Who do you believe?
Posted Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 10:24am in Media, Off topic | 1 Comment
HOUSE PRICES STILL SOARING
HOUSE prices are continuing to soar in defiance of interest rate rises, official figures revealed yesterday.
The average home in England and Wales went up by more than £1,200 every month in the past year despite Bank of England attempts to dampen the market with hikes to the base rate.
And in welcome news for homeowners, experts claim the possibility of a housing crash is becoming more and more remote.
IS THE HOUSE PRICE BOOM OVER?
House prices are falling across wide areas of the country, it has been revealed.
This could signal the end of the 11-year property boom.
Mortgage approvals in April have also fallen, this time to a 12-month low in an another indication of weakening home buyer demand.
Alarm bells sounded after official figures from the Land Registry showed prices slipping in four of the ten regions into which it divides England and Wales.
MyJet & EasySpace
Posted Wednesday, May 30, 2007 at 4:29pm in PR General | 2 Comments
BrandRepublic’s reporting (free subs reqd) that low cost airline, EasyJet, has partnered with MySpace UK form a branded community and to tap “into the social network’s 8.7m user base to create an online resource for travellers.” The platform will allow consumers to upload photographs and videos from global holiday destinations. As well as this, BrandRepublic says: “The branded community also allows MySpace members to blog on their easyJet travel experiences, access the latest cheap-flight deals and message other internet users.”
This is quite a bold and commendable move from EasyJet in my opinion. Fair play to them. Creating an open discussion for anyone to vent their opinions, both good and bad, certainly has an element of risk to it. But, then again, if it’s successful, EasyJet will have created a peer-to-peer platform which marketing messages just couldn’t
And here’s an EasyJet flight landing. 
Bonus Link: The Beeb reports that music social network site, Last.fm, has been bought by CBS Corporation. One for my mate Mats. (Via Iain Tate)
If you just build it doesn’t mean they’ll come
Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 8:27pm in PR General | 1 Comment
Is it any wonder PR is trying to adapt - with social networking sites heavily on its agenda for some time now. However, what some people are forgetting is that just because they understand the culture of social networks and, in fact, they may be frequent users of a particular social networking site, doesn’t mean they can just waltz in there and get their message (or their client’s message rather) out.
What I’m trying to say is that you hear all this advice by experts people who know a bit saying you’ve got “embrace”, “engage”, “give something of value to” the community but the point they miss is the big inherent idea that will embrace, engage and give value but also create talkability around the brand. What is the…
BIG IDEA?
Now this is the hard part. Coming up with a creative idea to hit your market online and then transcend to offline. Anyone can say: “Yeah we’ll create a profile on MySpace or we’ll form a group on Facebook or we’ll upload a video to YouTube”. So what! Will anyone actually care? It’s all about the creative ideas… And these, my friends, are harder to produce than throw away comments.
Bonus link: While we’re on the subject of social networks, NMA reports Facebook was the fastest growing website in the UK in April. A report by Comscore said the site’s unique user numbers rose by 38% to 3.7m during the month. Yep, I was one of those uniques.
The UK needs a Consumerist
Posted Sunday, May 27, 2007 at 6:51pm in Blogging, Off topic | 3 Comments
Customer service is terrible in the UK. It really is. How many times have you been got off the phone from a call centre and want to pull your hair out? I’ve been lied to; I’ve had the phone put down on me; I’ve been told by people in senior positions that they would call me back – they never did. I know I’m not alone either.
It’s quite bizarre that there’s a blog dedicated to outing these particular companies that don’t pride themselves in customer satisfaction in the US but not one in the UK. After all, the US is renowned for its customer-focused service staff, isn’t it? Okay, a lot of the “have a nice day” stuff does come across as a bit fake. But I’d take the fake-but-polite approach over the miserable-and-rude any day.
For example, a girl I know who has lived in the US but now resides in London had problems with her bank account. No fault of her own. It was the bank’s. After it was finally resolved did the bank apologise? Nope. And in her own words: “If that was in the US I would have a bunch of flowers on my desk about now.”
So, here’s what I propose. Shiny Media should start a blog dedicated to outing bad service from large companies who really should know better. Go on Shiny, you know you want to.
Check out Keith Flint in this video from Essex band, The Prodigy. This is how I feel after constant terrible customer service. 
Redbull - first brand on Facebook’s new platform
Posted at 1:11am in PR General | 6 Comments
On Thursday, Facebook announced their new platform which allows Facebook users (Facebookers?) to add third party applications (widgets) into their profiles. Anything from music, video, audio, games and even Word documents if they so wish. (See Drew’s post about the Twitter integration.) This is a great move for both Facebook and brands in my opinion. And, if the brands do it right, it may give something of value to the increasingly growing (particularly in the UK) Facebook community.
First brand to join the party is energy drink, Red Bull, with its (membership required) Red Bull Roshambull widget which is effectively a game you play with other members. From the widget page: “RoShamBull is the Red Bull version of Rock Paper Scissors (commonly referred to as RoShamBo). It has a long and complicated history of which no one really seems to know all the details. It originated in Japan or Scandinavia or near Portugal or maybe in Africa sometime BC or AD… see what we mean?”
The basic concept is simple:
* Create a game that allows you to challenge other members.
* Add Red Bull branding.
* Watch it spread virally.
I installed it but didn’t use it so uninstalled pretty much straight after so can’t comment on how fun or boring it actually is. At the time of writing it’s had 5,431 downloads which isn’t a massive amount. Particularly compared with the iLike widget (allows you to add music, gig dates etc) which has had nearly 170,000. There’s also a widget which allows you to add YouTube videos.
This is certainly an interesting situation given that Facebook’s prior marketing methods were more advertising-based. My question from a PR point of view is this: Do PR agencies have the technical skills to create these branded widgets or will the work be passed on to the (possibly) more capable digital agencies?