Whatever...

Moving on up

By Flora Haslam

I’ve just moved house and will try my hardest not to turn this into a rant about estate agents – for every journalist that’s had a bad experience with a PR, I’m sure I could find a dozen people who were frustrated by unresponsive agents.

Agents aside, I was surprised how much things have changed since I last went through the process a few years ago.  It’s clear from the investment in televisions ads that online is king when looking for property – the ease of search and convenience of seeing properties from multiple agents via one of the many portals now available is irresistible.

But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that solicitors have finally embraced the benefits of online communication and acknowledged that letters and faxes are just too cumbersome for today’s home movers.  The ability to upload rather than post documents was a breath of fresh air this time round.  Updates by SMS, while managing and tracking the conveyancing process online, was a significant improvement.

With the cost of moving house rising so dramatically, consumers will inevitably demand that the process is made easier.  There’s an app for everything else, so it was no surprise to see the launch of the first Facebook property app this month and it surely can’t be long before technologies like QR codes and augmented reality become commonplace as the business of buying and selling property evolves.

Found any bricks and mortar via the new Property Place Facebook app yet?  Let Flora know your take on Twitter: @FloraHaslam.  

 

Skegness: What's in a name?

By Claire Ayles

The English seaside town Skegness has today been advised it should change its name, which one expert says has become synonymous with ‘slot machines and caravans’ (which he obviously thinks is a bad thing – others may hold a different opinion).

Perhaps he got his inspiration from the tech industry’s very own the data centre sector which seems intent on convincing us that every facility based in the South East of England is in fact in London, even when a quick glance at Google Maps clearly shows otherwise.

So what’s so bad about calling Skegness ‘Skegness’ or, indeed, Slough ‘Slough’?

The problem of course is not the name, but what the name is associated with.  And the danger of changing a place’s name is that it can make these brand connotations even more negative, creating the impression that the place is so ashamed of its heritage it has to pretend it’s something it’s not – the  geographical equivalent of Hyacinth Bucket.  (Who, let’s not forget, was a complete and utter laughing stock). 

And shame isn’t, let’s face it, the greatest brand value to promote. 

Football club leads the way in Twitter morality shocker

by Mike King

It is not often that a football club can be held up as an example of morality or as a positive example of how to deal with inappropriate behaviour, but Oxford City’s decision to sack footballer Lee Steele for writing a homophobic Tweet about Celebrity Big Brother contestant Gareth Thomas sends a out a strong message that bigotry is not acceptable.

This certainly contrasts with the treatment MP Diane Abbott received from her employer when she wrote not one, but two, racist Tweets last week.

What amazed me about the whole Abbott affair was that the media outcry was predominantly for her to apologise, not to be sacked, for her racist comments.  This missed the point entirely.  The issue isn’t simply that she wrote inappropriate messages on her Twitter feed, it’s that she is a racist.  Her (reluctant) apology for any offense caused after the first Tweet hardly changes the fact that she, as a prominent politician in the Labour party, has shown herself to hold racist views.  I’d suggest Ed Miliband could do a lot worse than nip back to Oxford for some tips.

Surviving on Wikipedia

by Oliver Fischer

‘We need to ramp up our social media activities!’ – This is a sentence you hear quite a lot as a PR professional nowadays.  

I had just started as an intern in the PR department of a German IT company when my boss at the time (he was quite an old-school kind of guy) burst into the office, waved a print-out of a website in front of my face and said something like: ‘Hey there, young fellow! You are young, so you must know of this whole new media stuff.  So tell me why some complete stranger has the right to write about our company on a website called 'Wikipedia'?  They didn't even use our wording or our boilerplate! I already tried to upload our recent press release but somebody deleted it again and called it 'PR bullsh*t' – so now you are going to fix this!’

At the time, those conversations were quite common in many German companies – and hordes of young interns started to handle the social media activities of firms of all sizes (sometimes with hilarious effects). One of the duties they had to fulfil was taking care of the company's Wikipedia entry – which didn't always exist in the first place.  Some of them succeeded, some got virtually punched in the face by the German-speaking Wikipedia community.

You have to know at least two basic rules about the German Wikipedia.  First: the normal language in the German community is sometimes still quite blunt – especially on the site for deletion requests.  Just a link to this page can send shivers up the spines of some CEOs and marketing managers.  Secondly: Wikipedia is not a phone book or product index and the Wikipedia community gave itself a set of criteria to prove what is relevant and what is, well, ‘irrelevant crap’.

