pr is dead - long live pr

When I hear - as I'm sure we all have - that social media has irrevocably changed the way in which people communicate with each other, and will therefore change the way in which brands (and their intermediaries) attempt to communicate with people, I reserve the right to remain sensibly sceptical.

Back in 2002 or so, I encountered a question in almost every client meeting I had, whether with existing or prospective clients.

"Do you do online PR?" I was asked.

Frankly, this question threw me into a spin - no PR pun intended. I would return to my desk and sit there reflecting on this question, or more to the point on my complete lack of a coherent answer to it. I felt like a latter-day Rip van Winkle that had woken up after a long nap only to find there'd been an unexpected shift of paradigm. The (PR) world had moved on without me.

You see, the problem was I didn't even know what online PR was. Admittedly I wasn't, back then, the grey-haired PR aficionado I am now. But I was no newbie either. And I had been the news editor of the UK's foremost online news site. So, I felt if anyone ought to know what online PR was, and be all over it, it should be me.

But I wasn't. And that troubled me. 

One of the nice(r) things about being a little older though, is you start to notice when things heralded as new are, in fact, a rehash of something that has gone before. 

This brings me back to the issue of why I didn't understand what online PR was? Because it never existed. In much the same way that social media has not and will not change the way people communicate - except, of course, at a fairly mechanical level.

I don't know which was invented first - the fork or the spoon. But I wouldn't be surprised if one of those implements was heralded as changing people's relationship with food by some visionary or other. Sure, you scoop with one and, err, fork with the other. But the fundamentals remain utterly unchanged. You are eating. Transporting food into your mouth. Chopsticks will also do the job.

Back to PR. This is only my view, admittedly, but surely PR is the art of story telling - stories can be fact or fiction; if you don't agree with me, ask yourself why some documentaries are more compelling than others, why some biographies are more gripping.

Story telling only works if you have something interesting to say and someone who wants to hear it. You can sit round the campfire, you can put it on a CD, you can go on stage and use performance art, you can make a movie or a one-act play, you can write a novel or even make a documentary. It is still, at some level, a story - words and images crafted to convey information in an interesting way.

I don't doubt there are better and more sophisticated PR practitioners that will knock holes in my viewpoint with effortless ease. But I stand by the principle that if you can't get the basics right - what's my story and who do I want to tell it to - it doesn't matter which medium you select for telling it.

in praise of the front page corpse shot

The Roman poet Horace said: "pale death beats equally at the poor man's gate and at the palaces of kings."

And so it goes today, as it did more than 2,000 years ago when those words were written.

I was reminded of those words yesterday, upon hearing of the death of Muammar "Colonel" Gaddafi. A man who's lowly start in life belied what was to come in later years - as he installed himself as the self-styled brother leader of Libya; autocratic king in all but name.

Like most tyrants, he got the end he probably deserved. Found cowering in a drainage tunnel, he was dragged out, beaten and shot. His corpse was dragged through the street for all to see. But not, from what I've read, hung upside down outside a petrol station, as the Italians did when they fell out of love with Mussolini in 1945.

It is said that it's not enough for justice to be done. It must be seen to be done. That's a viewpoint I have a great deal of sympathy with. But while I'm not a proponent of censorship per se, I do think that there needs to be some judgement exercised when it comes to broadcasting the image of a blood-stained corpse across the world via the mass media.

My colleague Julian Moore summed up one of the things that bothers me about the image of the dead Gaddafi, which currently adorns many of the UK national papers' front pages: "Kids need to be brought up not thinking that violence is an acceptable part of everyday life. This doesn't help do that."

a tweet before bedtime

Like a lot of people I've grown to know online, and even count as friends, I have more than a passing interest in the tools available for blogging, tweeting and generally carrying on like a good netizen.

I've discussed Klout before. It's interesting. A little addictive perhaps. But pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Peerindex is much of a muchness (I love that expression, in case you were wondering).

Attempting to measure a person's online significance, influence, or (heaven forbid) capital by virtue of something as monodimensional as how many followers they have is clearly nonsense. The algorithms behind the likes of Klout, Peerindex et al are more sophisticated I grant you, but not massively.

I've become quite interested in Crowdbooster recently. I like the reports you get showing how your tweets were interacted with. It is quite simply, interesting. Nothing more, nothing less.  I'm unlikely to change my behaviour in lieu of it.

I noticed just the other day that Crowdbooster also offers recommendations for the best time for me to tweet. It turns out I ought to tweet at 10am, 3pm and 5pm. To what end is not entirely clear. What to say in those perfectly-timed mini-missives... anyone's guess.

I sincerely hope no one is taking this advice too literally.

Content remains crucial. Have something to say. Know who you want to say it to. Then figure out when to say it.

