Berocca: Stress relief for bloggers
Posted Saturday, June 21, 2008 at 9:33am in Blogging, Business, Photos | 5 Comments
Here’s a great example of some creative blogger outreach by UK vitamin supplement company, Berocca. You may have read in the New York Times blogging is apparently bad for your health, so what better way to create an online buzz about a product than to provide something which could help the very people that can spread the word.
The Berocca website has a dedicated page where you can sign up for a ‘Blogger Relief Pack’ which includes:
• Stress ball
• USB stress button
• Bubble wrap keyring
• Dead Fred pen holder
• Pack of Berocca
A very good idea me thinks. I’ve signed up for a Relief Pack, although it seems there are no guarantees of receiving one and reading the Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) they’re only giving the pack away to the first 50 applications. Another caveat in the T&Cs is that they may use my details for future marketing activity and potentially share them with third parties in relation to Bayer plc, the company behind Berocca.
I don’t fancy receiving spam if I’m honest but by the looks of things they’re planning on including links to blogs that feature the product so they’re obviously monitoring what’s being said.
In which case no spam please Borocca. 
Found via Kieron Donoghue.
Global balance of media power shifting
Posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008 at 11:03pm in Business, Media, PR General | 1 Comment
Those number crunchers at professional services firm, Price Waterhouse Coopers, have published some research which concludes that the global entertainment and media market is expected to expand by more than a third over the next five years. Not because of us in the Western World though. Oh no, we’re too busy dealing with inflation worries; it’s the emerging markets that will show the most growth in the coming years.
The Guardian says, “Europe, the Middle East and Africa will overtake the US as the world’s largest entertainment and media market by 2009. China, meanwhile, is expected to pass the US this year to become the world’s largest broadband market, with more than 80m households on super-fast connections.”
“Europe, the Middle East and Africa will see its media market grow 6.8% a year from $570bn in 2007 to $792bn, while the US will grow by 4.8% a year from $601bn to $759bn. Asia-Pacific will increase 8.8% a year from $333bn to $508bn, with Latin America expanding from $51bn to $85bn.”
I guess this research is confirming what many of us thought and knew. Good to see it in numbers though. Fifteen years from now the media landscape (both online and offline) will be considerably different to what we’re used to. Bring on globalisation.
UK FIGURES
More stats from the Guardian article which I’m going to blatantly rip (I hope they don’t ‘do an Associated Press‘ on me)
• The UK is the largest media and entertainment market in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and is expected to grow from $115bn (£59bn) last year to $152bn in 2012, according to PWC.
• By 2012, 35% of UK advertising spending will be online, against an average 19% globally. The number of UK households with broadband is expected to rise from 56.4% of the population in 2007 to 84.9% in 2012.
• By 2012 the online advertising market, at $14bn, will be worth more than newspaper advertising, at $9.4bn - or TV advertising at $7.8bn.
• Over the five years the newspaper advertising market is forecast to show compound annual growth of just 2.6% while circulation revenues will decline as readers switch to freesheets.
• The PWC report follows estimates from Enders Analysis yesterday which forecast that UK internet advertising would overtake TV advertising this year, growing 26.4% to £3.56bn, or 19% of the entire UK advertising market.
• Enders believes growth will be driven by search advertising, which will account for more than £2bn of the market. TV advertising, meanwhile, will fall 2.5% to £3.39bn, Enders estimates.
CIPR’s SMNR for the World PR Conference & Festival
Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2008 at 11:39am in Business, PR General | 3 Comments
Webitpr’s just put out a social media news release (full disclosure) for the CIPR’s up and coming World Public Relations Conference and Festival. From the SMNR, “The World PR Conference and Festival, organised by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (UK) and Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, will bring together professional communicators from across the world to discuss global issues and industry trends impacting on their day jobs.
