Whatever...

Guest blog – Death by PowerPoint

As well as being a platform for JKers to rant, ruminate and reflect on the worlds of technology and PR, 'Whatever...' will periodically be running guest blogs from friends who live beyond the (fire)walls of Johnson King Towers.

Here's that man Nick Booth again, veteran tech freelancer and PR trainer, on the challenges of keeping it simple, stupid…

There are nearly three million Welsh people living in their homeland. And that’s in an area the size of Wales!

OK, that’s a stupid intro, but it makes two important points about modern presentations. It’s obligatory to pack them out with facts and figures. And everything, from rainforest destruction, through disappearing polar ice caps, to the size of Mike King’s garden, has to be measured in units of ‘Waleses’.

Am I alone in being fed up with all these meaningless statistics?

Or maybe I’m just jaundiced by my own bitter experience of giving presentations.

Once, I was giving media training to a huge IT corporation whose name I’d better not mention. The theme of my training was to be ‘Keep it Simple’, the idea being that people never remember much from a presentation, so just spoon-feed them little nuggets, and leave them wanting more. They said they liked it. Hoorah! But when I sauntered into their offices for a run through, I encountered a sight that would make a bishop kick in a stained glass window.

Ten marketing clones were there to meet me. And it soon transpired they all wanted some input into my work. Keep it simple became “Let’s Keep It Simple”, at the suggestion of a man in chinos. A power suited women then changed it “Let’s Keep Simple-izing” as it sounds more American and dynamic. More changes were made, until the title eventually became “Let’s Keep Simple-izing the Process to maximize competitive advantage”.

But that’s not half as bad as the presentation I did for a large telecoms company. There, they chucked out all the feedback I got from their channel partners telling them how they could improve their service. And instead they insisted on 50 almost identical slides, with stupid charts on them that looked like squashed spiders.

I’m not the world’s greatest public speaker. Indeed, on youtube.com, I’m described as a “funeral warm up man”. But honestly, Bob Monkhouse couldn’t have brought that material to life.

At the end, someone complained about all the charts. The very same person who’d insisted on them in the first place, who by then had realised the need to cover her posterior in front of her boss.

So you see, statistics are very useful. You can use them to protect yourself. And to kill others in a dog eat dog corporate situation. Blimey, I’m really glad I don’t work for a big company…

However, if you do work for a big company, and want some no nonsense media training, do contact me.

No, daddy - you have to press the send button first...

By Tom Kirkham

Sensational news broke earlier this week... according to Carphone Warehouse's Mobile Life Report 2006, mobile phones are apparently very popular with kids.  Wow!  I almost fell off my chair when I read that.  Apparently, 51% of ten year olds now have a mobile, though this isn't exactly a surprise.  Everywhere you look - on the street, in cafes, on public transport, in doctors' waiting rooms (perhaps in the queue for treating tendonitis?) - you'll see kids texting, playing games and annoying the hell of everyone by flicking through libraries of ringtones.

So, it's not big news - however, the survey has sparked debate on issues such as mobiles in schools, children maintaining undesirable relationships, or even depression caused by a lack of texts.  Of course, a lot of this 'debate' is just old issues and the bleedin' obvious re-heated.  How exactly is texting in class different to passing a note to the person in front of you?  Equally, we all know there are individuals that children would do well to avoid, and of course young people are going to be depressed if they have no friends.

Texting, like email, has opened up new ways of forming friendships and staying in touch with people.  In fact, the survey shows that texting is now the preferred method for youngsters to contact each other, rather than phone calls. The real problem seems to be whether parents can keep up.  If kids want to talk in text, then parents risk being cut out of the loop if they don't respond in kind.

The problem is, 42% of parents admitted having to ask children how to use certain functions on their mobile.  In my experience, these 'functions' could easily include "How do I turn it on?".  I remember when my dad finally figured out how to open his SMS inbox, he was shocked to discover several years worth of unread messages saying "Call me now!", "Can you pick me up from the station?" and other miscellaneous requests for his urgent assistance.

