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Lessons from unlikely sources

By Aislinn Collins 

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months (in which case, I hope you enjoyed your break and welcome back!), you’ve probably become acquainted with the question “who killed Lucy Beale?”  This week, in an EastEnders story line that has been gradually building for the last ten months, it was finally revealed that Lucy was murdered by (SPOILER ALERT) her 11 year-old half brother, Bobby. 

I don’t watch EastEnders, never really have.  Many colleagues and friends don’t watch EastEnders, never really have – but we all watched it this week.  Why? Because we all, for some reason, wanted to know who killed Lucy Beale.  Almost 12 million people tuned in to watch the revelation unfold (the previous week’s Thursday episode had a viewing figure of seven million), and it accounted for more than 44 percent of the evening’s TV audience.  A total of 1,028,036 tweets were sent throughout the two episodes aired the evening of the big reveal, with 30,000 posted in the minute after the killer was revealed.

Woah. That’s one hell of a PR campaign. 

While it would appear that the majority of viewers were not overly pleased with the fact the eventual killer had never been a suspect, and questioned how an 11 year old was able to murder a fully-grown woman (possibly with a jewellery box, that’ll be revealed later) when she was aware of his presence, and there were also a number of other people in the house – I doubt the EastEnders team care much.  Over the last few months they have managed to build up a furore so great that even people who would never normally consider watching the show, who may, in fact, feel that even Don’t Tell the Bride is a better use of their viewing time, watched it.

It was a pretty slow and steady campaign and that might be the lesson for us in the PR world.  Despite not having the foggiest idea what was going on most of the time, or who anyone was, I stayed watching because I’d heard so much about it over such a long period of time – it, at one point, seemed the coverage was relentless. 

So I guess the lesson is, people might not care at the start, but say it for long enough and say it loud enough and they may just start to – though, particularly in the tech-PR world, it might be advisable to make sure the end product pleases the people.  There is, after all, such a thing as bad publicity in our realm.   

Humanoid robots: from fiction to reality

By Morgane Leonard 

Over the decades we’ve become increasingly fascinated with artificial intelligence and the evolution of robotics. Hitting the headlines recently was the news that Toshiba had introduced a humanoid robot named Chihira Aico at CES 2015. Chihira is a 32 year-old “lady” and is able to talk to humans, communicating through sign language. Toshiba plans to develop Chihira to the point where, by 2020, it will be able to act as a guide for foreign visitors during Tokyo’s Summer Olympic Games.  There’s no doubt it represents a step forward in terms of technological development, but such advancements are also beginning to raise a number of questions and concerns with regards to ethics –  how far can science and innovation can go without crossing over to the dark side? 

When I read about all of this it reminds me of Bicentennial Man, a movie released in 1999, in which the late Robin Williams played a robot called Andrew.  Andrew joins a family to carry out its housekeeping and maintenance work, but the family soon realises that, unexpectedly, Andrew is able to identify emotions and eventually evolves so much that, after 200 years of fighting for its rights, becomes human. 

It’s been just over fifteen years since the film was released, yet the subject is still hugely topical today. For example, you may have seen the recent Swedish TV drama, Real Humans, where a community of consumer-level humanoid robotic workers and servants live among humans. Or perhaps you have seen the futuristic film, Elysium, which depicts a highly technologically advanced world, where medical machines are able to cure any disease, reverse the aging process (goodbye Botox!) and regenerate new body parts. 

Despite being science fiction, all these stories deal with a wide range of contemporary issues, such as humanity, slavery, prejudice, maturity, intellectual freedom, conformity, sex, love and mortality.  All of which are topics that come into play when these technologies – or even just the idea of them – are presented to us.

As we begin to see the technology develop, merging reality and fiction, it could certainly be a daunting prospect – but only if you look at it in black and white.  Technological evolution is a good thing and some technology can make people’s lives better, like Xbox Kinect technology which can be used for surgery, while 3D printing can assist medical innovations.

