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Welcome to Black Friday

Have you snapped up a deal, or got more than you bargained for? 

By Flora Haslam

Just as UK shoppers are so sick of turkey, TV repeats and family squabbles that they traditionally hit the sales on Boxing Day, our American friends do the same after Thanksgiving.  The result?  Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year.

Outside of some sectors – let’s be honest, the tech PR and media community has been capitalising on it for some time – Black Friday has never really hit the mainstream in the UK.  But this might just be the year that changes.

Not many people in Europe celebrate Thanksgiving, but that’s no reason for us to miss out – at least that’s what the major retailers, desperate to bolster their sales, have been telling us.

I guess it’s no surprise that Asda – owned by US supermarket giant Wal-Mart – seems to be leading the charge.  Last year, Wal-Mart stores in the US served more than 22 million customers in one day; Asda stores are presumably hoping to emulate this to some degree.  Sadly if these stories from Bristol and Newcastle are to be believed, it’s not just the deals that have crossed the Atlantic, but the fist fights too.

If you’re scouting for a bargain, The Telegraph has handily rounded up some of today’s best offers.

Too busy to shop today?  Never fear, it’s Cyber Monday in a couple of days.  Oh and then there’s ‘Middle Cyber Monday’ the following week...

Seminar with Tick Tock Social shows how to improve ROI from social

This week, we held a breakfast seminar here at Johnson King with Carole Theriault from Tick Tock Social treating attendees to best practice tips and advice on how tech firms can get better ROI from social media.

Carole drew from her past experience when she led PR efforts at IT security firm Sophos, and also gave examples of some pretty remarkable social media campaigns such as the Blendtec “Will it blend?” YouTube sensation, and the excellent example of Tesco Mobile’s Twitter interaction strategy.

Over pastries and coffee, Carole also spoke to attendees from marketing departments at a wide variety of tech firms about how to create a social media strategy that functions as a natural extension of traditional PR, and how to set measurable goals that can help to prove campaign success.

Those present were also treated to a copy of Carole’s social media strategy whitepaper – if you’d like a copy of this for yourself, you can download it here.

When political parties try to erase the internet

By Kasia Murphy

It was recently uncovered in ComputerWeekly that the Tory party had deleted ten years worth of speeches and press releases from its website. However, it doesn’t stop there – the materials were not just erased from the Conservatives' website and YouTube page, but from the INTERNET ARCHIVE – the world's digital library.

So what terrible, dark and awful materials were deleted? The ‘disappeared’ materials were pre-General election speeches and press releases that discussed how the new Tories were all about modernising conservatism, dedicated to saving the environment and that “cuts would be made to the deficit, not the NHS”, and so on.

Unsurprisingly, censoring the internet isn’t quite like setting a load of books on fire a lá the 15^th century, rather this move was done by altering the Robots.txt file on their Conservatives.com site which instructs web crawlers such as Google about what content it is allowed to access.

However, there are many sophisticated archiving tools and methods out there – thanks in no small part to, you guessed it, technology! For one, the British Library has been archiving a selection of the UK's Web since the mid-2000s.

Fortunately human(electorate)-memory is pretty hard to purge, and there are still plenty of one-liners that can be sourced from articles published in the period between 2000 – May 2010, like this chestnut:

"It's clear to me that political leaders will have to learn to let go... Let go of the information that we've guarded so jealously." David Cameron, 11 October 2007, Google Zeitgeist Conference in San Francisco.

Also worrying is that Labour's current news archive dates back only as far as the start of Ed Miliband's leadership, in 2010 – and it is supposed to be regularly ‘updated’! Even speeches delivered by Tony Blair during his time as prime minister appear to have been deleted. That said, Labour did not use the Robots.txt file meaning it’s all still out there, somewhere.

Blackberry jam

By Mike King

Call me nostalgic, but I’d kind of hoped Blackberry was going to be able to turn things around. I know the writing has been on the wall for a long time but I still have a fondness for the keypad and cheaper international roaming costs that set Blackberry apart from the rest of the smart phone world.  

OK, the handsets are unreliable, battery life is ridiculously short and the need for businesses to set up and run separate Blackberry servers is antiquated and cumbersome, but I’ll still be sorry to see it go. Unfortunately, there’s little doubt that the end is nigh.  Latest figures from research firm IDC show that in Q3 2013 only 1.7% of smart phones sold worldwide ran the Blackberry OS.  That’s a 41% drop in market share for Blackberry when compared to the same period last year.  Ouch.   

Meanwhile, Android continues to go from strength to strength, hitting more that 80% market share for the first time in same quarter.  Apple’s iOS and Microsoft’s Windows phone also showed significant growth, confirming that we’re well into a three horse race. 

To put Blackberry’s figures into perspective, another research firm, TrendForce, calculates that a minimum of 3% market share is necessary for any smart phone manufacturer to remain competitive.  Below this level, which equates to 35 million units shipped per year, the economies of scale are not there.  So, in other words, last quarter Blackberry had close to half the market share it needed to stand a chance of competing. And its market share is dropping at a record rate. 

Of course, Blackberry would say different and is pinning its hopes on new CEO, John Chen, who it claims can turn the company around.  Meanwhile, details have just emerged of another Blackberry security flaw.  I can think of less risky places to invest $1 billion. 

Mobile Christmas countdown

By Nicole Melzer

It’s November, which means Christmas is just around the corner, and I am slowly getting into the right mode for the festive period.

