Blog

By Kristin S.

Despite our ever-busy workloads and the tough economic conditions we closed our offices in Europe last week and took all our 110 staff for a two-day off-site. If you’re in a cynical mood you could call it a jolly or a waste of time. You could even, if you’re so inclined, call it a piss up. In fact it was the best investment we have made so far this year.

Company off-sites are not new but what with the recession (or the GFC as our new colleagues in Sydney call it), client demands, several PR Week viva and much, much more going ahead with this year’s boot camp was a tougher call than ever before.

In the event the two days were enormously effective and if you haven’t taken your staff off-site for a mega bonding session then please go out now, buy the tickets, get the venue, order the beer and wine and go and do it as soon as you can.

OK, I may be exaggerating, but if you’re interested in the concept I can list at least ten benefits:
1) Everyone likes each other so much more. With teams spread across many locations working on the same clients and maybe not always seeing eye-to-eye this is vital for us. People getting on with each other means the business gets on.
2) Everyone got to know the back office team. It does help to see, meet and join in competitive dragon boat racing (as we did) with the people who are there to support your work. We’re humans and if the IT guy knows who you are he will surely be more helpful?
3) It’s like an official water cooler. It is a fact – we all like friendly gossip and are interested in hearing about our colleagues. So let’s take the opportunity to find out more about the people we work with and spend pretty much most of our waking lives with.
4) You can’t avoid shop talk – which is great! The teams that work together – often internationally – got to catch up outside the meeting room and IP conference call system. Perfect.
5) You, the employer, is seen as the good guy. I don’t have to explain that (it feels great …).
6) The organisers amongst us get to do what they do best and show off their amazing skills, an opportunity which can be quite rare. Our boot camp team rocks!

OK, I’ll stop, but let us know if you want to hear the other reasons why every company should invest in something similar. I am really serious – whatever company you run or are part of needs an annual boot camp. It builds stronger teams, and stronger teams lead to stronger business performance.

By Suzanne H.

Harold Wilson once said, “A week is a long time in politics”. There’s no more apt a phrase than this to sum up the past seven days in the UK. As the dust settles and the Lib-Con coalition embarks on the task of governing the country, one of the most interesting areas to watch will be the Government’s policies on banking. Not least because it will frequently see Lib-Dem heavyweight, Vince Cable, as Business Secretary, coming up against the Chancellor George Osborne; but also because the Lib Dems’ and Conservatives’ attitude to the industry is so different.

The Liberals built their manifesto around coming down hard on the banks with a new 10% tax on banks’ profits. While the Tory leadership is keen to take a similar harsh stance, it has been tempered somewhat by a political party with deep seated links and loyalty to the financial services industry.
The negotiations of the past week have however led to the two parties finding some common ground: they agree that reform to the banking system is essential and that a banking levy will be introduced. They have also agreed to bring forward detailed proposals for robust action to tackle unacceptable bonuses in the financial services sector.

Perhaps however the most interesting, and complex, proposal is the agreement to investigate the issue of separating retail and investment banking in a sustainable way through the auspices of an independent commission. Recognising that this would take time and effort to get right, the commission will be given an initial time frame of one year to report back.

While Labour believed that regulation was the answer to reducing systemic risk in the financial system, it seems that the new Government is open to more radical action. Of course, it will be a complicated and long-term task, but to my mind there are some clear benefits, aside from the proposed reduction in risk. As the commission investigates the possibility of separation, it will force the debate out into the open. To date the banks have largely taken part in back street lobbying, but the investigation will lay bare banks’ arguments and allow a proper discussion about the respective merits and drawbacks, providing greater information and insight to the public.

The separation of retail and investment banks could also spell good news for the public in another way. Banks were initially set up to serve customers, but as banks saw the potential to make huge profits through clever investments, arguably customer service became less of a focus. New entrants on the banking scene, such as Tesco, Metro Bank and Virgin, are challenging this perception of banking, claiming to put the customer at the heart of their new business models. Perhaps these innovators will lead the way for a new breed of retail bank which will emerge from the break-up of the big banks and which will make money by providing a good customer experience. What a revolutionary thought…

By Andy W.

I reckon it’s worth taking 20 minutes out of our day to recognise and celebrate the achievement of a certain 22-year old lady from Wokingham in Berkshire. Far from her comfortable home base, Bonita Norris has realised her dream to climb Everest and become the youngest British woman to achieve that feat.

