2009 Resolutions Revisited

So about this time last year I created a list of five social media wishes for Social Media over the coming 12 months, as the year now draws to a close I thought I should review them and make some new ones.

The 2009 ones were mainly:

1) That I never have to sit through a presentation on digital that uses Kryptonite, Dell Hell or Wal-Mart as a proof point on how iccky the web can be, surely we dig up examples that are slightly newer?*

2) That I never have to see a blog post entitled PR/Blogging/Advertising is dead again meme. Really ppl find something better to link bait with in ‘09.

3) To see some case studies with actual ROI attached to them. Thus far I think I’ve seen two – Dell claiming a $1 million in sales via Twitter and HP’s month of the Dragon blogger outreach.  I know that digital engagement is more valuable than attributing figures to it might suggest but as the credit crunches, clients are increasingly to demand that we show them the money

4) That we stop over hyping what social media actually is, as John Jantsch says “Social media is a tool, not a religion‘

5) To see digital become an integrated part of what a PR person does, not an activity that is punted out to a separate silo of experts. Making everyone tick off the list of 51 things every PR person should know would be a bloody good start.

I did fairly well on number one, but then again I didn’t attend that many presentations but I know people that did and despaired that the same old clichés were still being trotted out. I even create an eponymous law about it.

The meme involved in two moved on, people stopped declaring things dead and instead started fighting about which discipline should own social media, there was a nice debate held by NMK in April about online versus traditional PR which came out of a twitter discussion, Drew has a very nice summary of it over here.

On to three, there is a still a lack of hard numbers attached to social media case studies. I know it’s a hangover from PR being difficult to measure but we really do need to address this if social media is ever to gain credibility. Personally I’ve been pushing this slide deck to everyone who mentions ROI as I think it’s a damn good starting point.

I do think that we have stopped over hyping what social media can achieve, and we’re also coming to a realisation about just how incredibly useful it can in certain situations, the recent Eurostar snafu being a good example of what a can be achieved on the fly. How much improved the outcome might have been if there was already decent monitoring and a response policy in place can only be guessed at.

Finally, integration of digital into the remit of the normal PR person’s bag of tricks. From a personal perspective it’s happening at PN Towers but this year has seen other agencies spin out dedicated digital shops so perhaps there is still some way to go on this front.

As for my Social Media wishes for 2010, that will be another post in the next couple of weeks.

If any one is interested in my  personal resolutions they mainly involve this , more of this and this , hopefully doing this in the summer and this  in the autumn, and the odd bit of this on grass as well as on sand. Oh and blogging more, mebbe. And world domination.Natch.

Have a happy Christmas people!

Making an Ongoing Drama out of Crisis

Even the non-egg chasers among you are probably aware of the current controversy rocking my favourite sport of Rugby. For those of you that aren’t the overview is simple. In the Harlequin v Leinster quarter-final of the 2009 Heineken Cup, Rugby’s top flight European competition, a Harlequin’ wing faked a blood injury which enabled a player who had already been tactically substituted to return to the field. The hope was that the returning first choice kicker, Nick Evans, could change the out come of the match, which stood in the balance at 5- 6 with only five minutes remaining. Fortunately Evans missed his attempted drop goal, Quins were knocked out and Leinster went on to win the final.

Sitting at home, mainly watching through my fingers, I, like many, thought that  the wink the injured player gave the bench as he came off, looked a bit weird but not quite as weird as the colour and quantity of blood pouring from his mouth. I’d like to think I thought that there would be something made of it but it’s quite possible that it’s wishful hindsight. Initially it seemed that nothing was going to happen, then there was a report that the ERC was investigating, that there would be a hearing and since then the media storm has just got bigger and bigger. I doubt Rugby has had quite so many column inches devoted to it between world cups and definitely not in the off-season.

As with many crisis, the initial incident has now been overshadowed by the way that the club responded to it, and it this which is at the centre of the contuinuing media maelstrom. The club initially tried to bluff it out, denying anything untoward happened. Amazingly this didn’t work, and as the story is pulled apart piece by piece, new revelations continue to appear and the calls for even greater sanctions to be imposed are getting louder.

That how you handle a crisis is of more importance than the actual reason for the crisis is something  we’ve seen repeatedly and seems to be of more importance now that any action or inaction can be scrutinised. Think of recent, and not so recent, cases, Motrin Moms, Spinvox and Kryptonite, it was the lack of response that really irked people. Compare these to Jet Blue and Dominos’ booger both companies came out of their crisis fairly unscathed as not only did they take immediate action, they made it very visible what action they were taking

In times of crisis, do something and be seen to be doing it.

Some Niff, Naff & Triv (Finally)

My darling brother, from whom I nicked the title of this very blog, has occasionally complained that it doesn’t feature enough niff, naff n triv.  So this is a little snippet for him as it combines our joint love of the game they play in heaven, our religious background and our accidental Welshness.

The last two times Wales won the grand slam in 2005 and 1978, the Pope died.  Actually in 1978 two died, Paul VI and John Paul I, but it is a universally acknowledge truth that Wales were much better in the seventies.  Therefore Pope Benedict XVI should take it easy on the egg-nog over the Christmas period.

Obviously you shouldn’t just take my word for it, please read the full study as completed by the British Medical Journal.

Consequence of death declarations

Making a change a welcome change from the usual declarations of PR/blogging/advertising being dead, is a predication that something will die, which gives us something to look forward to at least.