It's inevitable that young people will go on using mobile phones, and operators will make sure uptake increases by providing all manner of tailored call/text packages, new designs, features and what-have-you.  The problem is making sure parents stay up to speed with this communications revolution, so that they can still effectively interact with their offspring.

On a lighter note, elsewhere in the survey it is revealed that for people aged 18-24, their mobile phone matters more to them than television, while interestingly, half of young adult phone users have sent or received a sexually explicit text.  I received one a while back, but it was actually meant for someone else - the disadvantage of having such a common first name...

A laptop for 1 euro a day!

By Marjorie Meyer

Going back to college with a bright new laptop sounds exciting, doesn’t it? The French Government wants happy students that work hard and has therefore decided to continue its MIPE (Micro Portable Etudiant) project for a third year.

The MIPE project consists of helping students to buy a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop. Depending on the model you are eyeing up, you will have to pay just 1 euro per day over a 12 to 36 month period!  It's a great opportunity for those who can’t afford to spend a lot of money in one go.

Now I wish I were still a student, as I need to buy a laptop to replace the prehistoric desktop computer I’ve been working on since I was 18. Although it's expensive, I've decided to upgrade because I simply can’t live without a decent computer anymore. Surfing on the web, connecting with friends and family living far away from me, posting on my blog and reading other people's blogs, is now an integral part of my daily life (welcome to France's PC-addicted youth culture!).

In my opinion, the MIPE project is a win-win situation for all involved. It offers students greater freedom with their time and their working methods, and for the numerous partners championing the cause (vendors, retailers, banks…), the opportunity to build and retain customer loyalty. And best of all, it closes the gap between rich and poor students.

As Carol said before, service providers in France are offering very competitive pricing for internet access, and with Wi-Fi spreading all across the country, you can increasingly get internet access for free. This, together with the MIPE project, means that cheap mobile computing and the internet should soon be available to all students.

So when are you going to send your child to one of our fabulous French universities??

Free lunch? It's an all-you-can-eat buffet!

By Richard Scarlett

So, with the high profile (and conveniently synchronised) launches of thelondonpaper and London Lite, the tabloid armies of Rothermere and Murdoch have well and truly thrown down the gauntlet and declared all-out war on the streets of London. Roll on the dirty tricks, cheap stunts and consumer harassment, as both papers try to survive in the already overcrowded freesheet market.

But nowadays, it seems that it’s not just the newspapers that have resorted to dangling the idea of something for nothing under our noses. As I flicked through my giveaway newspaper and read about the flurry of companies launching their own ‘gratis’ services left, right and centre, I realised that 'free' is just the latest strategy to win consumer loyalty and sustain precious advertising revenue.

But in the midst of all this excitement, I have to ask myself - is ad-driven revenue really a sustainable model for the freesheet business or just the latest example of ‘dotcom denial’? Probably the latter.

Ad spend for many companies is extremely sporadic, and one of the first things to be cut whenever corporate savings need to be made. Add to that the crowded and competitive market space that these companies operate in and the whole thing begins to take a different shape. As more companies jump onto the ‘freebie’ wagon with hopes of monopolising their particular market, I’m sure it’s not only me who can hear the faint but worryingly familiar sound of a bubble bursting?

But why worry?  For consumers in the meantime, it looks like the offer of a free lunch has generously been extended to breakfast and dinner too!

Of course, it's not that simple.  A primary goal of the free products and services rush is to force down prices and ruthlessly drive competition into the ground. In true ‘party-pooper’ mode, I believe that while we’re downloading our free music, watching our free films and reading our free papers, it may be worth sparing a thought for the people who are being dealt the losing hand in this cutthroat game.

No, I’m not on about the industry big shots who can afford to give things away in the hope of long-term gain, nor the increasingly agitated and outspoken record companies who can no longer overcharge us with ridiculously marked up CDs.  I’m talking about the workers who could easily find themselves out of a job simply because their company can't compete in this emerging ‘freebie’ culture.

A little dramatic maybe, but just remember that the next time we take up the offer of a free product or service, we may well be helping to destroy another business run by hard working people just like you and I.

So, about that free lunch? No thanks - I’m feeling quite nauseous now.

Shift my paradigm

By Claire Gibson

One of the perks of this job has to be the chance to hear some of the more weird and wonderful business expressions sometimes used on transatlantic conference calls. Americans seem to possess a unique talent for language mangling, though of course Brits are also capable of some quite serious crimes against English.

In fact, none of us are immune to this - anyone spending time in planning meetings and 'brainstorming' sessions will probably have been shocked at how easily some of this language rubs off and creeps into everyday conversation. However, while we may all have been guilty of spouting off a marketing-ism in a worryingly earnest tone while, for instance, ordering a pint of lager, I can honestly say some of the more mind-boggling ones listed below had never even entered my head before working in PR, let alone inadvertently left my lips.

So without further ado, I present Claire’s ‘Top Ten of Business Bunkum, Befuddlement and other words beginning with B’:

10.Time to get the dog & pony show on the road

9.This one is a different animal

8.Down in the weeds

7.Circle back; regroup, touch base or revert

6.We have to put the bug in this guy’s ear

5.Let's go for the low hanging fruit

4.Get your ducks in a row

3.Are we in go live status? (American pronunciation, not as in the Quo)

2.What is your immediate pain, and how can this become your long-term gain?

And at number one, for overwhelming obscurity:

1.Let’s see if the other shoe drops

And of course, this is only the top ten - some other fantastic expressions that would ordinarily have people hitting the mute button on calls had to be left out. However, we’d definitely welcome further contributions - the more obscure the better - via the comments section, and hopefully we’ll be able to build our own ‘Anthology of Business Bunkum’ right here on Whatever... So with that (and I quote) - let’s make it happen, my friends, make it happen…

Oops I did it again….

By Jacqui Depares

It's over a week ago now, but the story of Lucy Gao and her 21^st birthday party at the Ritz still refuses to die.

Lucy Gao’s email gaffe has apparently become a topic of national importance.  We all got the email, we all laughed at the dress code “the more upper class, the better”, we all were astonished how someone could assign friends 15 minute slots to arrive at a party - but most of all we were disappointed that we didn’t get the email soon enough so we could all go along (or was that just me?).

And while it may be old news now, it certainly won’t be the last email of its kind that circulates on corporate email systems around the world.  Indeed, Lucy Gao was merely one example in a long line of email catastrophes.  For instance, there was modern day Romeo Joseph Dobbie, who innocently (ok, stupidly) emailed a woman he’d met on a Saturday night with a declaration of love, who then forwarded it on to her friend, who forwarded it on…and on, until it made it into the Metro as a 'news item'. 

Other stories follow a similar path of self-destruction, though with rather more serious consequences.  Take city lawyer Richard McKenzie, who last year sent his secretary a £4 dry cleaning bill for a ketchup stain on his trousers.  He ended up having to quit his job after the email he sent was splashed all over the UK press.  Then of course there was the splendidly named Bradley Chait, the man whose girlfriend, Claire Swire, emailed him about his sexual prowess, which he then ungallantly forwarded on to his friends, who emailed it on to the world, resulting in a series of suspensions at his place of work (though the jury's still out on whether or not this was actually a hoax).

Now, while these incidents undoubtedly raise a chuckle in the office, there's actually a pretty serious lesson to be learnt here - in each case, the message was originally sent from a corporate email address. 

While you may be prepared to walk the path of shame as an individual, I’m not sure that your company would want its reputation dragged through the mud because of an email that you sent with its name attached to it. In fact, any company which values its brand should be actively making their staff sign up to a communications policy, outlining what constitutes an acceptable use of corporate email and the penalties that will ensue if a member of staff oversteps the line.  It may seem a little extreme, but if you stop and think about it, the justification is pretty clear.