I had the pleasure of meeting Bonita and her family literally minutes before she left for Heathrow for Katmandu. What struck me was her attitude. She is the sort of person who does not let events or problems get in the way. She was just completely calm (on the outside anyway), handling a last minute TV interview with great skill.

I just love meeting people who set their sights on a goal and then pursue that dream with a passion. Bonita is everything we would want from ‘young people’ today. Dedicated, ambitious and ultimately incredibly brave and resourceful. Congratulations to her and her support team for summiting Everest. A fantastic achievement.

For full details of the ascent, visit Bonita’s website – http://www.bonitanorris.com/, her blog http://bit.ly/9zq6md or follow her on Twitter — @bonitanorris. You’ll see she was sponsored by Mobile Phone Top Up at ATM – part of VocaLink, a Hotwire client.

By David A.

Here’s a riddle for you….

If I had two documents, one in each hand, and you wanted to find out which contained the most sensitive or valuable information how would you find out which one it was?

Answer: probably the one that I was least likely to give you when you asked for it.

This might seem quite a flippant response on the surface, but it was a point that freedom of information fighter, Heather Brooke, was trying to get across at a fantastic event I attended this week run by Editorial Intelligence as part of their ‘Thought for the Day’ programme.

In case you don’t know, Heather Brooke is the journalist who campaigned for MPs expenses to be made public and she’s still at it; trying to expose the secrets that our politicians really don’t want you to know.
Heather believes that there is still a tremendous amount of resistance to sharing information from the Government, and that the elected should be much more open about the data they have on the electorate.

The timing of the event couldn’t have been more perfect in light of the coalition announcement that was made just the night before. Cameron has claimed that he will bring in a new era of open politics, echoing Obama’s promises from a year and a half ago. But what will this mean for our country?

Cameron has already shown he is willing to conduct himself in a more transparent way, with the likes of WebCameron (although highly staged) and the way he has already let the press into the more intimate parts of his life and work.

I do hope that Cameron continues on this route, and paves the way for the rest of Government to be more transparent, but also sets a precedent for more traditionally ‘conservative’ companies to present themselves in a more open and personable way. This is happening with the rise of digital media of course, but it would certainly make our jobs more gratifying if companies said “we can’t say/do that” a little less and “can we be a more opinionated than that” a little more…

By Stuart W.

Speaking the language of business decision makers struck me as being one of the greatest challenges facing IT teams today.

At a recent IT event in Rome, understanding how to better align the work of IT with the main objectives of a business was hotly debated. According to some, for too long the IT department has focused on bits and bytes rather than considering the wider implications of what it is trying to achieve. Today that approach no longer works as business leaders cast a critical eye on all business functions and identify opportunities to improve efficiency by whatever means possible. As a result, it’s more important than ever for IT teams to play a service-led role and closely align their work with the wider business. Business leaders don’t care how things work, they just want to know that IT is playing a key role in helping them do more with less.

The same is true in the world of PR where executives have long looked at all of manner of ways to demonstrate the value of various activities. This need hasn’t changed. In fact, although there’s now a greater respect for the importance of maintaining a good reputation, PR professionals must constantly assess the work they are doing to ensure activities have greatest impact on the bottom line. According to a feature in this week’s PR Week the PR sector could learn a lot from management consultancies if they are to continue to enjoy success in achieving the senior level buy-in required to implement effective campaigns. One of the top tips stressed in the article states ‘it’s not just who you know, it is what you know’, highlighting the importance of PR professionals providing strategic counsel as opposed to just tactical support.

Whether working in IT or PR, speaking the language of business has become critical. Those that are able to clearly articulate how they are ultimately supporting business’ objectives and appreciate the challenges facing the business will therefore enjoy the greatest levels of success in coming months.

By Lauren M

Like any relationship, that of the PR and journo has its ups and its downs. Most days the relationship is quite amicable, but there is always the potential for one side to annoy the other and arguments to ensue. The main cause of discord is that of over-eager PR consultants sending press releases to the wrong journalists – a problem that has been the cause of severe acrimony in recent times.

For years now the blame has been passed between the two; is it that PR consultants aimlessly send out press releases to old press lists without fully doing their research, or is it due to journalists’ focuses being far too broad for PR consultants to effectively target them?

Either way, it is time to settle this argument once and for all so the relationship can return to an even keel.

