Whatever...

We’re off to pastures new

On Monday (5th October) Johnson King will officially morph into Finn Partners, and this means we’ll sadly be saying goodbye to our Whatever blog.  We’re an opinionated bunch though and won’t be forced off our soapboxes that easily, we’re just off to a new domain.  To continue reading our musings on the world of technology, communications and everything in between, head over to the Finn Partners Global blog (http://www.finnpartners.com/blog/index.html) where we’ll carry on posting regularly.  

Thanks for reading over the years and see you on the other site!

 

EuroFinance conference: International Cash & Treasury Management

By Terri Bloore

Finn Partners was charged with the role of raising awareness of the treasury, securing media attendance at the event and manning the press office at EuroFinance’s flagship conference, ‘International Cash & Treasury Management’. This year's theme was 'Keeping treasury fit' and with Denmark being one of the happiest, fittest and healthiest countries in the world, Copenhagen seemed the perfect location to host this leading event. The challenge lay in educating business and financial media, and, of vital importance to the treasury, to educate businesses and the global economy too.  This is not least because apart from the niche financial titles, the treasury function is still something of an unknown. An education process was therefore in order.

With the ever increasing pace of change to regulation, competition and renewed economic worries, it is vital that a company’s finance functions are fit and have the stamina to keep going in tough conditions. The conference has brought together leading experts and thought leaders including José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission (2004-2014) and prime minister of Portugal; Lord Rose, chairman of Ocado, and former chief executive and chairman of Marks & Spencer; and Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief at The Economist. Discussions have ranged from looking at how corporations can make changes to ensure the fitness of core treasury functions, increase strength and agility for growth, and build stamina to keep financially fit for the future.

This year, there were over 2,000 people in attendance showing the rising importance of the treasury to technology, financial institutions and media.

A few bad men – Fact and fiction about PR & journalism

By Oliver Fischer 

There’s a discussion most PR professionals have had at least once – the discussion about the morals of our profession. This discussion normally leads to the same questions, which I have also heard several times: How do you sleep at night? Can you look yourself in the eye when you look in the mirror? You, who started out as a journalist, a fighter for freedom of speech and freedom of information, a paragon for the truth, how could you end up in the claws of Big Business and, instead, spread misinformation and propaganda? How much did the devil pay for your soul? Questions I can answer with: safe, sound and snoring; yes; it’s complicated; that’s personal. 

Obviously – at least it’s obvious for most people actually working in the industry – these questions are based on a complete misunderstanding of not only our job, but of journalistic work as well. And I can’t blame them – most societies generate images of a certain profession through their depiction in fictional media. That’s why, when people think about journalists, they think about Cal McCaffrey from “State of Play” and William DeWorde from “The Truth”. On the other hand, there’s sleazy Nick Naylor from “Thank You For Smoking” (technically, he’s a lobbyist, but he gets linked to PR quite often) and the jerk-ass, arrogant, offensively rich and cowardly PR man Dominic Foy from (again) “State of Play”. In the fictional examples, there’s occasionally some effort to give journalists a few faults and PR people some sympathetic features – in “Thank You For Smoking”, Katie Holmes’ journalist sleeps with her interviewee to get confidential information, while Aaron Eckhart’s character is shown as a loving father – but that’s mostly just a plot device to create some drama, the roles stay the same. (It’s similar in “State of Play”, except that Marc Warren’s / Jason Bateman’s PR man didn’t even get one redeemable feature – instead, they gave those to the scheming politician…) 

Clearly, these memories and fictional depictions often overlook the harsh reality; that journalists frequently spend months or years pushing a personal or publisher-dictated agenda – German newspapers brought a whole (useless) law into existence that was meant to allow publishers to charge Google for showing snippets on Google News; that there are about five times more fact-checking mechanisms involved in any PR story than in journalistic articles; that although I now write and work for my clients, as a journalist I often worked twice as hard to please advertising customers. And that in the future more and more good-quality and investigative journalism won’t be coming from the publisher side, but from companies and NGOs. 

There are, of course, exceptions on both sides – the good journalists and the bad PR people, which is where the stereotypes actually come from. There are also fictional works, where journalists are reduced to publicity hungry, irresponsible morons (usually if there’s no PR person in the story). There’s also quite often a lot of confusion about what it actually is we actually do and how we are different from advertisers and marketers. However, what I would say about the whole discussion about morals in PR and journalism is there is no black and white in the media business; I’m incredibly happy in what I do for a living; and I will continue to laugh a lot about the depictions of our profession in film and literature.