Themed ‘The public benefit of public relations’ and taking place on 23 and 24 June at the InterContinental Hotel, Park Lane, London, the conference includes 30 sessions on issues as diverse as:
• Communicating in London, the world’s most diverse city
• How businesses such as car manufacturers and gas suppliers can handle climate change and environmental challenges
• How cities attract investment – the reputational issues that count
• Appealing to different audiences and cultures – lessons from the front-line”
I’m attending the sessions taking place on the Monday so obviously looking forward to it. I’ll probably be writing a blog post either during the course of the day or afterwards. And, of course, I’ll be twittering it.
Anyone else going?
Internet primary news source in five years
Posted Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 8:10pm in Blogging, Business, Media | 2 Comments
So says a report by the Word Digital Media Trends, a not-for-profit organisation which includes members from 76 national newspaper associations in 102 countries. According to an Associated Press article in Yahoo News covering the report, newspapers will lose their dominant grip by 2013 as more and more people consume their news from their respective online versions. The articles also states that rising online advertising revenues and the increase in mobile web usage will also play a part in this shift.
How they calculated the five year time-span is unclear. What does seem to be clear, however, is that newspapers will form much more of a love/hate relationship with bloggers. Love because they appreciate how bloggers will take their news articles, link to them and add an opinion on them (as I’m doing now). Hate because it’s an equal level playing field where bloggers could potentially steal readers away from them.
For example, why do I have to read a newspaper’s motoring supplement when there are blogs like Autoblog? Why do I have to read a newspaper’s football (soccer) section when there are sites like Soccerlens? And why would I have to read a newspaper’s celeb section when there are blogs like Perez Hilton, who is much more catty and snarky than a mainstream celeb gossipist would ever dare to be?
Things will become more interesting if/when digital paper is introduced. It’s going to do to reading what the iPod did to music, apparently.
That said, proper journalism covering hard, thorough and indepth news will always shine through; there is no better substitute for it. But given that a number of newspaper websites now include the ability for people to comment on them, like the Times, should journalists be accountable for their news articles and respond in the comments?
Obviously there is a time issue involved but the every-day person is beginning to demand some form of two-way conversation online - and a journalist that does not respond could (stress: could) potentially be perceived as somewhat ignorant and out of tune with this two-way nature of the internet.
Article found via a tweet by Tiffany Berryman.
Carphone Warehouse listens
Posted Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 12:03pm in Blogging, Business, PR General | 7 Comments
Editor of NMK and blogger at twopointtouch, Ian Delaney recently received poor customer service from mobile phone supplier, Carphone Warehouse. Ian, who has used the company for around four years, was due a phone upgrade and was contacted by a Carphone Warehouse salesperson to renew his contract. In a nutshell, the salesperson was shisty and provided Ian with incorrect information on his new contract along with a false extension number to contact him on should any issues arise. This resulted in Ian receiving a hefty bill for using the mobile internet when he believed he was on a fixed cost.
After receiving little help from other Carphone Warehouse staff Ian eloquently detailed his experiences on his blog. The clever part of Ian’s blog post and probably the most important which people fail to understand is what he calls “The Science Bit” and how aiming to make a quick buck results in poor treatment of customers and loss of reputation which affects the bottom line: cold hard cash.
HAPPY ENDING
Less than 14 hours after writing his less than positive blog post, Ian received a phone call from a customer services manager from the company who had been alerted to the post through an email notification from her Google Alerts subscription. The customer services manager promptly retrieved Ian’s files and called him up to sort out the matter. Two hours after the phone call he received an email confirmation that his account had been credited with the money. This was all done on a Saturday.
The question remains unanswered whether Carphone Warehouse has procedures that proactively monitor company mentions online or whether this was a sole initiative from a smart employee. Either way damage limitation was quashed in a short period of time and such efficiency deserves extra credit for happening on a weekend. Remember, the internet doesn’t take the weekend off unfortunately.
In his latest post on the issue Ian rightly states, “A lot of people might see this as a victory for blogs and bloggers. I’d agree, sure. But, on reflection, I think it’s more of a victory for Carphone Warehouse.”
Agreed.