Yesterday the CIPR began its latest campaign in response to the InconveinientPRTruth, a website launched by RealWire to put an end to PR spam. The CIPR has launched a survey to find out how PR consultants feel about the issues raised by RealWire’s campaign. Realwire does an excellent job of highlighting the issue and claims that three out of four releases sent to the media are irrelevant for their target audience.

So how can we resolve this? Unfortunately for every one highly targeted campaign there seems to be two poorly executed ones. There is a real need for the media and PR industries to sit down and reach a consensus on the best way for channelling information to the right people. This is something that the UK Technology Journalists and PRs (a joint group promoting better relations between the two industries) is currently working on and we are certainly looking forward to seeing happen.

Just like any relationship, by sitting down and having a calm debate, even the most intractable of problems can be solved.

By Giles P

Metrica has just launched the first in a series of measurement insights on planning and it revealed what many of us suspect about PR. That planning still remains an afterthought. The research found that 23% of respondents have no formal plan driving their PR efforts and according to Metrica’s blog ‘nothing documenting what they are trying to achieve, what messages they need to deliver to what audiences to do it and how they are going to prove that it got done’. While you could argue the majority are doing some ‘planning’, I think the fact nearly a quarter of respondents admitted they are not devoting enough time to plan is a sad indictment of the industry.

Great PR is routed in great planning. Without taking the time to consider what the business and PR objectives will be and working back from there in terms tactics and deliverables, PR really just becomes output for output sakes. And as an industry we have to be better than that. In fact, given the changes taking place in the media and marketing landscape, I would argue that planning is even more important. Now is the time to put more rigour into the planning process to ensure success, because as someone said “Good plans shape good decisions. That’s why good planning helps to make elusive dreams come true.”

By Andy W

Last night I was privileged to be invited to attend the Installation Dinner for the new Master of the City of London Guild of Public Relations Practitioners.  Having never been to a Livery Company event before, I was taken with the ritual and tradition that shaped the evening.  From the clapping in of the Court to the various formal toasts to the Queen and the Royal Family, the formality pervaded the evening.  Although very enjoyable, with excellent conversation and interesting fellow guests, I was left pondering how relevant such pomp and ceremony is in today’s world of the PR practitioner.

By way of background, the City of London Guild of Public Relations Practitioners was formed in June 2000, with the same aims that have inspired all Livery Companies over the centuries: to promote and maintain excellence in the practice of our profession; to support education and training of practitioners; and to build charitable funds through which the public relations profession can give back to the communities it serves.

These are worthy aims but how does the Guild sit alongside other PR associations such as the CIPR and the PRCA?  Surely as a profession, PR is better qualified than most to see the benefits of having a single voice and a common purpose in the pursuit of professional excellence?  Many have commented that the industry does not speak with one voice and that it would benefit from a more joined up strategy across the various associations that represent the interests of all stakeholders in the PR community.

So what role does the Guild have?  There’s no doubt that the traditions of the livery companies are at odds with the often youthful nature of the PR industry.  To many it will appear anachronistic in today’s era of micro-blogs, social networking and 24-hour media consumption.  It may be considered quaint, typically British and of appeal only to a past generation of PRs.  But this has to be looked at in context of the aims, not just of the Guild of PR, but the Livery Companies in general.  The City of London has for centuries supported its trades through education and charitable endeavours and has provided a framework of professional governance that has helped create the City into what it is today.

The Guild therefore reflects a commitment by senior members of our industry to give something back and to create a forum that encourages good conversation and the interchange of ideas with peers both inside and outside the profession.  The altruistic goals of the Guild and the links it promotes to other City institutions and Livery Companies must be welcomed.  For sure the other professional bodies share some of this and for those who wish to get involved, they may be better representative of the industry at a grass roots level.  But for those who enjoy the tradition, old fashioned courtesies and a bit of glamorous pomp and circumstance, then the Guild of Public Relations Practitioners has its place even in today’s frenetic communications world.

By Annie W

Figures released in the annual online advertising expenditure report from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) and the World-Advertising Research Centre, reveals that the UK has become the first major economy where advertisers spend more on internet advertising than TV advertising. According to the latest reports a record £1.75bn was spent online in the first six months of 2009.  Compare this to 1998 figures, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, and just £19.4m was spent online and it’s clear that this is a hefty increase.