10am, 3pm, bleak o'clock.... whatever. It doesn't matter what you tweet if you're saying the wrong thing.

Twas ever thus.

And it it doesn't just apply online.

if the menopause doesn’t get me, the cancer surely will

This is the second of two pieces I wrote on 8 October 2011 on the subject of searching online for health-related information and coming face-to-face with the issue of trust. This was the first one: "snake oil, bone-shakers and witch-doctors 2.0"

Spurred on by my recent search for food information and the number of hokey websites I found myself looking at, I decided to go one step further and investigate some online diagnosis sites.

Once again, it is nigh on impossible to tell the voice you can trust from the ones that ought to be denied access to the internet altogether. And of the majority, which sit between those two extreme points, there is no easy way of knowing who is well-intentioned but essentially wrong on too many counts, and who is being deliberately misleading in order to promote their own beliefs.

I decided to spend a little time filling in some online forms, answering questions about my health, so I could see for myself what kind of information might be presented to someone entering into this sort of activity genuinely.

With a mind to some everyday aches and pains (the kind I imagine we all suffer from occasionally) I answered all the questions accurately and honestly. Well, mostly – I lied about my gender on one site. We’ll come on to that shortly.

It might be worth pointing out that my family doctor, a charming and thorough man, recently insisted I had a full set of blood tests and an ECG. Everything came back normal, and his assessment was that I am in very good shape for a man of my age. In fact, my lung capacity and strength is that of someone 20 years my junior, he said. Perhaps that’s from all the practice I have of blowing my own trumpet.

So what of the time I spent with Doctor Interwebz? What was the diagnosis from that?

Well, I have always believed that when it comes to any form of self-diagnosis all roads lead to cancer. These beliefs were not shattered by this weekend’s activities. In three parts of my body I am – allegedly – exhibiting symptoms that could indicate cancer.

In addition to which, I learned I need an urgent medical assessment of my cardio-vascular functions.

But my favourite diagnosis by far was the one that told me I was experiencing symptoms that indicate the onset of the menopause.

It’s hard not to laugh, which is why I did indeed laugh. But there is a serious point buried in here.

When it comes to online information, the issue of trust – it seems to me – is as valid today as it has ever been.

In some ways, I take comfort from the fact that little really changes when it comes to human nature. Some folk like to be scared, while others are happy to lead you astray.

It’s a jungle out there people – stay safe.

And for goodness sake, if you really are concerned about your health don’t go anywhere near the internet. Go and see a real doctor.

A footnote: I decided against including links to any of the sites I visited. Trust me, it's for your own good. Added to which I don't think they deserve the traffic.

snake oil, bone-shakers and witch-doctors 2.0

This is the first of two pieces on the subject of using the internet to find reliable information regarding things connected with health.

Over the weekend I was searching online for information about which foods are a good source of different kinds of vitamins and minerals. Not for myself, but for one of my kids.

It was, I thought initially, a pretty straightforward thing to look for online.

But what happened next enabled me to see the internet in all its naked glory.

My first encounter with the internet was 20 years ago and these days I am rarely offline, except when I am asleep – much to the occasional chagrin of those around me.

Consequently I consider myself to be pretty savvy when it comes to using the internet. A digital native, if you will. I am well versed in finding what I want online and quickly navigating my way through the many pools of information therein, some deep and some not so.

But the food search episode was quite the revelation. Pretty much all the results returned by Google (which has been my weapon of choice for searching since 1998 and is likely to remain as such for the foreseeable) were from websites that looked at best questionable as sources of information and at worst downright misleading.

How, I asked myself, am I supposed to be able to tell in whom I should place my trust?

I trawled through page after page, site after site, and came to the conclusion that I couldn’t figure that one out. So I ignored them all, preferring to remain in blissful ignorance.

This, I realised, is what it must be like to be unfamiliar with the internet and to trust in the validity of all the search results Google delivers you.

One of the most enduring changes the internet has brought about is the democratisation of publishing. Anyone with an opinion, a computer and an internet connection can publish those opinions and, potentially, gather around them an audience of believing readers.

This is a good thing.  And also a not-so-good thing.

september 2011 word cloud

Last month, I published a word cloud showing the words I'd used in August.

I thought I'd do the same for September.

Simple as that.

new songs from my band the subtitles

I joined The Subtitles as vocalist and rhythm guitarist late last year.  A few months ago we started writing our own material.

We picked two songs that we liked, worked on them and then recorded them a few weeks ago. After some refining and mixing, they are now finished. I hope.  :)

The links below should take you to them.  If not, leave a comment to let me know - or email me, or @-reply me on twitter. 

I would really appreciate some feedback on them.  They are yet to go on the band website but soon will.

Hopefully, we'll get some gigs sorted out soon so we can try these (and others) out on a live audience.

