Whatever...

Time for change – let’s make do and mend

By Dana Hashem

The time has come for me to renew my mobile phone contract.  Yes, once again, I find myself bombarded with renewal offers from my current provider, while competing operators fight hard to steal me away with promises of better packages and wondrous handsets capable of anything from full-blown GPS to intelligent voice recognition (heck, why would I want to talk to my friends when I can talk to my phone?).

Apparently, I’m supposed to take this opportunity to replace my old handset.  There is just one snag with this - I like the phone I have now.  It works.  It’s familiar.  There’s absolutely no reason that I should replace it.  In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if it broke, I’d probably feel more inclined to get it repaired than buy a new one.  The problem is I can’t shake the feeling that this attitude is socially unacceptable – I’m supposed to yearn for the latest upgrade, and everyone around me thinks nothing of casting their old phone aside regardless of whether it still works or not.

This in itself may seem like an insignificant conundrum, but just think about it – when it comes to IT equipment, this throwaway culture manifests itself everywhere.  Consumers and businesses alike turf out perfectly serviceable kit all the time, and manufacturers certainly know how to press all the right buttons to keep us hungry for more.  The environmental consequences of this are enormous, and somehow government initiatives like the WEEE directive just don’t seem to be hitting the mark.  To me, the solution to this problem is simple; we need to make things last longer instead of discarding them at the first sign of malfunction.

As the new government prepares to tighten the nation’s belt – not to mention clamp down on the UK’s carbon footprint – it should also be encouraging a more thrifty mentality towards the disposal of IT equipment.  Perhaps making IT repair more affordable would be a good place to start?

Accessorising the iPad

If you’re one of the lucky ones getting an iPad this Friday, you’re probably considering how to best accessorise your purchase.  This video from Swiss Miss is a great place to start!

 

New vs old media...

Here’s an interesting report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. 
 
It’s a (US based) in-depth look at how different stories/issues prove popular not just between new and old media, but between the individual channels of blogs, Twitter and YouTube – suggesting that digital campaigns will really benefit from a highly tailored individual approach for the separate platforms.
 

The 140 most influential people with 140 characters

The Information Architects team has produced this impressive map of the top 140 Twitter influencers.  How many of them do you follow and how much influence do you think they really have? 

A recent survey of technology marketeers found that there is still major disagreement on the value of using Twitter.

 

I’m sorry, your card has been declined

By Flora Haslam

Having just got back from a few weeks in Mexico, I’ve faced the all too common frustration of having my credit/debit cards repeatedly blocked.  My bank now asks customers to advise when they’re travelling overseas, providing the dates and countries they’re visiting.  While this is far from convenient I was happy to oblige on the basis that my bank was doing all it could to prevent fraud and I’d have no problems buying stuff and withdrawing cash.  Sadly, this didn’t happen!  Despite registering both a VISA and Mastercard, both were blocked for certain transactions – even when using a Chip and PIN device.

Banks obviously can’t afford to lose any more money in the current climate – fraud costs the UK cards industry £440m a year despite overseas fraud apparently falling 47% in the last year, but I can’t help but think there has to be a better (and cheaper) way than automatically blocking cards.

There’s clearly a market for technology to address this – in the interests of full disclosure we’ve done some work for one such firm that is addressing the problem by checking whether a customer’s mobile phone is in the same place as the card making the transaction.  Unfortunately few card issuers seem to be deploying such tools.  If one could offer me a more user-friendly, secure service today, I’d certainly be interested in switching!

How has your privacy changed on Facebook?

Lots in the news at the moment regarding Facebook’s privacy policies.  This blog entry shows you how the default settings have progressed overtime.  Give the diagram a click...

 

Know your PR proverbs

By Oliver Fischer

 

I really like those old proverbs, quotes and sayings.  Everyone can recite them, and though they are rarely useful, they at least make you appear quite intellectual. And polite.  For example, ‘Speech is silver, but silence is golden,’ is just a nice way to tell someone to shut up.

 

This good old proverb comes to my mind quite often these days as more and more people publish their opinions online.  A prime example is Wolfgang Grupp, the owner of the German textile manufacturing company Trigema, who was interviewed for a German blog just last week.  Mr Grupp is well known for his straight talking and, true to form, he just said what he thought about the internet and particularly the users of a well known social media platform.

 

I quote: ‘Twitter ist für mich einfach nur dumm und die Menschen, die das nutzen, sind für mich Idioten.’  (‘In my opinion, Twitter is just stupid and the people using it are idiots.’)