Mini-maternity leave: Fine for Mayer, just don’t force it on the rest of us

By Claire Ayles

Congratulations to Marissa Mayer and her family on the news that they have twin girls on the way.  With a son already, Mayer proves that it is possible to be a mother whilst holding down one of the biggest jobs in corporate America.

The fact that she was born female means, whether she likes it or not, Mayer’s personal life come under particularly close scrutiny. Just look at the furore that followed the announcement that she plans to take just two weeks maternity leave following the upcoming birth of her babies. 

This is her decision and I’m eager not to judge her (there’s been enough of that already). I’ve never met a working mother who doesn’t feels guilty about leaving her kids to go back to work and I doubt Mayer is any different.  Bear in mind that she operates in what largely remains a man’s world (true of both the tech industry and investment firms so crucial to Yahoo’s success) and it’s perhaps not that surprising that she’s taking an amount of leave that sounds more ‘paternity’ than ‘maternity’.

But while Yahoo’s shareholders will feel rest-assured that it’ll be business as usual, do spare a thought for the women who work for her.  After all, when the boss decides to take just a fortnight, will you be branded a slacker if you want to take longer?  

An extremely competent and successful friend once told me that the worst boss she’d ever worked for was a female entrepreneur with kids who’d returned to work pretty much immediately after their births. Although she was never prevented from exercising her statutory rights as a parent, the company culture was such that my mate felt guilty every time she needed to take time off to settle her own children into school, take them to the doctors, etc. You know, the kind of stuff you really HAVE to do.  She ended up leaving even though she liked her job, was good at it and was valued by her firm.

I’m sure Mayer is an utterly fair and decent boss who would never overtly pressurise any employee, but CEOs lead by example, and this is a pretty strong example.  No one wants to be judged on the decisions they make about parenting, so let’s not judge her. But equally, let’s hope she and other people in her position won’t judge those working parents who decide to strike a different balance.

An ideal pitch – have you considered ‘unconsidered needs’?

By Ioiana Luncheon

Pitching news and story ideas to journalists is a fundamental part of what we do, and it’s extremely important to ensure a pitch is both relevant and stands out from the crowd – especially when journalists receive hundreds of email pitches and phone calls a day.

Journalists will occasionally impart helpful tips for companies who approach them, a lot of which is usually very simple and sensible.  For example, it’s often helpful to relate a pitch to a current news story, make it as clear and concise as possible and, if it’s via email, you should arguably put as much thought and creativity into crafting your subject line as the body of your pitch itself.

One interesting and important consideration expounded by Corporate Visions, which is a sales training and messaging company (and in the interests of full disclosure is a Finn Partners UK client), is that of outlining your prospect’s ‘unconsidered needs’ first.

Unconsidered needs “are the gaps and deficiencies in a prospect’s current approach that they’re either underestimating or don’t yet know about.” It’s interesting to think about this approach from a PR perspective, and how useful unconsidered needs are from the perspective of telling a PR story – most obviously an interesting hook or angle that adds to a topic and, vitally, that hasn’t been written about yet.

For a PR pitch to be successful, it must get the basics right above all else. Beyond that, it is creative ideas and considering the unconsidered that will really set it apart. 

Are you still a LOL-er? You’re probably 28 then

By Aston Sonnen

So it’s official, Facebook has confirmed that the humble ‘LOL’ is decreasing in popularity.  Once the standard expression used to display digital amusement, it has now been overtaken by the new, hip laughing Emoji, ‘hehe,’ and the more traditional, ‘haha’.

The findings reveal which method of e-laughter is favoured by each age group, and LOL-ers do still exist, but they’re now Facebook users with an average age of 28.  Indeed, I can understand why they continue to stick with it.  In the days of MSN Messenger (RIP), ‘LOL’ was my go-to response to the things I found funny, the things I didn’t find funny but felt like it required a response, or for the times when I was unsure of how to respond so used it no matter what its relevance to the initial comment was.  Communication in my teens was pretty basic, but it meant I believed in the power of ‘LOL’, and clearly some still do. 

According to Facebook, the inspiration for the e-laughter analysis was a New Yorker article by Sarah Larson.  In the piece, she discusses her methods for expressing digital delight, as well as those of her friends, in a bid to see if there’s a pattern between their gender, age and laughter method.  Ultimately, she did spot a few trends, which Facebook confirmed do exist, but the findings are in no way conclusive; after all, what about ‘ROFL’ or ‘LMAO’?  Come on Facebook, a job worth doing is worth doing well.