If you are sure that your company, product or idea matches those criteria, you are absolutely right to ask a professional for help with the article.  But here’s some advice if you are planning to get things kicking in the German branch of the world's biggest online encyclopaedia: just because Microsoft, Dell and IBM have an entry, it doesn't mean you can get one.  As I said, there are some criteria you have to match first. Otherwise you risk getting your article deleted again just some days (or hours) later with reasons like ‘irrelevant’, ‘Marketing blabla’ or ‘come back when you grew up, kiddo’.  Also, when your article doesn't get deleted, you don't own it. It's a wiki; everybody can edit it – even your competitors.  And, last but not least, never forget that Wikipedia wants to be a neutral encyclopaedia – they want to show facts, whether you like them or not.  There has always been a select few who’ve tried to lighten up articles using Greenwashing, spin tactics or legal threats, but most of the time, this didn't end well.  However, if you are still willing to try tactics, I have one final piece of advice, perhaps you should read this article first: Streisand effect.

Goodbye 2011

By Flora Haslam

As we head towards Christmas, this will be our last post for 2011.  So it seems rude not to jump on the bandwagon and look back at the last 12 months...

For me – and in no particular order – these are the top five stories that stick in my mind:

1. Tablets.  I’m starting to think I’m the only person without an iPad – too late to add to my Christmas list? 

2. Anonymous and LulzSec – I’m sure there were a couple of months earlier in the year when they were in the headlines practically every day.  

3. The power of social media in action – from Egypt to the London riots. 

4. Can tech turn the economic tide?  Zynga, Groupon and LinkedIn all made public entrances in an otherwise shocking economic climate.  

5. Steve Jobs' untimely death in October – the biggest tech story of 2011, as covered by Bex at the time. 

And finally, I’ll have to give a little mention to RIM – after a week in October travelling with no working BlackBerry, this has to be the company that has least impressed me in 2011 – I suspect they’ll be glad when this year is over. 

So what have I missed?  Let me know if the Autonomy sale, launch of Google +, News International hacking or something else would have made your top five.

Is gaming your dirty little secret?

By Ben Roberts

The gaming industry has traditionally been considered as fairly niche, but with the last five years or so seeing the introduction of the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, advanced smartphones and tablets, the industry has been transformed.  This stunning new technology, coupled with so-called casual games like Just Dance or Angry Birds and social games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars, has opened the market to a host of new audiences.  Indeed, the value of the market these days is huge – in July Gartner predicted that in Britain we’d spend £3.6bn on games this year.  That’s about the same as the music industry, if you’re wondering.

What’s odd, however, is that the image of the gamer hasn’t changed.  As someone who <3 computer games I find this pretty sad (not because I’m sad).  Gamers have long-been considered socially awkward geeks with not a lot else going on in their life, and many people remain shy about sharing the fact that they enjoy playing computer games, fearful of the assumptions that would be made about them. 

For example, when my colleague, @JacsBooker, recently levelled up and got an iPad – soon getting hooked on Flight Control and playing it on a daily basis during her commute – she flat out denied the fact that she’s a gamer.  She actually puts this down to the fact that she doesn’t play a ‘proper game’ like Call of Duty – but, personally, I don’t believe there’s a difference in playing one type of game or another; if you play games, you play games.

In order for the modern reluctant gamer to accept the truth, I believe that the image of the gamer needs some PR love.  We need to help people recognise that computer games are nothing to be ashamed of.  Whether it be shooting virtual people with virtual bullets, or shooting virtual pigs with virtual birds, gaming should not be your dirty little secret.  

Wi-Fi vs. Man

By Olivia Ronsain

Among all the tech news I’ve read recently, one piece really caught my eye – a preliminary study on the damaging effect of sperm’s prolonged exposure to Wi-Fi via a laptop, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility. 

Working in tech PR, I paid particular attention to the news that this warning message – ‘The use of a Wi-Fi connection can damage your sperm cells’ – could soon appear on the underside of a modem, and it got me thinking.  How exactly will parents tell their teenage sons that surfing the net with their laptop resting on their knees could harm their ability to have children one day?

It’s hard to picture a mother casually telling her son, “Sweetie, I already told you not to put your laptop directly on your knees.  Do you really want to suffer reduced sperm motility and a fragmentation of its DNA?”

This study is just the latest in a long line of research reports that have found a regular place in our news cycles.  For instance, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) previously warned that a 20 minute call on a mobile phone and a whole year in a Wi-Fi hot-spot, exposed users to the same amount of radio waves.  The question is, has anyone paid attention and adapted their mobile habits?  

Carried out by scientists from Argentina and the US, this Wi-Fi fertility study has certainly raised a few eyebrows – especially among the male of the species!  And, given that previous reports suggested infertility worries were a result of the heat generated from laptops, there’s certainly some merit in these findings.

However, with the HPA already closely monitoring the safety of Wi-Fi, wouldn’t it have been better to wait for some stronger confirmation before publishing news like this and proposing health warnings be stamped across pieces of kit? 