It may take a while until we see the full force, but Chihira is “living” proof that humanoids are not just a product of the mind.  Over the next few years innovations like this will increasingly become part of our lives – likely in ways that we couldn’t begin to fathom yet. Who knows, 50 years from now we could have the ability to fall in love with an artificially intelligent operating system, just like Spike Jonze's recent film, Her. Which raises yet more questions about how technology will impact loneliness and isolation – but that will be the subject of another blog post! 

Ready to meet Chihira? Watch the video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BRycib5lWI

What’s all this then?

By Jonathan Mathias 

WhatsApp, the social network that The Social Network bought for $19bn about a year ago, has now muscled its way from mobile onto desktop.  Although I don’t currently feel that I need to be dialled into my WhatsApp feed constantly, I’ve become a massive fan of it in a short time.  Its group messaging has quickly replaced a lot of my personal email and text messaging, and it’s now the primary way that a lot of my friends and family share pictures and updates on what they’re up to – taking over from Facebook a lot in that respect.

It’s interesting to wonder about how these services will change over time and how money is being made.  WhatsApp is clear that it doesn’t pry on your messages for any purposes, and it is likely instead to yield long-term income for Facebook due to annual fees.  But, now that it is on the desktop, and because you’re likely to be doing different things when sat at a desk versus on your mobile, there has been some discussion about how Facebook Inc may learn information that will be useful for its increasingly successful advertising strategy. 

Facebook must be doing something right to make so much money from advertising, and it’s unlikely to be a coincidence that the way people use it has changed in the wake of WhatsApp.  The vast majority of my Facebook stream isn’t selfies and pictures of someone’s dinner, instead it’s feeds that reflect my interests – TV programmes, sports teams, publications, groups etc. 

With its aggregation qualities only seeming to improve, the importance of getting your news into people’s feeds is becoming increasingly important from a marketing and public relations perspective.  What’s most interesting, though, is that, while a lot of my news ‘comes from Facebook’, the stories that I read and trust, or the products I hear about and buy, are still without fail from ‘traditional’ media that’s been shared or fed-through to Facebook.  A comprehensive social strategy is important for a growing number of businesses, but the most valuable raw ingredient for many is still traditional media coverage.  

 

 

 

The Monday blues just got worse

By Hannah Townsend

This Monday was apparently the most depressing day of the year. According to reports, the third Monday in January is known as Blue Monday, which is based on a number of factors: bad weather conditions, high levels of debt, the amount of time passed since Christmas, failed New Year resolutions, low motivational levels, and finally, a need to take action. 

While it’s not surprising that this would fall in January or on a Monday, who claims that this day is particularly worse than the others? It was in fact devised by Sky Travel in 2005 as a way of persuading people to book a winter holiday. The travel company based this assumption on a formula created by Dr Cliff Arnell, a self-proclaimed Cardiff University psychologist: 

Each year, journalists and scientists come out in force to blast what is considered ‘bad science and nonsense PR’. The PR and marketing industry may have a reputation for making something out of nothing to promote a client’s product or services, but in this case, its detractors definitely have a point. Not only is it based on a non-scientific formula (how you can quantify motivational levels or weather, I don’t know), but the creator’s credibility has been called into question as Cardiff University quickly sought to distance itself from him. 

Good PR should involve news stories and arguments based on fact, whether it’s statistics, qualitative research or a qualified expert opinion. While attention-grabbing headlines are good in our business, it’s just disappointing – and embarrassing – if they don’t hold up under scrutiny.

What’s surprising is that, despite offering no real evidence to support the theory, it is still widely recognised, debated and ridiculed ten years on. Naturally, companies have already started to look at how they can utilise this PR and media-constructed phenomenon by jumping onto the bandwagon. Sky Travel may have gone into administration in 2010, but it left a legacy that looks likely to stick. 

When bad publicity is good publicity

By Tina Ambos

In a study from Stanford Graduate School of Business, researchers say in some cases negative publicity can increase sales when a product or company is relatively unknown, simply because it stimulates product awareness. Whereas a negative review in the New York Times hurt sales of books by well-known authors, for example, it increased sales of books that had lower prior awareness. That bad news isn't always bad for business has also been the case for Sony Pictures Entertainment’s recent film ‘The Interview’.

