Newspaper revenues saved by India…
Posted Monday, November 26, 2007 at 10:27pm in PR General | 12 Comments
…so says an article by Eoin Gleeson in this week’s edition of Money Week. In short, the article asks why Rupert Murdoch would commit to buying MySpace and the Wall Street Journal. Answer: Because he believes there’s a place (and being in Money Week there’s a place for profits also) for both media. However, the point that’s most interesting (to me at least) is Gleeson’s description of the newspaper market in India. The article (sorry can’t find it on the site. Money Week needs to sort its website out) says:
“Readership has been exploding in the country, with more than 150 million people picking up a paper every days compared with 97 million in American and 48 million in Germany. With the economy growing at a rate of 8 percent a year, increasing numbers of people can afford an education and are adopting Western lifestyles. There are still at least 360 million literate people in India who have not yet taken to reading papers.
“And as their disposable income rises, so will advertising spend by the companies looking to appeal to their expanding wallets. Revenue from print advertising in India has grown by 21 percent in the first nine months of this year, says the Business Standard.”
Wow! 360 million literate people that *aren’t* yet reading newspapers. Given that India has a population of 1.1 billion makes it over one third of the population. Or, to put it another way, India’s total number of literate citizens that aren’t (yet) reading newspapers is six times the population of the UK OR 60 million people more than the population of America OR the population of the UK and America combined. Whichever stat you compare it with, it’s pretty awesome.
What the article fails to acknowledge is broadband penetration in India also. Point Topic noted (pdf) that, at the end of Q4 2006, India had 2.1 million broadband subscribers. Very low in comparison with the much smaller populated UK which had 13.1 million at the end of the same period.
But when broadband penetration in India does grow in with a relative ratio to the UK’s then we’re in for an interesting time.
I guess that’s why newspaper pioneers like the Guardian are becoming more global in their outlook. Which reminds me, I read an blog post today saying that the Guardian has surpassed the New York Times in terms of traffic. Can’t remember whose blog I read it from now though.
Anyway, no real conclusion to this blog post. Those stats just blew me away. I guess it’s a kinda ‘thinking out loud’ type blog post.
BizDays: Bucharest
Posted Sunday, November 25, 2007 at 1:42pm in Blogging, Business, Media, PR General | 4 Comments
I’ve just returned home from a whirlwind two days in Bucharest, Romania, where I was speaking at the capital’s BizDays event at the city’s World Trade Center. BizDays is a five day conference which includes speakers from all areas of the business community discussing issues and developments affecting the business world. Day 5 was purely on marketing and advertising and yours truly ran a workshop titled ‘Web 2.0 and PR”.
No thanks to KLM Airways who almost made me miss the conference because of a flight delay. Fine, these things happen but when your staff don’t allow me to take my own luggage with my own possessions to the complementary hotel then there’s a problem. I couldn’t change clothes, brush my teeth, take my lenses out etc. So, purely for SEO purposes: KLM Airways suck and KLM Airways sucks because KLM Airways customer service is poor. Flying with KLM Airways is not recommended.
Anyway…
I arrived at the conference with about an hour to spare so unfortunately didn’t have time to see any of the other talks or workshops taking place that day. What struck me most about the Romanian media scene is that its representatives all seem so young. Well, either that or Romanians age **really** well. I’ve never been to a conference with so many young people in attendance which is great as the atmosphere was one of interest and intrigue. There’s a great excitement about the industry which is still in its relative infancy over there.
Full praise to the guys at BMG (the organisers of the event) who, rumour has it, rarely slept a wink all through the week of the event.
Once I was done, I checked into the hotel and a little later got picked up by my new pal, Mihnea Miculescu, a young hotshot account executive at McCann Erickson who knows far too much and will probably end up running the Romanian PR scene one day. From there we met up with his PR director colleague, Veronica, and her friend (whose name escapes me) and headed to a few bars and clubs in the city.
Tip: If you ever go out for a night out in Bucharest. I strongly recommend you go to this place: Bamboo Club. You’ll see why when you’re in there. You can thank me later. 
The following day Mihnea, Veronica and I went to a restaurant slap bang in the middle of the city where the architecture of some of the buildings is mind blowing. As was the restaurant with its amazing wood finishes and huge ceilings. If this restaurant was in London I’d expect to spend a week’s wages on my dish but, here, it cost less than a Strada and a thousand times classier.
We chatted about the Romanian PR and social media scene and the problems they were facing in the battle against advertising and the educating of clients about online communication. Pretty similar to the UK and elsewhere actually.
Pic by catb
We then drove around the city and saw the world’s second largest building, the Palace of Parliament, and the Arcul de Triumf, a replica of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, until I reluctantly had to head to the airport.
All in all, a fantastic experience and one which I hope to re-live again with a little more time and a suitcase filled with spare clothes (I travelled light). Experiencing Bucharest has made me want to ‘do a Michael Palin‘ and see the surrounding countries of my Eastern European cousins. More places added to the ‘places to visit list’ it seems.
Here’s my presentation if anyone wants to view it. Thanks to Youngie and Amelia for sending me some ammunition for the deck. Thanks to Constantin also for correcting my currency exchange minor slip. Bloomberg needs to seriously update its currency convertor!