Should the effects of Wi-Fi be proved true, then men will surely take note and adapt their posture (or risk the consequences).  I doubt that modem warnings will make much of a difference.

 

For Tim the Bell tolls

by Mike King

As if the recent expose of Bell Pottinger’s underhand lobbying claims wasn’t bad enough for the firm, Matthew Norman in the Independent has now written a scathing personal attack on Lord Bell, Chairman of Chime Communications, Bell Pottinger’s parent company.  In it he pulls no punches, with comments like  ‘Why he eschewed the title Lord Bell-End of Much Tossing Over-The-Heath is beyond me. He was a gigantic tool then, and so he remains...’.

Amazingly, for a man with unrivalled experience in the PR industry, Lord Bell’s reaction to the expose has made the whole situation worse.  When the story first broke I wasn’t particularly surprised at MD Tim Collins claims that Bell Pottinger has direct influence at the heart of the British government.  This is, after all, essentially what the lobbying industry exists to do and this is certainly not the first time lobbying, or even Bell Pottinger, has been in hot water over its activities.

The surprise for me came with Lord Bell’s reaction and his reported claims that Bell Pottinger had been the victim of “an attempt by unethical, underhand deception to manufacture a story where none exists”  and that “there is no public interest in this story.”

Is he serious?  To claim there is no public interest in a story about corruption and underhand influence over senior British government figures is farfetched to say the least.  As for his claim of underhand deception, could that be because the journalists involved posed as potential Bell Pottinger clients and secretly recorded Tim Collins’ claims?  This, coming from a man who’s firm represented Rebekah Brooks, is not without some degree of irony.

Google+ may have lost me £100

By Ginnia Cheng

Here at Johnson King, we take our tech very seriously – so seriously that it looks like I owe my colleague Ben (@BnRbrts) a £100 meal because of a tech-related bet I seem to have already lost.

When Google+ was released back in June, I was certain it was going to be a revolutionary success, while Ben was sure it would never take Facebook’s social media crown. After a lengthy and very heated debate, we decided to settle it – if Facebook remained the dominating force in the social network space, then I’d owe him a £100 dinner. But if Google+ makes a dent on Facebook’s industry domination, then he’d owe the dinner to me (we’d both just been promoted at this point so were feeling particularly rich!). 

The release of Google+ drummed up an unprecedented level of hype in the social media world, and with what critics deemed as ‘killer’ features, such as Circles, Hangouts and Sparks, to me it looked like Google couldn’t go wrong . The other big ‘winning’ factor for me was that Google+ was really just a project, and the company were very keen on getting it right for their users – generally the biggest complaint about Facebook is that, due to its many years of market monopoly, it implements whatever changes it wants regardless of user feedback.

There was only one downside I could see – which Ben insisted would be an impossible barrier to break through, but which I was sure would be fixed with time – and this was the fact that everyone and all their friends were already on Facebook and would be reluctant to join another social network.

Unfortunately, as time went on, Google+ seemed to lose its momentum. As Google+ was invite-only for a longer period of time than expected, the only people that seemed to be joining Google+ were the tech-inclined. The only things people seemed to be posting on Google+ were about Google+ itself. Reports started coming in about how it was a flop, and even a Google engineer called Google+ a ‘complete failure’.  Then came the news that Google was pulling the plug on its other social media ventures, Google Buzz and Google Wave. Many took this as a sign of things to come for Google+. Had I lost my bet?

To me this in no way signifies the end of Google+. Call me a Google fangirl, but I really do think Google will be pulling something out of its sleeve soon to drive momentum behind the service. Just because we’re not hearing about it 24/7 anymore, doesn’t mean it’s not being used – and recently, Britney Spears overtook Google’s CEO as the most-followed on Google+, which must be an indication that its userbase has grown from just the very tech-savvy to a wider audience of social networkers. Google+ adverts have popped up around London and on TV, which I never saw for Buzz or Wave. Usually advert-shy, the only other Google adverts have been for Chrome, and look how well Chrome is doing. Admittedly, Facebook’s never had to physically advertise anywhere – but it does have a seven-year head start and before Google+, was the only service of its kind available.

So for now, I refuse to accept that I’ve lost this bet. To me, it looks like Google’s just getting started with Google+, and at this point I’d say Ben and I are still even. What do you think – is Google+ the Facebook killer?  Let us know here: http://twtpoll.com/tc7enx 

Has Christmas come early for Amazon?

With the festive season fast approaching and 50,000 daily pre-orders of the Kindle Fire, it looks like Christmas has already come early for Amazon.  In light of this, Techspot published this lovely infographic showing us just how big Amazon is: