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 the ‘Media Mini Moguls’ Category
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).
Oh Yeah? Prove It – Measuring Social Media
Andy Parkhouse - April 20th, 2009Useful blog piece on hard metrics and anecdotal evidence for the value of social media. Via Power Shift – Social Media Blog
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Knowing how to make careful use of both measured and anecdotal evidence is important.
Things that can be objectively measured meaningfully *should* be measured, and decisions should be based on that hard evidence.
Where objective measurement is either *very difficult*, or conceptually *not possible*, anecdotal evidence is a powerful input to decision-making.
Economist Snippet on Social Media for Marketers
Andy Parkhouse - April 9th, 2009Useful article from this week’s Economist about how the economic downturn is affecting marketing strategies. Final three paragraphs very interesting – snippets below.
“Interest in things such as green products and healthy foods will continue to grow in a post-crisis world, but customers will be less willing to pay a premium for them, and will demand more value for money when they do.”
“The downturn will also accelerate the use of social media, such as blogs and social-networking sites, by consumers looking for intelligence on firms and their products [...] Social media make it harder for brands to pull the wool over consumers’ eyes, but they also offer canny companies a powerful new channel through which to promote their wares and test new products and pricing strategies.”
“…this recession has triggered a wholesale reappraisal by shoppers of the value that their habitual brands deliver. The winners will be those that adapt intelligently to the new reality. The losers will be those who think they can win simply by telling consumers to ‘Want It!’”
The World’s Strongest Truck (updated)
Andy Parkhouse - April 3rd, 2009Update on the Volvo Truck game I posted a while ago. I’m following this story because:
1. I like big trucks.
2. We’re interested in non-obvious brands and organisations using social media intelligently (and people talking successfully to a niche audience).
3. Big Lorry Blog is an interesting success story of a print magazine creating a strong online following through good blogging.
Lego…Social Media Heroes
Andy Parkhouse - March 31st, 2009Lego using social media well again: this is the launch video for a new Lego train (Emerald Night).
Lego trains have a very engaged and die-hard fan base – a true community, sharing things online and meeting in the real world.
The Emerald Night set is a premium-priced toy for children and adult fans of Lego; it was designed with fan input, has been tracked on blogs and forums for the last few months, and was launched at real-world fan events.
Interesting.
We Take You Inside Today…
Andy Parkhouse - March 11th, 2009New from Rubber Republic, here’s a charming little film we’ve made for the Radio 4 Today Programme.
It’s great to do work that reinforces the connection between people who’ve got a product or brand, and their existing customers. Sure, it’s about repeat business and loyalty, but it’s also about building up a brand that people appreciate and want in their lives.
Also, sounds cheesy, but I love the Today programme, and I love working on things I love….Lego, can we help you?
Bristol highlighted as world innovation hub; government support extremely patchy
Andy Parkhouse - March 4th, 2009Have a look at this map by McKinsey of global innovation hubs, Bristol is identified as a ‘Hot Spring’ of innovation,
“…hubs tend to develop a specialism and build credibility as an ‘innovation hot spring’, often around a small number of companies, before expanding.”
Interestingly, Bristol is not far behind London in terms of significance on the map, and is one of only five cities in Europe named by the map.
McKinsey also argue that “…hot springs are typically driven by either targeted, government-led investment projects.” How well do we do on that?
Well government support in Bristol is patchy; there have been great examples of far-sighted grant funded projects which go beyond cash handouts to individual companies (not interesting) and instead focus on producing network benefits by developing collaboration, a culture of innovation, and drawing in talent to the city. This should be recognised, encouraged and applauded.
What should be condemned forthrightly is the absence of any sense of high-level consistent support and vision from local agencies charged with supporting innovation.
To provide some context, on Radio Four’s Today programme this morning, Gordon Brown said “…at the same time you’ve got to plan for the future, so we know the green economy, green jobs, digital economy, highly skilled economy, our creative industries, our advanced pharmaceuticals, advanced manufacturing, these are the sectors that are going to do well in the future, so we’ve got to invest“.
I know a large number of founders and directors of Bristol based innovative creative businesses. It’s far from clear to us that the vision (articulated by Gordon Brown, but predating his adoption of it) is understood by local public sector bodies, key among these being South West RDA.
Those of us who’ve attempted to engage over the years with these bodies (including, but not limited to SWRDA) are frustrated by messages of inability to help, and the utterly tedious sector politics between different public bodies.
Let’s be clear: those of us building innovative creative businesses are in the business of getting things done; we have a vision of growth, and being the best in the world.
Public sector politics is of *zero* interest to us, and we consider it an absolute waste of our time. Too often the sense is that we are a ‘supplier’ being ‘commissioned’ to ‘deliver outcomes’. Screw that: we are the customer here, the public sector is the supplier, and we are demanding service.
That said, let me also be absolutely clear that when support has been available, that support has been brilliant. It has also usually been driven by visionary, almost renegade individuals who have no thought of sector politics and whose concern is not their public sector career path, but to *get things done* .
What is hugely problematic is *not* that *nothing* has ever been done, it’s the lack of consistent high level vision. Every few years we seem to have to start from scratch with building the case for support to address market failures. Let me repeat that last line: we are looking for support to address market failures: recruitment, training, networking, publicity, high risk innovation. We don’t need and are not looking for simple cash handouts, we’ll leave that to banks, thanks.
I want to see this scrabbling replaced by a sense of momentum and *building on success*. We have this incredible opportunity to be a global centre for innovation in high tech creative businesses; that will be hugely valuable to the city region over the long term.
Meanwhile, from the outside looking in, public sector often seems unable to think beyond the idea of securing its own organisational funding, careers and consultancy fees.
Some (not all) of you guys appear to be stuck in some kind of ridiculous zero-sum game, where a loss for someone else is a win for you and vice versa. You don’t seem to understand how to play for the long term. Better ways exist. Ladies and gentlemen, time to get your eyes up and start looking at the bigger goal. This is a call to arms.
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Postscript 2: feel this is unfair? Want right of reply? There’s a comment system on this blog. Lets have a conversation in public.
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Postscript 2: industry people, business owners, this is a call to arms for you as well. This is not a blame game. The future will be what we make of it.
