Stuff and Things

RIP Google Reader – but RSS remains an important PR tool

By alex | Published: April 8, 2013

There was plenty of hullabaloo across the PR and journalist community last month with the announcement that Google was killing off Google Reader from the start of July.  Indeed for many users (including me) the popular RSS reader was one of the main sources of keeping updated on the latest news.  Yet at the same time it has become apparent that people’s online news consumption habits are changing with the advent of the likes of Twitter or tablet-inspired news aggregation services such as Flipboard.

Clearly Google is of this opinion, with rumours it has a replacement news offering in the works.  However, certainly in the fields of PR and journalism there is still clearly very much a need for the trusted RSS.  For me it still remains the best way to monitor your chosen news sources on a daily basis without having to filter out the noise of social media chatter.  It just isn’t as easy to find an interesting technology story amongst tweets about holidays, football and the latest celebrity meltdown!

Indeed being able to keep on top of the breaking news agenda is also a great way to capitalise on those important issues response opportunities – so I would recommend any one getting into PR that setting up an RSS feed (to monitor key publications, analyst houses, clients and their competitors) should be one of the first things they do.

So with the upcoming demise of Google Reader here are some of the alternative RSS services you can sign up to. (NB.  I have signed up to Feedly which also has a couple of excellent iPhone and Android apps. It appears many other people have made that move too in the last month).

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Budgeting Technology – a cut below the rest?

By leila | Published: March 27, 2013

Last week, the 2013 Budget was announced or rather, was leaked by a certain London newspaper, amidst much speculation and high expectations from the tech sector. However, despite much talk from the Chancellor about the pivotal role that technology is expected to play in boosting the UK’s ailing economy; it was interesting to note that there was precious little in this Budget to add flesh to the bones of this claim.

Last year’s Budget was full of promises of incentives, but the 2013 one had slim pickings for the technology sector; despite it representing around 12% of GDP. There was no specific mention of an extension to the ultrafast broadband programme announced in last year’s Budget, nothing on skills and training and the rumoured Wi-Fi rollout on trains never left the station. The Chancellor did reiterate the Government’s intention to give Britain the fastest broadband and mobile telephony in Europe, but no details were announced. While some argued that provisions such as a new £2,000 employee allowance and reduced corporation tax will help companies such as tech start-ups to overcome administrative hurdles, many industry pundits would have liked to have seen specific measures put in place to extend tech hubs, encourage BYOD, and push IT strategies to provide joined-up services.

All in all, this was disappointing. Most of us in the tech industry were undoubtedly expecting more; particularly as the Chancellor had emphasised the critical role of technology in ensuring that the UK is competitive in a global marketplace and vowed to make us the tech centre of Europe. It will certainly be interesting to see if more specific plans emerge later on in the year!

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Knowing when to jump on the bandwagon

By stephanie | Published: March 25, 2013

News hijacking or issues response (IR) is a very effective way to gain exposure, establish your company as an industry expert and more importantly; generate coverage. For PRs it can be fun and demonstrate to your client the key skills and attributes of a PR professional: having your finger on the pulse of the news agenda, the ability to write succinctly on message and those all-important media skills. However, it is easier said than done and its success often relies on a good relationship between the client and the agency.

IR is when you see a new report, research or news story that is relevant to your client and something that you can offer a unique perspective on. Timing is everything. The aim is to take your report/research/news story and client comment to your core press before they have seen the news and especially before they have written it up. The ability to get comment written and approved in time is generally the make or break of an IR. 

Now it is important to note that IRs are not for every business, as they often require the respondent to take a positive or negative stance against a major industry issue. An example would be agreeing with a report that is critical of the Government: if the Government is one of your major customers, it is probably not the smartest business move. Another stumbling block can be client approvals. If you know that your client has a multiple stage approval process, you need to consider if you will get the comment approved in time so you can pitch it to journalists before they write up the story. If it’s likely to take at minimum half a day to be approved, it is unlikely you will be able to sell it into the media in time and therefore your resources are probably best used elsewhere.

The development of pre-approved comment, which can be tweaked to relate to a news story, is one way to speed up approvals; especially if a client is based in a different time zone. However, there will still be times when a more technical or controversial response is required, which will need proper consideration from the client.

IR’s can go wrong, but the key to avoiding this is to ensure that you are on message and that you do the necessary due diligence to ensure it is relevant to your client.

At the end of the day; for an IR to work, agencies need to demonstrate their knowledge of the business and in return the client needs to trust the agency will only act in their very best interests. 

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Crisis communications and saying sorry: not just when, but how

By michelle | Published: March 11, 2013

We say sorry tens of times a day. ‘Sorry’ for bumping into someone in the street when it’s not our fault, ‘sorry, I didn’t quite catch that’ when you simply can’t hear; and of course we apologise for a perfectly legitimate complaint, ‘I’m sorry, but my soup is cold’. Perhaps our unique British politeness is to blame, but is the word sorry uttered so many times a day that it’s beginning to lose all meaning? I’d go as far to say that we don’t’ even realise when we’re saying sorry, or when we’re being apologised to. So for businesses caught in the midst of a PR disaster, how can they make their customers hear their apologies?