So I joined Twitter
Posted Tuesday, November 20, 2007 at 10:17pm in Blogging, PR General, Technology | 12 Comments
Sigh. I have no excuse. In March this year I wrote a rather scathing blog post on micro-blogging service, Twitter. In short I didn’t ‘get it’ and was rather ignorant to its uses. Ahem, and I said something along the lines of “Okay, I’m either cynical or completely boring but why on earth would you want to know what your friends, family or colleagues are up to EVERY part of the day. Seriously, does anyone not value a incy tincy bit of privacy now and again? A little bit of escape? Get away from it all? Disappear for a while?”
Note: The tweet to Ed Lee is made out of sarcasm. I might be slow but I’m not corny.
I’ve avoided Twitter since then out of pure stubbornness and for the fear of being wrong. Well, my friends, I’m eating my hat alongside a piece of humble pie right now. I signed up for Twitter yesterday and haven’t looked back since. It’s great. I’ve barely been in Facebook or Bloglines today and have been ‘tweeting’ like a trooper. How long that’ll last for is beyond me but, still, it’s shiny and new (to me at least) and a great way of keeping up with the PR bloggeratti.
I won’t give you the reasons why I think it’s good as I’m so behind the curve on this one that the laggards have been laughing at me as I eat their dust. Don’t let it be said that I don’t take my time before adopting new technologies.
Feel free to add me.
Pretty city
Posted Sunday, November 18, 2007 at 7:48pm in Blogging, Off topic | 4 Comments
Back from a great week in New York yesterday. Think I’m suffering from holiday blues as I’m quite sad to be back on British soil actually. Thanks to Youngie and his flatmates, Chase, Mike and Pesey for putting me up in their Upper East Side apartment for the last seven days. Very, very cool people and impeccable hosts.
Thanks also to my personal New York tour guide, Melanie Seasons, for showing me around the city and putting up with my general dumbness. We walked 80 blocks in one day; climbed (took the lift) to the top of the Empire States Building; strolled around Central Park; ate at the place which was voted ‘Best Pancakes in New York‘ and spent a little time shopping. The exchange rate is awesome (if you’re British) at the moment so I had to take advantage of that a little.
I also got to meet some of Paull’s Converseon colleagues including, Constantin (the man, the legend) Basturea and Christi (best darn accent) Eubanks. I owe Constantin dinner as he bought mine not once but twice while I was there. One of those dinners was with social media consultant, Josh Hallett, who I’ve been reading since he was interviewed on FIR over two years ago so obviously great to meet him also.
I met up with one of my old colleagues from Edelman London who’s now “living the dream” at the New York office and even managed to pop into Edelman’s New York EIS office for 10 minutes too.
I get around don’t I?!
My impressions of New York is exactly how I expected. Fantastic. The people are really friendly; the air is surprisingly clean for such a busy city and there are a million things to do there. Awesome. I plan on going back as soon as I can.
Here’s a funny clip Youngie showed me which cracked me up.
Cheap christmas shopping
Posted Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 10:02pm in Blogging, Off topic, PR General | 3 Comments
One last post before I head of to New York. Expect the same volume of posts in the coming week as I’ve shown in the previous - probably none. No big industry news to report but here are a few links.
I want to ride my bicycle
Do you ride a bike? Do you like biking? Are you more eco-friendly than the rest of use petrol guzzling motor vehicle drivers? Then maybe you’ll enjoy spending time with like-minded people over at Me and My Bicycle - a new social network for bike enthusiasts launched by my pal, Ben Ayers - a keen cyclist himself. Ben says: “I bang on enough about the importance of niche social nets so I thought I may as well build one. If you are a cyclist check it out.”
70 percent of communication is done non-verbally
Don’t think that statement is entirely factual to be honest. I’ve heard something similar before but that, I’m afraid, I’ve just made up. Body language is important though. As are a number of other factors when you’re doing a presentation. With that in mind, my mate Andy Wake from Don’t Panic Event Management has produced a pdf ebook with tips and guidance on how to create and deliver a Power Point presentation.
Go and grab it. Check out my post on creating a successful presentation also.
I’ve written nearly two novels
Well, not really, but by my guestimation this blog has at least the same number of words (probably more) than what is required to write a novel. When I was in London, a girl I knew who was actually writing a novel herself told me that 80,000 words are the required minimum. So…
I’ve published 456 blog posts in all the time I’ve been writing this blog - and say I’ve written 300 words, as a rough estimate, for each blog post gives a grand total of 136800 words. Almost two novels! Personally, I think it’s more than but I’ve been generous in allowing for when I’ve simply copied and pasted people’s quotes or when a blog post I wrote contained less than 300 words.
Getting your Wireds crossed
Personally, I thought this didn’t achieve anything. Not something I would have expected from a thought leader, pioneer and Editor in Chief of a respected publication. Disclosure: I know one of the people on the list who I personally think is a good chap and, although I never worked alongside him, is very good at what he does by all accounts.
The Corrs - Toss the Feathers
Remember The Corrs? How good and pretty (except Jim) were/are they? Great piece of Irish folk music.