Nice, readable interview with Guy Kawasaki about PR and suchlike. Kawasaki was on the original Mac team and appears to be a generally nice sort of chap.
Archive for July, 2009
Newspaper Licensing Authority madness
Andy Parkhouse - July 16th, 2009Interesting post from Kevin Taylor (President, Chartered Institute of Public Relations) about an insane proposal by the Newspaper Licensing Authority (NLA) to charge agencies for simply providing links to someone else’s content. I.e, right now, I should be paying the NLA for providing you with the link to Kevin’s post.
Kevin explains why this is nonsense very well, so I don’t need to any further here.
Meanwhile we had our own interesting experience with the NLA this year. The NLA are a *commercial body* not a government organisation. They derive revenue by threatening other companies with copyright suits on behalf of their members (publishers), unless a license is paid.
I have no problem with the concept of fair revenue for publishers, and being generally rather scrupulous, when the NLA came calling earlier this year we declared all of the copyrighted newspaper materials we have sent to clients recently. As it happened this amounted principally to approx 10 copies of Metro (a free newspaper) which we had collected and passed to some clients whose work was featured.
For this use the NLA proposed a fee of approx £10k, including ‘backdating for assumed prior infringements’, and a steep ongoing annual fee. That being obvious nonsense, it was sorted out, but not before it had wasted a good amount of several people’s time here.
As Kevin says the NLA appears to exist in a parallel universe, so I’ll leave them to it and end here before this becomes a tedious rant (maybe I’m too late).
The 100th ‘Big Brother for Guardian readers’ comment…
Becca - July 10th, 2009We’re two weeks into my Media Internship with Team Rubber, and, though I can’t speak for everybody, it’s been a weird fortnight for me. After living the laid-back student lifestyle for three years (studying English, not Medicine, obviously) I’m suddenly surrounded by people who can be creative on demand. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes even all day.
As a stranger to off-the-cuff performance, I’d be disappointing in ‘One And Other.’ It’s Antony Gormley’s latest idea, as I’m sure you know: filling the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square with the activities of a different randomly-selected member of the public every hour, for 100 days. On-demand creativity (or lack of it) has never been more exposed.
Take the girl up there now, Ciara, swigging with deliberation from a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. She’s not badly-dressed, in fact quite conventionally on-trend, and her bio says she ‘co-runs an art space,’ but she doesn’t seem to have any bright ideas on how to use her hour on the plinth apart from smiling rather inanely. Being up there is enough for her. (Edit: The next girl does exactly the same, minus the champagne.)
Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the whole curious experiment is the interaction it’s inviting, both online and offline. There’s a live webstream on www.oneandother.co.uk from which the view is better than the one tourists get in the plinth’s immediate vicinity. The Guardian is panting for details, setting up ‘plinthwatch’ on Twitter and Flickr, so readers can “help us document” the event. I’m sporadically searching #oneandother for the many pithy comments, and looking forward to the weekly highlights (catch them tonight at 7 on Sky Arts.
Gormley’s plinth has a certain amount in common with the internet itself, in that it’s a catalyst for interaction, communication, and debate, while at the same time being a godsend to the ordinary exhibitionist. One person, one pedestal, one hour of being beamed around the world, talked about, slagged off or idolized: frankly, I’m amazed so many people want to do it. But they do. Plinthgoers (a good proportion of them Art students, but not all) are embracing their hour in the spotlight. Gormley’s intention is to build up a picture of Britain. So far, so representative, in that these days, it seems perfectly normal to believe you have a right to be famous.
Whether everyone with a voice deserves an audience is debatable, but what’s amazing is that this democratic opportunity for self-promotion does exist online. Everyone has the chance to introduce themselves to the world, and share their love of llamas, Civil War re-enactments, scrabble, giant foods, or whatever their passion may be. Ordinary people no longer need financial backing, political influence or a twenty-six foot high column to share what they think. Personally, I’m taking the ‘One And Other’ project as a celebration of the fact that literally anybody with access to an internet connection has a platform they can use to be themselves. Fortunately – to borrow a pun from Boris Johnson – if there’s one out there for everybody, I can have faith that some day my plinth will come.
(Sorry. I’m pretty sure I just earned myself an hour on a stone platform, in the rain, dressed as a rubber duck.)
Being Media Week’s Team of the Week
Ian Ochiltree - July 6th, 2009There are a few acronyms I could use (“WTF, OMG, LOL”) to describe Rubber Republic’s feature in Media Week, but best refrain having read it. Though it may also read as Meme of the Week to some, I think it’s piquantly witty and a fitting snapshot of viral batter Rubber culture.
Baby’s Got Backspin
Ian Ochiltree - July 3rd, 2009Here we are again: the semi-finals of Wimbledon. We’re almost at the peak of that beautiful stretch of summer when every English man and woman become strawberry scoffing tennis connoisseurs; tennis puns lighten the muggy summer air and the Williams sisters scare all of us.
To top off this annual gloriousness, we even have a British person with a chance of winning! National morale is at an all-time high, sitting proudly and distinguished inbetween those familiar warnings of floods, droughts, heatwaves and mutated flu strains that visit us – unwanted – each year.
As Rory put it, it’s ‘Andymonium’.
Some people don’t like his face, but we’re proud of you lad, dead proud!
In celebration of all of this, I have selected a clip that harks back to a period of British cunningness and tennis domination. Please enjoy, have a great weekend and use the phrase “Hard cheese old boy” for the remainder of the summer!
Online Marketing Show 2009
Jenny Hardy - July 1st, 2009
Largely the show was geared up for large companies with marketing departments, who wish to explore and learn new ideas. That’s not to say there were not nuggets of interest and new things to learn.
Despite at some times unbearable heat, Adam and I managed three talks and a look around the stands.
The most interesting talk was by Amelia Torode, Partner and Head of Digital Strategy at VCCP. Amelia discussed the “Compare The Meerkat” campaign. Amelia highlighted the big change from traditional Ad campaigns where it was important to make them ‘sticky’ to remain in the consciousness of the audience, now a successful social media campaign is about ‘Spreadability’.
Love or hate Aleksandr Orlov, follow him on twitter or be his friend on Facebook. The core idea and strong narrative spread across platforms, was key to the success and charm of the campaign. One problem was due to issues with measurability. I have a good guess that many agencies and clients have similar issues with social marketing.
Although Compare the Market had measurable success, with its positioning in the market and many other benefits i.e. increased sales, increased traffic and reduction of costs etc. There is little research and evidence that consumers engaging with social media campaigns will necessarily engage with the product. Will being friends with Aleksander make you a customer of Compare the Market?
Amelia will be starting a research project with the IAB. I will be very interested in the results, as will many others.
There was a general consensus throughout the talks, that good conversations start with questions, so in the words of Adam “ Interesting! How you can’t kill the meerket? What could be the end strategy?
Team Rubber days out: Delib’s democracy debate
Ben Witnall - July 1st, 2009We went to Parliament and had us a debate. Check out the pics over at Flickr…
