Similarities between Innocent Drinks and Geek Squad
Posted Wednesday, August 22, 2007 at 11:02am in PR General | 4 Comments
If you work in the media, particularly PR, marketing and advertising you’re probably aware of and, indeed, admire the Innocent Drinks brand. The marketing behind it is so different to any other UK consumer product. From their grass covered vans to their yearly Fruitstock - now the Village Fete. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Innocent’s not the first though. Take a look at this presentation given by Robert Stephens, founder of US based IT help company, Geek Squad. If you haven’t heard of Geek Squad, recently launched in the UK, you should take a look at the company’s website too. How do you make a subject like IT help which is often considered boring into something fun? See below.
Spot any similarities?
Video via the the flux capacitor
Our social media news release video
Posted Friday, August 17, 2007 at 9:55pm in Blogging, Media, PR General, Technology | 20 Comments
Hot off the production line, here’s our promo video for our version of the social media news release we recently launched. Disclosure: Yes this is how I actually pronounce ‘audio’ and ‘video’. 
It contains both webitpr’s chief exec, Adam, and myself explaining a little background history and purpose of the SMNR, webitpr’s take on it and also includes a blurb by Mark Burgess, creative director of Big Button Media, webitpr’s multimedia partner.
I think it’s great and it serves as a good educational tool for those wanting to know more about the SMNR and how it works. Sometimes it’s hard trying to explain in conversation exactly what the SMNR is and does - I think this will help. Well, it’ll help me at least.
Would love your thoughts, particularly Todd Defren’s as we reference his template in the video itself.
It’s also viewable on the webitpr website btw.
Here’s the social media news release video on YouTube.
Bonus video: Here’s the outtakes from the last video. Good for a giggle. There’s another outtakes version being made for the SMNR video as we speak. **sigh**
technorati tags: webitpr, social+media+news+release, smnr
Top five social media tools revisited
Posted Thursday, August 16, 2007 at 10:20pm in Blogging | 7 Comments
Copypunk aka Clogger aka Milton Hicks (Second Life) aka Head of Creative Media Services at LEWIS PR (nice new website) aka Jon Silk, loves a meme. And was the instigator in July of last year on the ‘My Top 5 Social Media Tools‘ meme which spread across the PR blogosphere. Drew’s compiled a list of what others’ top five were from last year and it’s interesting to see the ‘tools’ that people value and use in their day-to-day job.
It’ll also be interesting to see if anyone’s preferences have moved on since then too. After all, the online world moves at 200mph… or does it? Last year mine were WordPress (what this blog runs on), Bloglines (how I read my feeds), Firefox (great browser), Google Analytics and FeedBurner (for stats and data) and BrandPulse (a very expensive monitoring tool).
This year hasn’t changed that much I’m afraid. The first three, WordPress, Bloglines and Firefox were all there last year. And the two new editions aren’t really tools as such.
1. WordPress. WordPress is a state of the art semantic personal publishing platform. It has too much functionality, too many plugins and, being open source, there’s too many developers and designers cranking out useful addons and beautiful designs to make any competitor come close. You know the Apple cult? Think of WordPress as the blog platform equivalent.
2. Bloglines. I believe there’s no better RSS reader out there. And I’ve used a lot, including Newsgator and FeedDemon. Why is it so good? Well, it’s not a desktop reader (which puzzles me why anyone would want to use a desktop reader anyway), which means I can read my feeds from any computer with an Internet connection. But that’s not all, thanks to Bloglines Mobile I can read also read my feeds anywhere I have a phone signal. Bloglines is my door to thousands of opinions and insights.
3. Firefox. Read this post to see why it’s one of my favourite social media tools.
4. Last FM. Not a tool at all. But it helps me work better so I guess it is a tool in that respect. Kinda. Last FM is an awesome Web2.0 music station that has revolutionised the way I discover new music. I have my own personal radio station playing only the type of music I like without the adverts and without the annoying DJs. Excluding Chris Moyles because he’s not annoying, he’s a legend.
5. Facebook. Again, not a tool but it’s a social media platform that allows me to keep up to date with all my mates and colleagues. I really think it’s a fantastic way of maintaining relationships that can’t be maintained in the real world due to geographical constraints. Okay it’s not as good as in person but it’s better than nothing.
So there you have it. Nothing much to report from Davies Towers this time around.
Bloggers I’m tagging (and I know some people hate memes so please don’t think I’ll be offended if you don’t respond) are David Brain, Ed Lee, Paull Young, Ewan MacLeod and Melanie (Mel) Seasons.
Interview: talkToshiba
Posted at 5:55pm in Blogging, PR General | 1 Comment
UPDATE: The Behind the Buzz blog also has some additional insights.
Last month I was sent a Toshiba Tecra A8 by the nice chaps at talkToshiba. Interested to find out more, I email one of the guys, Jason, from talkToshiba on the outreach programme they’re working on. Here are the Q&As. (my questions are in bold)
Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions, Jason. First off, can you give me a little background about yourself and your role at talkToshiba?
I’m the Editor and Project Manager for talkToshiba. As well as editing the English language articles, I oversee site development and the trialist campaign. I try to make myself sound important but in fact, I’m a mere menial: Lola, Sondre, Franziska, Karen, Lucy, Jenny and Sylwia most do of the hard work and bully me mercilessly.