For PR and journalism, an interview is one of the most important methods used to collect information and present views to the public. In the film the interview is a method to commit a murder: The film stars Seth Rogen and James Franco as journalists instructed to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after booking an interview with him. This film has since been linked with one of the worst cyberattacks ever on an American company. Everything and anything had been taken by a group calling itself ‘Guardians of Peace’: Contracts, salary lists, film budgets, medical records, social security numbers, personal emails and five entire films. In December 2014 the ‘Guardians of Peace’ threatened terrorist attacks against cinemas that played ‘The Interview’. Due to this, Sony canceled the theatrical release of the film. The company was criticized by the White House, Hollywood stars and others who accused it of capitulating to extortionist threats.

Sony’s ‘The Interview’ has dominated international headlines for weeks. And so it’s no surprise that after Sony had decided to release ‘The Interview’ for rental or purchase through streaming services, and to show it at a limited number of selected independent cinemas, that the film became a sensation. After four days the film earned over 12.5 Million Euro through online rentals and purchases, becoming Sony’s highest-grossing online release. ‘The Interview’ is the top-selling Google Play and YouTube film of 2014 and as of 6th January the film has earned more than 25 million Euro online.

The publicity due to the cyberattack has called the attention of millions of people – and not just fans of political satire comedy films – to purchase ‘The Interview’. People buy and watch the film to fight their own little battle for freedom of expression. The film, with lower prior awareness, hasmade history thanks to ‘bad’ publicity.

 

In search of essential truth: footballers on Twitter

By John Basquill

Normally, the only time you hear a footballer speak is on TV, immediately after they’ve finished playing.  They stand in front of a board covered in sponsors’ logos and face two minutes of pointless questions, desperately trying to goad them into saying something controversial.  The answers are always the same, but in this setting you can forgive the bland, inane clichés – it’s hard enough for most people to express themselves eloquently after a 15 minute jog, never mind an hour and a half of professional football.

And even in these post-match interviews, the players are speaking in a setting they’ve been carefully prepared for.  All footballers are given years of media training before they’re unleashed in front of the cameras.  Unsurprisingly they’re told to handle the post-match interview situation by playing down individual achievements, talking up the importance of the team effort and, ultimately, revealing nothing that might be of any interest to rival teams or hostile journalists (or, in truth, any sentient human at all).

But the one part of the media football clubs can’t control is Twitter.  Clubs are often left exasperated by their players’ 140-character outbursts, jokes, arguments and general nonsense.  With every other part of the game so carefully shielded from the press and, even more so, the fans, Twitter is a force for truth, a noble beacon of light.

Crystal Palace midfielder Jason Puncheon was fined £15,000 for accusing a former manager, Neil Warnock, of corruption.  Puncheon claimed that Warnock was profiting from his own team selections by manipulating players’ contracts:

It’s impossible to ignore Joey Barton.  Barton, never far from controversy, became known for posting Nietzsche-inspired philosophy titbits on Twitter between matches. In 2012, before comparing himself to George Orwell, he made headlines for refusing to withdraw his criticism of John Terry, the then England captain who appeared in court accused of racially abusing an opponent.

And, in fact, Barton’s martyrdom almost did see him face charges, narrowly escaping prosecution for contempt of court.  He’s since dedicated himself to the noblest of Twitter causes: winding up Piers Morgan.

These brief insights into the obfuscated world of professional football are becoming more and more frequent.  They’re not always particularly coherent – Peter Odemwingie’s criticisms of West Bromwich Albion’s transfer policy were emotional but nonsensical – but they’re usually entertaining.

The ever-bemusing Mario Balotelli’s twitter output is always worth watching, as he veers between the controversial, the offensive, the amusing, and sometimes the downright bizarre.