Anyway, what we’ve had confirmed is that there is a plethora of options for you to use to convey, or feign, amusement when your friend posts a video on your wall.  However, the next stage of technology evolution means we could soon be laughing AT our computers.  Microsoft has attempted to program a computer with a sense of humour in order for it to judge the entries to a popular weekly caption competition.  While still very early in development, the computer penalised entries which included proper nouns, and that in turn punished good jokes which reflected current events.  Still, is it inconceivable to think that one day machines will be able to sense sarcasm or generate their own punch lines?  Just think, we’ve all seen Terminator 2 and there’s no way the T-101’s comic timing is due to Arnie’s acting ability – this is the start of Skynet.

Now I realise that I haven’t actually explained what ‘LOL’ stands for and it’s because I assume you all know.  However, just in case, it means ‘laugh out loud’ not ‘lots of love’ as my Nan thought when writing my birthday card.  LOL, Nan. 

Music and productivity at work: please don’t stop the music!

By Morgane Leonard

“What would you think if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me?”. Yes, probably! Especially if you’re my colleague and you start singing (off-key) while I’m trying to focus on my next byline article on network infrastructure! But if you keep it to yourself, I might be OK with you working with music.

For as long as I can remember, music has always been a big part of my life. My parents always had the radio on in most rooms, and with my grand-mother being a former ballet dancer, she would practice to music every day in our dance room at home, which made it almost impossible to grow up with “the sound of silence”. This has always been fine by me, though; I listen to music a lot in my free time, on my daily commute, and even when I want to concentrate on something at work – but it seems I am not alone in this.

In fact, I am just one person among many others that uses music to focus.  Indeed, a recent infographic, conducted by Toggl, shows how music affects people in the workplace and how it does (or doesn’t) boost their productivity and happiness. This infographic echoes a survey conducted by Spotify last year, which revealed that 61 percent of respondents thought music makes them more productive and happy.

What’s most interesting is that we all don’t listen to the same kinds of music and we all concentrate in different ways. Many websites have developed recommended playlists for you to listen to depending on your activity and music taste. For instance, MyLittleParis' newsletter, which provides fashion and food tips to Parisian ladies, has a “radio” page suggesting playlists for every occasion, including a few dedicated to your work life: The morning booster, The concentration playlist and the playlist to take a nap at work, to name a few.

If we take a closer look at this infographic there’s music for all kinds of tasks and personalities. And sorry to break it to you, but listening to classical music doesn’t make us any smarter! Marilyn Manson, for example, is not ideal when you need to focus on a press release or a byline article. But if you’re in need of some motivation to pitch for a new project, it seems you can ask Freddy Mercury or Survivor for some support.

These surveys essentially reveal what music is best for you to successfully achieve your tasks, whether it’s in silence, classical music or underground music. So, please enjoy the music and, while you’re at it, find out where Charlie is!

Rising tuition fees

By Terri Bloore

Last week George Osborne announced the first Conservative Party budget in almost two decades.  Among a number of new policies – including changes to welfare, the BBC, road tax, and quite a bit more – Osborne  revealed that universities will be able to increase tuition fees in-line with inflation from 2017-18, if they can demonstrate excellent teaching.  Many universities will be faced with the challenge of how to attract new students, many of whom will be tempted by the world of work, apprenticeship schemes and colleges.

In order to do this, and persuade potential attendees that it’s worth the money, they’re going to have to look at their communication strategies. 

Communication tips

Demystify the process

With so much buzz around the different routes that students should take after A-levels, it’s hard for young people to decide which route is right for them. There is no point encouraging the majority to go to university when a percentage might realise halfway through the first year that it’s not for them. No one wins. Universities, as well as other academic institutions and the government, have a responsibility to make clear the options open to young people considering their future, and how they go about taking up those options. Better information upfront can minimise drop-outs and raise the degree pass rate.

Differentiate yourself from competitors

With more and more competition in the higher education industry, it’s hard for students to differentiate. Universities tend to tell the same story and stick to cold hard facts: quality teaching staff, reputable courses; lovely student housing – all things which are undoubtedly important but don’t provide differentiation. Young people want a personable approach, just like everyone else; bombarding them with a generic sales pitch won’t cut the mustard.

Universities need to build a clear story to message their unique offerings, focusing on their value proposition and promoting the strengths of their courses and campuses. These benefits need to be understandable, tangible and, most importantly, distinctive.

Be personable, be creative

Universities are not renowned for big creative campaigns; understandable as they want to be taken seriously by parents and young adults alike, but creative needn’t be ‘out there.’ Rather, it’s about thinking through how to get the message across in the most memorable way. Creative university campaigns may be few and far between, but they needn’t be. It’s simply a case of identifying the USPs and then being creative in positioning them.