A recent survey, conducted by Ernst & Young, reveals how people in Germany will spend approximately €273 on Christmas presents. This got me thinking about my own Christmas shopping and what to buy for my mum, dad, brothers, sister, cousins, grandma, grandpa, sister-in-law, nephew, brother-in-law, my best friend and her husband – wow, that’s a lot of people! With this in mind, I began to panic. A reasonable shopping budget is good, however, I hope that Ernst & Young’s results take into account more than just three family members or friends. Then there is the same dilemma that I’m faced with every year, what can I buy them? My first idea: socks for all of them, but that’s not very creative, so maybe I should think of something else. I decided that I needed some help and a source of inspiration, so I grabbed my smartphone and began my hunt for the latest Christmas apps.

It seems I am not the only one who is resorting to using apps for my Christmas shopping, according to a recent survey, conducted by Inside Mobile Apps, 25 percent of its respondents will use an app for holiday shopping this year. Furthermore, LEAD digital reported that, in 2012, 1.76 billion apps were downloaded all over the world, with the USA taking the lead with 604 million apps.

The range of Christmas apps is growing – for example, there’s special Christmas ringing tones, Christmas countdown, Christmas Tree Live Wallpaper, Funny Santa Videos, Christmas Carols, Christmas with Charlie Brown and many more – however, the latest is the “en vogue” app, which is described as a “relationship-butler”. Not only does the app remind you of important festive days, birthdays and important occasions, but you will also receive a list of suggested gifts. The “relationship-butler” simply looks at your family or friends Facebook profile, as well as your own, and scans your wishes, interests, and personal preferences, to find the perfect gift. Once you’ve found the right one, you can buy it online using your smartphone, which we’ve already discovered many people are in favor of.  

It’s no surprise that mobile shopping has become an increasing trend for 2013 and, with the rapid proliferation of smartphone devices, it will undoubtedly continue to grow into 2014. For example, according to a report, conducted by Toluny QuickSurveys, 24 percent of Brits used a mobile device for shopping in 2012. The USA showed similar shopping behaviours and were 4 percent more likely to shop using a mobile device or tablet.

So, what does this tell us about Christmas today? Mobile devices are certainly playing an increasingly bigger role than previous years – it’s like Christmas in your pocket, where you can listen to the sound of bells, play a Christmas carol, and complete all of your Christmas shopping straight from your mobile device. The idea of a “relationship-butler” sounds interesting, but personally I believe there are two hooks. Firstly, not everybody from your friends or family is on Facebook. Secondly, an app couldn’t possibly take all of your interests or tastes into account, not like a human does anyway. Of course, there is a big amount of personal data on Facebook, but posting pictures of your favorite cocktail bar could potentially draw to the wrong conclusion. Finally, it's all a matter of budget, and so my search begins for an app to help me with my Christmas funds.

US tech firm targeting European journalists? Here’s what not to do

If you work at a US tech firm that’s about to start doing PR in Europe – or if indeed you’ve already started – you could do worse that read our new white paper.  Authored by veteran tech journalist and current editorial director of IDG Connect, Martin Veitch, it spells out the 12 most common mistakes US tech companies have made when selling him a story.

So if you believe the European Union really is a single market, you have a ‘turnkey’ solution with a ‘compelling deliverable’, or you always skip the wine list at a press lunch, you’ll find this essential reading.  Download it for free here.

 

Who knew? Liam Payne gets it more than Harry Styles

By Aislinn Collins

Re-tweets at least.  PeerIndex this week released its annual list of the UK’s 140 (see what they did there) most influential tweeters and the results are somewhat surprising.  Liam Payne, apparently, has more clout than Harry Styles and Eleanor Calder’s (One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson’s girlfriend) musings are seemingly more significant than Ed Miliband’s – despite the fact anyone who isn’t one of these is unlikely to have ever heard of her.  The list of surprising results goes on, with, for example, controversial 2012 X Factor contestant, Rylan Clarke, ranking ahead of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

While I have no doubt that the tweets of each member of One Direction are seen by a wide and varying audience – the idea that the influence of a reality TV show contestant is greater than the Chancellor of the Exchequer is slightly concerning and hard to genuinely believe.  PeerIndex’s methodology for the Top 140 focused on the people responding to, retweeting or engaging with a certain tweeter.  The number of followers a person has is not taken into account and a retweet from a fellow ‘influencer’ scores higher than that of an ‘average’ person.  PeerIndex has removed any corporate or brand accounts, including newspapers, parody accounts, and journalists from the main national newspapers (although, for some reason, Times journalist Caitlin Moran makes it) in its assessment.  Included, however, are transatlantic Brits, à la Piers Morgan, and will.i.am because, apparently, he’s always on TV here so he counts.  Sure. 

In 2012, PeerIndex joined forces with the Independent to compile a list of the 100 most influential Tweeters in the UK.  A list that looks very different, with Richard Branson in pole position, and  Sarah Brown and Alan Carr coming in at joint second (while Harry still made the list at number 22, Liam was nowhere to be seen – in case you’re interested).  This research used a different methodology and, perhaps crucially, included a five-person expert panel to verify the results PeerIndex provided.

PeerIndex, and other tools like it, are often used by organisations and individuals to measure their social media presence.  Where traditionally the reach of a company’s message could be calculated through column inches and press cuttings, in today’s fast paced and social world it’s a very different story.  It would appear that measuring social media influence is a highly complex process with the results varying dependent on the methodology used.  While the results of this year’s Top 140 may be slightly skewed given PeerIndex’s headline-serving methodology, it’s likely that consensus on the best way to measure social media will need to be reached at some point.  Without it, it will be each to their own and that doesn’t hold much value in the long run.