Apparently the press release will be dead in 36 months time as declared by Peter Shankman this week at TIMA. Leaving aside the absurdity of a phrase that “if your clients can’t send their message in 140 characters of less, it needs to change’. I think we should have a think about consequences.

I know that there is a fine history of public predications being completely and utterly off the mark, Bill Gates on memory needs, IBM chairman Thomas Watson on how many computers the world would need in total or DEC on the complete lack of need for home computers, but at least they were made in good faith. Somehow I can’t help but suspect that the plethora of claims about whatever being dead/dying/or at least having man-flu aren’t quite made in the same vein.

In fact, I’m seriously starting to get ticked off with people making unsubstantiated claims and feel that they should be called on it if their predication doesn’t come true.  The reason I get ticked off is that we’re still trying to create greater understanding of social media, what it is and what it can do for individuals and businesses.  If people outside the echo chamber are constantly seeing such foolish claims made on social media’s behalf it makes creating that understanding that much more difficult.  It also makes social media proponents seem like we’re desperate, making such far-fetched claims makes it seem like we’re trying to hard and therefore that social media is really inconsequential. We know that is not true and should be working on accentuating the positive aspects not making it out to be the digital version of Kali.

Way back in 2003 when England had a decent rugby team, David Campese, a man equally fleet of mouth as of foot, repeatedly predicted that we wouldn’t win the world cup. After we did so, beating Campo’s home nation 20 – 17 to do so , he took part in a stunt for Ladbrookes and walked down London’s Oxford Street wearing a placard admitting that the best team won.

Yes, it was it was a stunt and yes he undoubtedly got paid for it but at least he publicly admitted he was wrong.

So I think that any blogger who makes a wild predication such as the press release will be dead in 36 months, or cartoonists who predict newspapers will die within two phone upgrades, should be called on it, and forced to do a similar walk of shame at an industry event, SXSW or LeWeb3. Alternatively they could display a blog badge admitting that they made an outlandish claim purely for the google juice and promising not to do it again.

Tag – you’re not it

I’ve just got back from a long weekend in sunny(ish) Cornwall, where, along with a few friends and some family, I played in the Lusty Glaze 2008 beach tag competition. We’ve played in this particular competition a couple of times before but the last time was 2005 and boy has it grown since then.

Team X about to face the might of the Newbury under 9s

The last time there were about 40 teams taking part, the vast majority of which were  local and featured a wide range of ages.  The pitches, when not under water, were marked out with tape and one of the Lusty staff commentated on whatever he could see from the stage. The whole event had a real community feel to it, made magical by playing rugby under floodlights while listening to the waves and the strains of the local band.  Which was one of the reasons we decided to venture down again this year.

This year though, it had become part of the large O2 Scrum on the Beach set of tournaments taking place around the country and the very visible corporate sponsorship couldn’t help but change the the feeling of the tournament and not necessarily for the better.

It started at the top of the 133 steps down to the cove, where 02 goodie bags were being handed out. The bag and flip flops were welcome, but some of my team mates were a little miffed that they couldn’t enter the competition to win the England themed camper van because they weren’t 02 customers. One  said they’d have been happy to pay to enter but that wasn’t an option.

When we hit the beach it was impossible to look anywhere without seeing the O2 logo. As part of the registration we received more 02 goodies bags, this time with some free PowerAde. Although to get that goodie bag you had to enter another competition although this one was operator agnostic.  There was a large screen off to one side of the beach showing live footage and a presenter inviting us to visit the O2 Blue room, where we could receive free massages and fruit smoothies. If you were, or with, an 02 customer that is.

And that was sort of the tone for the weekend, you could enter the limbo competition but only if you were or with an 02 customer; you could have a go on the bucking ruby ball but only if you were, or with, an 02 customer.  You could sit on the huge beach bean bags, but only in the 02 area which you could only get into as an 02 customer etc.  02 customers and their friends also had the first crack at getting autographs from the two England rugby stars that were down for the day, although they did venture out and happily signed away for everyone later in the afternoon.

Not being an 02 customer didn’t spoil the weekend but it did make my friends feel excluded.  The 02 area took up a lot of space on a not huge beach.  It wasn’t that fun to be reminded every hour or so that you couldn’t do something.  What was worse was that they didn’t give you the opportunity to join the exclusive club.  Again my friends mentioned they would be happy to pay a fee to get into the Blue Room especially if the money went to one of the various rubgy charities.  They even said they would be equally happy to sign up for marketing and promotional offers or discuss potential payment plans but that wasn’t an option either.

There were some good points to the 02 sponsorship, the big screen was great for keeping up with the action on the other pitches and I doubt they’d have enticed two current England players down otherwise. However it would’ve been better if they hadn’t been a little elitist, which is something we should probably bear in mind when we think about offering exclusives for journalists and bloggers.  Being part of an elite group is only fun for that elite group and if you do run the risk of alienating everyone else. Especially if the difference is repeatedly pointed out and you know aren’t going to be able to to join that group at any point.

All that said Team X had another rather marvelous time at Lusty. The rugby was top-notch and the weather was kind most of the time. Most enjoyable though was somehow, with a little help from the F.B.I (Forest Boys International) and Tim and Moro from the Cornish Rattlers, we won the shield, which we will be back to defend next year.  Though if 02 is still involved, I have a sneaky feeling though that some of my team mates might give Vodafone or Orange a shout and ask if they fancy sponsoring us.