Be Social

Millennials spend more time interacting with digital media than traditional media. They are digital natives. This is where they feel comfortable. This is the millennial’s space so why not communicate with them on their terms? Universities and other authorities often feel that they are under selling their offering by limiting their message to 140 characters. But a tweet can link to a post with more information, or a forum where discussions can occur. Social by nature means you can ask questions, have conversations, and join discussions. It could be used as another method to reach students, to share content and provide information. 

Please refrain from trolling me

By Aidan Murphy

*All opinions expressed in this blog are my own* 

I have recently finished reading Jon Ronson’s So You've Been Publicly Shamed, and am consequently quite scared of the internet. Author of
The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test, Ronson’s latest
book on the re-emerging of public shaming as an internet phenomenon examines the power of social media, and people whose reputations have been ruined by misjudged use of it – making it a recommended read for anyone who works in PR. Or anyone who has Twitter. Or anyone who has ever said anything risqué in front of someone who might have access to Twitter. It's relevant to you, read it.

 In essence, the book looks at how social media gave ordinary human beings a voice to make change through social pressure, which can be used for good. However, caught up in righteous campaigning, the Twitter-sphere is guilty of publicly shaming individuals, often to an extent disproportionate to their offence. For example, the book looks at the case of the American PR Justice Sacco (who I remembered from my crisis PR training), whose (albeit tasteless), Twitter joke made her the shaming target of hundreds of thousands of tweeters and resulted in her losing her job.

Internet reputation means a lot to everyone, and I’m now very conscious about my internet “profile”. For example, recently I was horrified to find out that my Myspace page STILL EXISTED. I’m not sure what I thought happened to it, I kind of assumed it was condemned to some internet hell with my Bebo account. BUT NO, 15 year old Aidan lived on in a corner of the internet and his opinions and pictures represented me. It was a living nightmare. Don’t bother Googling, I deleted it.

It made me think of what will happen in a generation or so time, when virtually everyone will have an internet history; every company, politician or celebrity will have an easily accessible past. The press has a field day when they find out a politician had a consensual relationships before marriage, so imagine what they'll do with a politician’s entire Facebook relationship history, or, God forbid, pictures of a teenage Magaluf holiday circa 2012. 

The same applies to companies, what an organisation posts on the internet today will still exist in twenty years’ time and it will be held accountable for it. Thus, the necessity for good PR is more important than ever before. I’m now conscious that this blog has been a bit doom and gloom, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing – PR is often about building a reputation and if you can create a great online profile over a long period of time you’re on to a winner. 

Just tread lightly. I will be. 

SPOILER ALERT: Avoiding the impossible

By Gemma White 

Last week was the season five finale of the television series, Game of Thrones – and don’t worry, if you haven’t seen it yet, I won’t spoil it for you.  As a Game of Thrones fan myself, I know all too well how frustrating it is when spoilers ruin the big reveal or twist.  It was just hours before last week’s final episode when I scrolled past an article on Google news that gave the game away.    

One of the main problems with Game of Thrones is that it airs in the US the day before it hits our TV screens in the UK, so you spend the whole day avoiding Game of Thrones-related news and social media posts (which is harder than it sounds, especially when you work in PR and monitoring the news is part of your job).  Take a look at this BuzzFeed article on the “23 faces everyone avoiding ‘Game of Thrones’ spoilers has pulled.”

Spoilers are everywhere and the internet is a breeding ground for them.  Unless you’re planning on avoiding the internet altogether, you will always come across a spoiler. It used to be netiquette (a portmanteau of ‘net’ and ‘etiquette’) to avoid writing about spoilers online.  Today you can get away with including a ‘spoiler alert’ warning in the title so that readers can avoid the article if they wish.  In my opinion, though, these warnings are not always effective, as you can still catch a glimpse of the rest of the title that always gives away too much information.  

One company that’s trying to change all of this is the tech giant, Google, which recently launched its new app called Spoiler Shield, where you can filter out certain words and phrases from your Facebook or Twitter feeds.  With Spoiler Shield revealing that more than 7,000,000 tweets are posted per season of Game of Thrones and 170,000 spoilers are posted on Facebook and Twitter every episode, this app could be the answer to our problems, not least because speculation around season six is starting to circulate on the internet.

But what’s to say that one of your friends or colleagues won’t tell you what happened in Game of Thrones last week?  There’s always one that accidently lets it slip.  The question is will we ever rid ourselves of spoilers?  Technology will certainly help us to filter them out online, but I’m not convinced they will ever go away entirely.