ellen Godwin – http://twitter.com/holyellen
Alastair Bruce – http://twitter.com/ajbruce
Ian Dickson – http://twitter.com/the_roadtester
Steve Wilson-Beales – http://twitter.com/stevewb
Ed Holden – http://twitter.com/ed_holden_msnuk
Nigel Swan – http://twitter.com/motoringnut
Peter Bell – http://twitter.com/peterbel
Lorna Cooper – http://twitter.com/Coops_msntv
James Hurley – http://twitter.com/jameshurley
Nic O’Neil – http://twitter.com/niconeil
Nicola Gibbons – http://twitter.com/nicolagibbons
Antony Bennison – http://twitter.com/antonybennison
Ian Jones – http://twitter.com/msnuknewsian
Andy Young – http://twitter.com/msnuknewsandy
Timothy Poulton – http://twitter.com/timpoulton
Laura Simpson – http://twitter.com/simpo
Thom Gulseven – http://twitter.com/thomgulseven
James Andrews – http://twitter.com/MSNMoneyJames
Damian Clarkson – http://twitter.com/msnmoneydamian
James Draven – http://twitter.com/jamesdraven

Newcastle Evening Chronicle

Lee Ryder – http://twitter.com/lee_ryder
Ronnie Gill – http://twitter.com/Ronnie_Gill
Colin George – http://twitter.com/Colbear
Tom Mullen – http://twitter.com/thomasamullen

News of the World

Sophy Ridge – http://twitter.com/sophyridge
Simon Ward – http://twitter.com/simonjward
Robbie Collin – http://twitter.com/robbiereviews
Dan Wootton – http://twitter.com/danwootton
Paul McCarthy – http://twitter.com/maccahammer

NMA

Justin Pearse – http://twitter.com/justinpearse
Will Cooper – http://twitter.com/willcooper
Charlotte McElny – http://twitter.com/charlottemc
Alex Farber – http://twitter.com/alexfarber
Suzanne Bearne – http://twitter.com/suzannebearne
Vikki Chowney – http://twitter.com/vikkichowney (Reputation Online)

NME

Jamie Fullerton – http://twitter.com/jamiefullerton1
David Moynihan – http://twitter.com/DavidMoynihan
Ben Cardew – http://twitter.com/BenCardew
Claire Curran – http://twitter.com/Claire1982
Lyndsey Parker – http://twitter.com/lyndseyparker
Katie Torrie – http://twitter.com/TheTorrie
Luke Lewis – http://twitter.com/lukelewis

PC Advisor

Simon Jary – http://twitter.com/simonjary
Paul Trotter – http://twitter.com/paultrotter
Matt Egan – http://twitter.com/MattJEgan
Rosemary Hattersley – http://twitter.com/RosieHattersley
David Price – http://twitter.com/pricivius
Carrie-Ann Skinner – http://twitter.com/CarrieSkinner

Pocket Lint

Duncan Geere – http://twitter.com/radioedit
Stuart Miles – http://twitter.com/stuartmiles
Chris Hall – http://twitter.com/christhall
Dan Sung – http://twitter.com/dansung

PR Week

Peter Hay – http://twitter.com/peterhay
Danny Rogers – http://twitter.com/dannyrogers2001
David Singleton – http://twitter.com/david_singleton
Sarah Baldwin – http://twitter.com/sarahbaldwin (Art director)
Kate Magee – http://twitter.com/katemagee
Gemma O’Reilly – http://twitter.com/gemmaoreilly
Matt Cartmell – http://twitter.com/mattcartmell
Alec Mattinson – http://twitter.com/alecmattinson
Cathy Wallace – http://twitter.com/cathywallace
Arun Sudhaman – http://twitter.com/arunsudhaman

Retail Week

George MacDonald – http://twitter.com/GeorgeMacD
Martin Stabe – http://twitter.com/martinstabe

Revolution Magazine

Gareth Jones – http://twitter.com/gj
Andrew McCormick – http://twitter.com/andrewmccormick

Reuters

Mark Jones – http://twitter.com/markjones
Richard Baum – http://twitter.com/rbaum

Sky News

Jessica Wilson – http://twitter.com/NewsDeskGirl
Mark Kleinman – http://twitter.com/MarkKleinman
Tom Rayner – http://twitter.com/Tom_Rayner
Cheryl Smith – http://twitter.com/cherylsmith
Miranda Richardson – http://twitter.com/mirandasky
Niall Paterson – http://twitter.com/niallpaterson
Adam Boulton – http://twitter.com/adamboulton
Tim Gatt – http://twitter.com/TimGatt
Jon Gripton – http://twitter.com/JonGrip
Martin Stanford – http://twitter.com/martinstanford
Zoe Usherwood – http://twitter.com/zoeush
Ruth Barnett – http://twitter.com/RuthBarnett
Joe Braidwood – http://twitter.com/joebraidwood
Andy Burton – http://twitter.com/footballandy

Stuff Magazine

Will Findlater – http://twitter.com/willfindlater
Tom Dunmore – http://twitter.com/tomdunmorestuff
Zara Rabinowicz – http://twitter.com/AlmostZara
Fraser MacDonald – http://twitter.com/FraserMacStuff
Mark Wilson – http://twitter.com/markydwilson

Tech Radar

James Rivington – http://twitter.com/rungsberry
Patrick Goss – http://twitter.com/patrickgoss
Paul Douglas – http://twitter.com/pdouglas
Gareth Beavis – http://twitter.com/superbeav
Mark Chacksfield – http://twitter.com/mchax
Dan Grabham – http://twitter.com/dangrabham

The Catholic Herald

Luke Coppen – http://twitter.com/lukecoppen
Anna Arco – http://twitter.com/annaarco

The Daily Record

Iain Hepburn – http://twitter.com/iainmhepburn
Beverley Lyons – http://twitter.com/bevlyons
Iain Pope – http://twitter.com/iainpope73
Alasdair Baird – http://twitter.com/alasdairbaird
John McKie – http://twitter.com/johnmckie
Lindsay Cochrane – http://twitter.com/teentalklindsay
Shari Low – http://twitter.com/sharilow

The Economist

Robert Butler – http://twitter.com/ashdenizen
Martin Schoessler – http://twitter.com/MrSchoessler

The Guardian

Charles Arthur – http://twitter.com/charlesarthur
Jack Schofield – http://twitter.com/jackschofield
Dave Hill – http://twitter.com/DaveHill
Stephen Brook – http://twitter.com/SDBrook
Bobbie Johnson – http://twitter.com/bobbiejohnson
Kevin Anderson – http://twitter.com/kevglobal
Jemima Kiss - http://twitter.com/jemimakiss
Kate Bevan - http://twitter.com/katebevan
James Anthony – http://twitter.com/jimboeth
Sarah Hartley –