Thanks in advance - I really appreciate you taking the time.

The songs:

Falling - click here

Walk Away - click here


Added on 1 October:

I got some great feedback from people who kindly listened to the songs and shared their thoughts. I am really grateful, as are the other guys in the band.

This is some of what was said.  But I'd love to hear some more opinions.

• Wow
• Sounds great
• Impressed
• Awesome stuff
• Both very good
• instrumental section in Walk Away is too long - loses a bit of momentum, I thought it was the outro
• Both *might* benefit from some vocal harmonies on the choruses
• Seriously am now humming Walk Away
• Your drummer's style is very musical rather than "technical" if that makes sense - suits your material well

telling stories, human nature and social media

Since the very dawn of time itself mankind has told stories.

Ok, maybe not since the dawn of time perhaps "since the evolution of language" would have been more accurate. But that didn't sound very story-like.

Someone once told me that all the stories we are familiar with are in fact based on just a handful of original story ideas that came into being eons ago.

That could be true.

Certainly many cultures have a rich story-telling tradition. Viking sagas, the Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, Greek myths, the Tales of 1,001 Nights - frankly there's loads.

Stories don't just come in that more obvious narrative format either. Cave paintings, totem poles, the adornments on boomerangs - graphical story-telling is a strong part of human history.

We've come a long way from sitting round the fire recounting our ancestors' tales of derring-do or painting on cave walls. But stories are still a fundamental part of who we are as individuals, as nations and also in relation to how brands identify themselves.

The approach taken by advertisers and marketers just a generation or two ago looks naive by our sophisticated 21st century standards. It was, with some exceptions, "here's our product - buy it."

And while that approach still exists - and of course the motivation of generating sales is still hugely valid - consumers tend now to switch off to a lot of that stuff. We're all so accustomed to being marketed to that maybe we've started to become immune.

Whether you call it PR, communications, marcomms, or whatever, those who ply their trade in the same sector as I are in the business of telling stories. Stories that will resonate with our clients' target audiences and give them a sense of affinity with a particular brand.

This can be seen being played out in the digital space even more clearly, where the time between brand execution and customer feedback grows ever shorter.

But much like the crazy preacher-man berating the passing crowds at Oxford Circus I passed this morning, there's a danger we end up trying to tell our stories to people who simply aren't interested.

Again, the online world has made this trap ever more easy to fall into.

The fundamentals of story-telling – much like the fundamentals of human nature, in my opinion – remain:

• Get the story right
• Know who it is that you want to tell your story to
• Be sure you're talking when (and where) they will listen.
• And who knows, maybe even ask them to share their stories with you too

We haven't really come such a long way at all, in this story-teller's opinion.

Although at least we're not still writing on walls.

Ahem..!

Yes Facebook, I'm looking at you.

i don’t want you but i need you

Smokey Robinson said it best when he sang I don’t want you but I need you.

As one of the most gifted song-writers in the popular music genre, this observation of what it’s like to be in love with someone you know is bad for you is beautifully crafted.

It also kinda sums up most people’s relationship status with Facebook.

I can’t think of an example of another organisation with such a vast following of people who are so quick to voice their dislike of the service.

And therein lies Facebook’s problem. Timelines and profile tweaks aside, it needs to do something about the toxic relationship it has with its users, many of whom are only sticking around because their friends are too.

It’s like a massive Mexican stand-off. If the day ever comes when enough people finally walk away from Facebook it could start a craze.

So far there hasn’t been a viable alternative to lure people away. For all the fuss, hype and expectation, GooglePlus won’t do it.  And there simply isn’t anyone else with the size and reach to be a realistic threat to Facebook.

That’s not much of a business model though, is it? Our customers are stuck with us and we are stuck with the fact they don’t like us.

If I was gambling man, I’d be looking at Renren as a possible longer-term Facebook rival. But that’s probably a topic for another day.

In the meantime, Facebook has to do something to stem the tide of discontent and griping.

Will Timeline be enough to do this?

No, of course not. But if it forms part of a coherent strategy to start putting people at the heart of the Facebook experience, giving them something to like – in the real sense of the word, not a silly fake Facebook like – then maybe it could be on to something.

Now, why not treat yourself to Smokey Robinson & The Miracles singing You Really Got a Hold on Me – the video and audio quality isn’t the best, but it’s worth it. Your soul will thank you.

give us your thoughts - dan purvis set to music

A few weeks ago I recorded a phone interview that I did with Dan Purvis (Global Director of PR at Meltwater Group, he's also a former colleague of mine at Octopus Communications and a friend).

I cut up part of the interview and dropped extracts into a dance track I had composed a few weeks prior to that.

It's called "Give Us Your Thoughts" and Dan & I hope you enjoy it..!