According to the IAB’s biannual report, online ad spend accounted for 23.5% of all spending in the first half of 2009 while television accounted for 21.9% and in the words of Guy Philipson, chief executive of the IAB, “This is the first major market where online has overtaken television to become the biggest single medium… it is a significant milestone.”

It is an impressive feat for a sector which has managed to rise above recession and budget cuts earlier in the year to successfully become the biggest advertising sector in the UK.  It also opens up a wealth of opportunities as brands look online to further extend their presence online.  However, I do think TV advertising still has a role to play.  While the internet has always been able to offer more in the way of measurability and accountability than its TV or print equivalents, TV gives advertisers a mass audience and brand building presence that cannot be played down.

So, to coin a popular phrase, perhaps it’s time for a ‘third way’ where brands harness both the power of the web and the TV to make the most of their budgets. I’m looking forward to seeing what planners have up their sleeves.  While the internet may be leading the pack in terms of ad revenues, a truly effective campaign will be one that puts the consumer in the driving seat and reflects the way their audience consume content.

By Elle OG

This year’s IBC is thronging with people. Despite talks of recession the big stands are as vibrant a presence as last year and the show floor extends over the entirety of the RAI’s 87,000 square metre complex. The Amsterdam city trams are packed with grey-suited people using their free travel pass to get there for the 9am opening. (And what a genius idea that pass is. What better way to encourage the 40,000-plus visitors pouring into the city to explore beyond the confines of their hotel room and the conference centre itself?)

It’s not until someone makes a passing comment on day three about the gender split that it even crosses my mind to wonder whether one sex dominates the show. I’ll admit I came to Amsterdam with some preconceptions based on my own prejudices: I assumed that more than a few stands would have brought scantily-clad female models with them to advertise their wares to an overwhelmingly male audience.

It’s taken me three busy days to really look around me and think about it. What I’ve found has surprised me – and for once, not too unpleasantly. There are women on several stands who are taking an active part in the sales and networking process; for all I know, some of these smartly-dressed individuals are the driving force behind the company they’re representing. Sitting in one of the various restaurants, picking gingerly at a greasy piece of fried chicken (let’s face it; you don’t go to IBC for the food), I look around and notice that while the majority of tables are taken up with serious-faced men in suits, there’s a good mix of women in there too; there are even a few women-only tables. It’s certainly not enough to represent the global gender mix, though, and in some halls, as a fellow female PR puts it, “they look at you like they’ve never seen a woman before”.

Still, I am pleasantly surprised by the lack of scantily-clad female models posing on stands, and I spend the afternoon putting my theory to the test. Camera in hand I go in search of examples of what, for the sake of argument, I shall refer to as ‘aesthetic marketing’.

For the most part my search is unrewarded. The closest I come is a handful of companies using models to demonstrate their green screen technology and one rather surreal photo opportunity with a young lady in a wedding dress. I return to my client’s stand with only one half-way notable example: a video of a topless dancing girl whose breasts are obscured from broadcast thanks to the use of one company’s editing technology. Even this, it seems, is very much the exception. For the most part, companies are letting their products speak for themselves.

I remark on this to one industry stalwart who tells me how dramatically things have changed since he started in the industry.

“When I began my career broadcast was worse than the motoring industry,” he says wryly. “It wasn’t considered a product launch if it didn’t have a bevvy of beauties draped across it.”

He speaks from experience; this is a man who has been to every IBC since the show began. Although I’ve sent clients out to Amsterdam for the last five years this is only my second trip in person, and I bow to his superior knowledge.

“It’s certainly more low key these days,” I say.

Even as we speak, a pair of showgirls with feathered headdresses waltz past offering free tickets to a post-production training session. They swan up to my companion and offer him a ticket. I am given one as an afterthought; they clearly do not consider me to be their target audience.

“It’s like you conjured them out of the air,” the industry stalwart remarks.

I’m in a thoughtful frame of mind as I watch the girls leave. “It’s not that I disapprove,” I tell him. “They look like they’re having fun and as long as they’re paid fairly then good for them. But all things being equal, shouldn’t there be a male equivalent?”

We both laugh but as I do I wonder if I’m really joking. When we start working in an industry with a truly equal boardroom balance, surely the marketing tactics will undergo a reflective shift? Perhaps, in the future, instead of a team of showgirls, I can hope to see Shia LaBeouf draped across a new product launch instead. And perhaps this will be the sign that we have finally said goodbye to the testosterone-dominated world of yesterday.