Firstly, as Stephanie recently blogged, timing is everything; it took Apple two long weeks to apologise for the Apple Maps debacle and they’re still mopping up the bad PR around that one. We’ve seen many corporate apologies in the past few weeks, particularly in the wake of the horse-meat scandal, and some in particular have stuck out. Tesco, though not the only guilty party by any stretch, has been a serial apologist throughout horsemeat-gate. It has taken out full-page ads in every national newspaper, more than once, to say sorry to customers.

There is something striking in this age of digital, rapid, instant, direct-to-the-consumer communication, that the full-page print newspaper apology is still so popular with big businesses; and looking more closely at what Tesco said is very interesting. An article on the BBC last week about the style of Tesco’s newspaper ads, suggested that they have more in common with poems than standard corporate apologies. Looking at the poems/apologies I find myself agreeing. They are great examples of some very creative copywriting on a difficult subject. Sorry is still the hardest word, but Tesco’s copywriters have managed to turn saying sorry into a PR campaign all by itself.

It’s really quite ingenious from Tesco; neatly diverting attention from the original furore to their tightly penned sonnets of sorrow. But this is a risky strategy and one which could easily backfire. Some of the commenters in the BBC article think Tesco are just creating a little ‘mood music’ as a distraction. Whatever your view, that they’ve got us talking about their apology rather than what they are apologising for, kind of proves the point.

What can we learn from corporate apologies? None of us working in PR and comms actually want to deal with a PR crisis on behalf of a client, but if you find yourself writing a statement of apology would you use it as an opportunity to show off your clever wordsmithing and jot down a couple of haikus? I imagine the answer is no. For multi-billion pound brands like Tesco, they can afford to take the risk, because let’s be honest, very few people are actually going to stop shopping there. Most of us aren’t working for brands with such high equity (hi, Apple!) that what we do or say doesn’t actually matter, so if we do encounter a crisis then taking a risk with reputation is the least likely option. The old adage applies, keep it simple. And as my mum still says to this very day, ‘sorry means you won’t do it again’.

What do you think? Answers in rhyming couplets only below. 

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Technology PR: what the bleep is it exactly?

By tristan | Published: February 28, 2013

A few weeks back, Ana provided some tips for graduates looking to crack that tricky first step into PR. Amongst the points raised; she flagged that the candidate’s ability to define PR is a key question that will be asked at interview stage. It’s one that I distinctly remember being asked myself in every PR job interview I’ve ever been invited to, so I can vouch for this from personal experience. However, I also seem to remember that on every occasion, I’ve given an entirely different answer, which is telling of a couple of things.

Firstly, it admittedly shows that I tend to ‘wing it’ and make something up as I go along in this scenario. I’d actually suggest that an ability to think on your feet is essential in any interview (carefully balanced with being prepared of course) and one I’d add to Ana’s list of tips. More significantly though, it’s also an indication of the sheer number of ways of defining the PR industry. There’s not really a right or wrong answer as to what PR is; there isn’t even a tin for it to say what it does on, so the best definitions tend to be open-minded.

For those (like me) who studied PR as a degree course, I’d suggest disposing of some of the more snooze-worthy definitions from the likes of the CIPR that are done to death on university courses and coming up with their own. Here are some of my interpretations from a tech PR view to get you thinking:

  • It’s about communication – (well duh!) Of course it is – every definition you come across includes that, but most fail to communicate the communication that they’re attempting to communicate. If you get my meaning. So what’s the important point? In the technology industry, businesses have products and customers have challenges they need solutions to. However, businesses’ messages often don’t translate well between the two; customers might have a need for the business’ products, but they might not understand how it answers those needs. PR is about being the middle-man here, providing advice to the business on how best to develop a message that will be understood by their customers and bring the desired results, then executing its delivery.
  • It’s about understanding people – from the definition above, you’d be forgiven for getting PR confused with advertising. (Note; if you are trying to get into PR – don’t confuse the two. It’s an instant fail, unless you manage to pull something unbelievably spectacular – like your dad being the editor of the Financial Times – out of the bag). On a basic level, PR is about getting coverage for clients, which usually means persuading journalists to write about them, giving the all-important third-party testimony to their reputability. Contrary to popular opinion, in technology PR, you can’t just rely on knowing the right people to get results (although it does help). It’s far more important to understand when your client has a story that a particular journalist will be interested in writing about. This knowledge and understanding of the media is the key to great PR.
  • It’s the message, stupid – Following-on from that last point, no self-respecting journalist is going to write about your client’s latest announcement because it’s ‘super-exciting’ ‘ground breaking’ or even, dare I suggest it ‘very important to your client.’ The role of the PR agency is to develop a message that reflects the points the client wants to communicate, whilst providing a story that’s going to get the journalist excited enough to spend an hour or two of their day writing about it. With a well thought-through message, even the most mundane announcement can achieve some great coverage. Dom recently wrote a particularly insightful account of how to develop a strong message that’s well worth a read for anyone interested in PR or James Cameron’s Aliens.

These are just my three top-level ways of explaining what technology PR is and only just scratch the surface. If you’re looking to impress at interview stage, the best definitions are those you’ve come up with yourself, so get your thinking caps on and feel free to share your thoughts below. It certainly won’t do you any harm!

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