Twitter, then, is like male pattern baldness, or rain.  It’s the great social leveller, the force that can’t be controlled by even the most rich or powerful.  And with professional football so clouded by clubs’ obsessive media management and lucrative corporate interests, we should be grateful for every glimpse into reality, every sliver of truth, that footballers on Twitter give us.

Leave PR to PR professionals!

By Violaine Desmons

As a PR professional who is experimenting the “2.0 trends” on a day-to-day basis, there’s not a single day that goes by without reading or hearing about new ways of doing my job. Indeed, my role has changed a lot since I started working in the PR industry ten years ago in terms of how we use the internet and social networks.  As such, we are quite often asked for advice on the best way to approach these channels, including whether bloggers should be a target, or if social networks should be used to liaise with journalists. 

This got me thinking about the “best practice” of PR and why it’s still of value today.  Regardless of which channels we use, the core principle of PR is still very much the same; a good story and the right timing, no more, no less. So why is PR still necessary today? Well, it’s because PR can provide a significant Return on Investment (ROI).  The beauty with the internet and social networking is that each interaction – such as the number of clicks through to a website – can be measured, allowing PR professionals to measure the success of a campaign.  But can it measure the true value of PR?

One big issue with using social networks is that since most companies use them, there are still many that choose to manage them independently, which isn’t always ideal.  For example, Daniel Kreiss, journalism professor at Chapel Hill University, North Carolina, conducted a recent survey on the use of Twitter during the last US electoral campaign, revealing that campaign managers are not always the best at digital.  As they need to check messages and information with a number of individuals before posting them, this represents a real issue in terms of messaging and reactivity.  It goes on to suggest digital should be left to the “digital guys”.

This is where the expertise of PR professionals comes into play.  For any company considering press relations, PR professionals will have the right tools in place to deliver the relevant, precise information over a company’s digital channels, such as Facebook and Twitter.  This information will align with the company’s core messaging, which will only continue to position the company as a thought leader in its industry.  This will essentially keep the company at the top of mind for anyone requiring the company’s services. 

The problem with this, however, is that payment fees cannot be directly linked to final results.  For example, a French journalists’ trade union recently warned about a judgment in favour of a company who didn’t pay the PR officer due to “insufficient results”. If only tangible results count, then PR people will be forced to use all methods to get their results, leaving deontology and professionalism at the door.  For companies, this will mean that they will be more likely to waste money rather than optimising a potential ROI!

 

Band Aid 40 for text neck?

By Astor Sonnen

Its official, having friends is bad for you. OK, not quite, but a new study has revealed that constantly staring at your phone all day does affect your spine. “Text neck,” as its being called, has been described as the first world’s epidemic (expect Bono to have his say imminently) and doctors are worried that the next generation will suffer from serious back issues from an early age.

As a slightly-taller-than-average man, I spend a lot of my time looking down anyway, so I’m destined to be only able to look at my feet by the time I’m 65. However, while this study is supposed to shock people into becoming more conscious about their posture – are we likely to see people on the train holding their phones at eyelevel or higher? Probably not, a train is an awkward enough place without giving people more reason to stare.

Ultimately, the report will change little and will simply become something parents cite when trying to stop their children from playing on their phones all day. Indeed, it’s ironic that in a day of multiple health apps, perhaps it’s the device that is running them that is causing us the most harm. 

The advert that dared to spark debate

By Lindsey Challis

Sainsbury's launched its Christmas advert this week to much debate.  For some it showed a courageous moment in history when human nature won out over the brutality of battle, for others it was the epitome of capitalism and ‘glorified war’.  As the debate about the TV advert stirred on social media, it also showed the integrated digital world we live in.  More than ever before opinions are made and aired on social networks such as Twitter, giving companies great insight into public opinion and the image they have created. 

A company which celebrates special moments in our collective history or one which disrespects millions in the trenches to ‘flog more groceries’? 