Now, can you give me some background on the Blogger Outreach Programme you guys have been working on? Is this the first of its kind for Toshiba?
Toshiba has recognised the value of engaging online voices for a while now, but the LoveToLead competition which launched the R400 was their first formal Outreach Campaign. LoveToLead was so successful that talkToshiba was initiated to build upon this.
I noticed that the talkToshiba blog is multilingual (English, French and Dutch), is the programme of a European scope or is it UK specific?
It targets the UK, France and Germany, but the interweb tends not to respect national boundaries so we have to be flexible.
Note: Ma bad. I obviously don’t know my Dutch from my German.
What is the primary objective of the programme? Is it simply to gain online coverage or are you looking to build relationships with the online community?
Both of these objectives are important. We want to encourage discussion about Toshiba and distributing trial notebooks to bloggers is an effective way to achieve this. Building relationships is also vital: conversations can’t merely be one way and the best blogs/bloggers are not aiming to be megaphones. They don’t have much time for those who only aspire to monologue.
How many bloggers have you approached in the programme? What are your reasons for choosing this number of people? And why did you approach the people you did?
We aim to keep the trial notebooks in peoples’ hands as much as possible and to do this we approach a broad cross section of the blogging community. It’s always nice to get the laptops back, so we generally only lend to relatively well established bloggers. At the moment we’re keen to get notebooks to Linux users. I’m an Ubuntu fan and buying a notebook is a very different experience if you intend to install a Linux distro or dual boot. Hardware compatibility and ease of installation both need to be checked before purchase and for intermediate users (such as me) an online installation walkthrough for your particular model is a godsend.
Has anything surprised you since being involved in the programme? Anything unexpected?
The French element of the campaign has been a huge success and Sondre’s done a fantastic job of building up relationships with French bloggers. Less of a surprise, but nevertheless pleasing, is the quality of reviews that have come through. Most of the bloggers who’ve trialed the A8 have looked at how the Tecra A8 impacts on and interacts with their work and lifestyle - your own review is a prime example. That’s so much more useful than if they’d installed benchmarking software and reeled off a list of figures! To be honest, a touchpad that doesn’t lead to RSI is more valuable that another gig of RAM. After all, RSI slows you down a lot more .
If you could give one piece of advice to anyone considering a Blogger Outreach Programme what would it be?
The team is vital. Everyone involved needs to have a clear idea of what you are all trying to achieve and ‘be in there for the long haul’. After all, relationships are built by people, so if the team is changing every month then don’t expect very much.
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You can read the talkToshiba blog here.
Bit of this bit of that
Posted Wednesday, August 15, 2007 at 8:52pm in Blogging, Media, PR General | 3 Comments
I guess this is called lazy blogging when you just link to other people’s content without adding any additional insight or opinion.
PIONEERING PUBLICIST
Ben Ayers writes about the initiative he’s been working on for his employer, ITV, in conjunction with the Guardian. Ben says: “Today the Media Guardian announced an initiative I have been brokering with them to promote John Pilger’s latest film The War on Democracy which airs on ITV1 on 20th August. The Guardian website is to preview part of Pilger’s film this Friday ahead of its ITV TX alongside a live web chat with Pilger from 2pm – 3pm.”
Pretty significant considering “It will be the first time ITV has allowed broadcast of its content on another platform before network transmission.”
SOCIAL MEDIA? INFLUENCIAL? MEH!
The e-consultancy blog references a report by Jupiter Research which questions “the tactic of targeting high value customers through social media sites, saying they may be more traditional in their online behaviour than social marketers think. The research found that, although nearly 25% of all online adults are classed as influential ‘brand advocates’, they spend more time gathering product information and purchasing items than spreading the word through social media sites.”
Of course, I new this all along.
VLOG YOUR JOB. WHO’S JOB? YOUR JOB? MY JOB!
Sarah Stimson informs me of the new recruitment site by her employer and headhunting agency, Indigo Red. It’s called Vlog Your Job and does exactly what it says on the tin. The press release (tut tut, no social media news release) says:
(Vlog Your Job is) “a solution to tackle the problem of recruiting in a market where there are more employers than good candidates. VlogYourJob.com uses social media to post vlogs or short videos as job advertisements online to reach the newest generation of job hunters.”
Coincidentally, Sarah email interviewed me last week and TWL this week.
CITY BOY IS AVAILABLE TO ALL
If there’s one thing I miss about riding on the Tube it’s.. er,um.. nothing. But what took the edge away a little was reading City Boy, the anonymous investment banker who writes a weekly column in thelondonpaper. I’m not sure if the person behind actually is a real ‘city boy’ but his witty take on working in the City used to crack me up for five minutes on a Monday evening.
I thought once I moved away my weekly fix of City Boy would be no more. Not so. Turns out I can get it via the website and in RSS too. Thanks to Alex over at the PR and Comms Network blog for that.
NEW BLOG DESIGNS
TWL’s had one (still no link love from the TWL blog) and so has Ewan over at SMS Text News.
WOLFMOTHER - WHITE UNICORN