 

Needless to say, as soon as the interview was published, an online discussion erupted, as people debated whether he’d been misquoted, if he was just misunderstood or if he just didn’t care.  His words were quoted in several other blogs, retweeted more than 700 times and an argument raged on Trigema’s Facebook site, as people tried to decide whether the company – which has a speaking chimpanzee in its TV adverts (and as its avatar on Twitter) – was unkind or courageous.

 

To its credit, Trigema’s crisis management team acted fast and used appropriate channels, responding via Twitter and on Facebook.  It also set up a discussion between Mr. Grupp, the blogger who wrote the interview, and some prominent online community members on web radio station, cliq.fm.  Essentially, it used the very platforms that, just a day before, were being exploited to slate Trigema’s reputation.

 

We can only guess about what would have happened if Trigema had tried to ignore the problem.  Worse still, it could have decided to take legal action against the blog (see here, here, here and here for just some examples).

 

Trigema and others would perhaps do well to always remember another very true (although slightly readjusted) proverb: ‘bad news will fly around the whole world while your apology is getting its boots on.’

It wasn’t like this in the old days

By Claire Ayles

Forgive my self-indulgent naval gazing, but this week marks my tenth anniversary at Johnson King, and it’s got me thinking about what’s changed and what hasn’t in a decade’s worth of technology PR.

When you bear in mind that my mobile at the time didn’t even have SMS capabilities (and that my days are now dictated by my BlackBerry’s flashing red light), you can see that things have moved on a fair way.

I spent my early days convincing the print media, as well as an emerging number of websites (“they’ll never catch on!’’), to cover my clients’ news and opinions.  The phone was the number one way of communicating with journalists and clients alike, a far cry from today’s email and Skype-centred conversations.

While some titles – most notably, Computing, Computer Weekly, Silicon and The Register – have stood the test of time, I also can’t help but reminisce over the huge number of magazines and newspapers that have fallen by the way side over the years.  IT Week, Business 2.0, The Industry Standard, Network News, Communications News, Communications Week International and The Business (and they’re just the tip of the iceberg) have all met their maker. Most depressingly, the ever dependable (not to mention chunky) FT IT and FT Telecoms supplements were ditched for a slimmer, online equivalent.

I realise I’m in danger of sounding like a pensioner trying to convince her grandkids that it was better to live with rationing and the Blitz than get on the bus full of today’s school children, so I should point out that it’s not all doom and gloom. PR’s simply changed, and in many ways, for the better.

With online news sites outnumbering print outlets, the stories needs to keep flowing, so PR tactics have become short, sharp and decisive.  The days of slogging over 3,000 word technical articles on a regular basis are thankfully long gone.

However, perhaps the most interesting shift is in how firms are looking to PRs to develop digital and social media campaigns, which speak directly to their audiences and bypass journalists completely.  It would be way off the mark to suggest the media has had its day, but it’s clear it’s no longer the only kid on the block.

So, while ten years ago it was all about VC firms dishing out money to potential dotcom millionaires (who newspapers were happy to profile before they’d even made a penny); today’s buzz is all about social media.  Stay tuned for my 2020 post, but let’s hope it’s not a retrospective of the late, great Facebook, the modern equivalent of Boo.com.

Short term pain is sign of good times to come

By Mike King

A sure sign that the technology industry recovery is well underway comes from the level of mergers and acquisitions we’re now starting to see.  Last week’s announcement that Johnson King client PGP is to be acquired by Symantec though not particularly welcome from our point of view (a client acquired is more often than not a client lost) is a good illustration of how technology industry consolidation is gaining momentum.

There’s been a big increase in the number of acquisitions since the turn of the year. According to the National Venture Capital Association in the US, Q1 2010 saw the highest number of venture backed companies being acquired since their records began in 1975.

It is a similar story when it comes to IPOs.  Though nowhere near the level of the late 90s, they are also on the increase.  And there are plenty of others ready to go, including our very own Force10 Networks, a company that announced its plans to IPO back in March.

Of course, all this financial activity is good news for the tech PR industry.  It increases levels of VC funding because realistic exit routes once again exist.  And well funded companies look to invest in developing their markets and deliver sales growth to increase their value.

As the Wall Street Journal predicted when Force10 announced its IPO plans, if Force10 is successful, the flood gates will open. Here’s hoping there are good times ahead.

Johnson King Blog – The ‘Internet election’?

During the run up to this year’s General Election there’s been much talk about the use and potential of previously unused or unavailable communication tools such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.  On the eve of voting day, Johnson King asks how the political parties’ use of digital media compares to more traditional channels and whether the use of new tools has had any real impact.