In my eyes, the advert is brilliant.  It’s interesting, it stimulates debate and it’s honest.   It might not show all the horrors of World War I, but it was never meant to be a documentary.  It might not have much moral difference to two Nazi Holocaust victims exchanging gifts in a camp, but it is an iconic story that, though not every soldier’s experience of The Great War, reminds us that there is a degree of human nature that binds us all.  As Thomas Hardy so brilliant explained more than a decade before World War I: 

"Yes; quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow down

You'd treat if met where any bar is,

Or help to half-a-crown." 

So what image has Sainsbury's created?  I think it’s one of respect for our ancestors, compassion for human nature and timeliness with the centenary.  It could have been badly done, but I don’t think that is the case.  Above all, Sainbury's has shown its personality, it has sparked interest and got people talking.  The true mark of great promotion. 

My Great-Grandad died in the trenches in World War I and I for one am glad that Sainsbury's has had the guts to do something interesting, despite the potential controversy.  The best stories can be found in history and I’d much rather an advert stirred emotion because I respect its significance than by kissing penguins. 

The best irony of all is the advert alongside this particularly damming article to ‘click to order’ a book about public opinion during World War I.  What’s that you said about not ‘exploiting the World War for commercial gain’? 

All that’s left now is to see what Gogglebox has to say! 

What does Will Arnett pointing at dogs and Tom Hanks wearing cat ears have to do with good PR?

By Oliver Fischer

For as long as I can remember, everybody I know has watched ”Wetten, dass..?“, the biggest German-language game show / talk show / Saturday evening entertainment. If you’ve never heard of ”Wetten, dass..?“ – which means something like “Wanna bet..?” – chances are you haven't lived in the DACH area in the past 30 years, and didn’t see Will Arnett's interview on Jimmy Kimmel a few weeks ago.

After that interview, I realised for the first time that the show might actually be quite unusual for people who didn't grow up with it, and weren’t used to seeing a bunch of guys trying to change tires on a driving car, or a man undressing his wife with an excavator shovel (unfortunately, there’s no video available of this, but it somehow got stuck in my mind…). It’s true, the show is far from as good as it was during its peak in the early 90s (as is German television on the whole), and it seems that the weirdness and inappropriate moments have increased a good deal over the years, but for me, it is still the show that allowed me to stay up longer on Saturday nights.

To be honest, I was also rather baffled, because it was quite obvious that nobody had briefed Will Arnett. In our profession, we often have IT executives coming to Germany for press events and one key task for us is to provide excessive briefings to avoid possible hiccups. And here we have big Hollywood stars with no briefing whatsoever? Well, if that was the case, then we all can learn a lot from Will Arnett’s experience (and Tom Hanks’ before him):

1. If you want to promote your project on German television, expect people to speak German! Germans are normally quite good with speaking English, since we learn it early, but what do you expect when you go on national German television? Of course the presenter is going to speak German, and of course you will need a translator
2. Know what kind of event you are visiting! If you go on a press lunch, you should be willing to eat. If you go to a German beer fest, you should be willing to drink beer. And if you are going on a show that revolves around betting and wagers, you are likely going to be asked to bet on something. Indeed, there have been actors that have had to box against the current light heavyweight champion because of a lost bet, so don’t complain if they make you wear a silly hat
3. The internet is an amazing invention that provides us with copious amounts of information and funny video clips – so use it! “Wetten, dass..?” has been around for the last 33 years and is probably the most popular German game show. Amongst its international guests were people like Michael Jackson, Elton John and Robbie Williams. Also, as stated before, the core concept of the show is that Germans do really unusual stuff in front of a camera. So just Google it (or have someone Google it for you) and you will find loads and loads of videos that give you an idea of what to expect
4. Know who you will meet! “…This 90 year old former German soccer player…” That’s Horst Eckel you are talking about, one of the guys who made the Miracle of Bern happen. Show some respect, man!

So, all questions about the show’s recent quality (which are completely justified) drop aside, the big lesson to take from this is: if you come to Germany to promote something, or to do PR, ask someone to explain the basics to you, or you won’t know – to quote Mr. Arnett – “what the **** is happening”!