And so, next time you get ready to write an amusing email about what you got up to last night, maybe stop and think about it for a second. Hate to be a killjoy, but do you really want to become the next Lucy Gao?

All this spin is making me feel sick

By Joe Banks

What’s this? Another attack on PR as a vile example of everything that’s wrong in the modern world? Surely not…

Yes, this time it’s The Daily Telegraph having a go, highlighting the fact that ‘the Whitehall press machine’ now employs more than 3,200 PR staff, up from just over 300 in 1997 (when New Labour came to power). 

Hmmm, that is quite a lot, isn’t it?  And of course, it’s our taxes paying for all of this, you know!!  But really, so what?  Inefficiency within government is hardly a new story, and I’m sure this is just a drop in the ocean compared to the myriad committees, quangos and advisory boards that populate the back rooms of power.

No, what rankles is the way that, once again, PR has been singled out for a drubbing at the hands of the media.  The title of the Telegraph article screams ‘Spending on spin trebles under Blair’, but then goes on to clarify that this actually refers to the Central Office of Information's budget for PR, advertising and marketing - and as anybody in the industry will tell you, out of that particular holy trinity, PR is always very much the poor relation.  As the article even admits, ‘Much of the money has been spent on advertising flagship policies, including tax credits and extra help for pensioners’ - sorry, call me a fuddy duddy liberal, but what exactly is the problem with that?

It’s this constant use of the pejorative term ‘spin’ that really winds me up (no pun intended).  The impression given that every one of the 3,259 PRs that the Telegraph lambasts is some kind of evil genius hellbent on doing everything in their power to manipulate the media is frankly ludicrous (though excuse me while I remove these black leather gloves and get this Persian cat off my knee).

But according to a follow-on column from Julia Langdon in today’s Telegraph, ‘it is not the scale of the sums involved that make me mad, so much as the waste of the money in question’ (actually, shouldn’t that be ‘makes’, Julia?).  Ah, now we’re getting to the root of this constant griping against PRs - that basically, we don’t actually fulfil a useful function and in fact just prevent journalists from doing their job properly.

Well, knock me down with a feather…  I could go on at great length about this, but instead I’ll just restrict myself to this statement: the news media would grind to a halt tomorrow if all of us inconvenient PRs suddenly ceased to exist, particularly considering the way that journalism is increasingly conducted these days.  You might not like the symbiotic relationship that’s grown up between the two sides, but that’s the way it’s developed - and it hasn’t just been a one-way process.

Yes, the control freakery displayed by the current government has sometimes been pretty breathtaking - but political organisations through the ages have sought to control the messages they send out and the way they are perceived by the media.  Again, that’s just the way it is (and this of course goes for companies too). 

What I’m sick to death of is the way that ‘spin’ is used to tarnish the reputations of people simply trying to do their jobs and communicate with their audiences.  It’d be nice if, just for once, journalists stopped portraying us as ‘the dark side’, and ‘fessed up to the vital role that we play in their professional lives.

Read all about it – software killed the journalist star

By Andrew Chatterton

There has been a lot of debate on these pages recently discussing the rise of technology over people (Terminator 4: Rise Of The PR Machines/ PR is Dead, Part 63), and it appears that this continuing threat has now affected a profession that previously seemed untouchable…journalism!

The recent news of a US business information outfit replacing some of the tasks done by its journalists with computers will undoubtedly send shock waves across newsrooms throughout the country.  Financial journalists are first in the ‘firing line’ as new software can turn around an earnings story within 0.3 seconds of a company making its results public! 

This will surely be a threat to all journalists, not just financial hacks.  As software intelligence increases, it’s feasible that any type of press release could be turned into an article before you can say ‘copy and paste’.

Indeed could we see chief executives briefing some sophisticated software and a laptop over lunch at Claridges?  Newsrooms filled only with PCs and one techy to see to the needs of these next generation journalists?  Or maybe even software that has the ability to scan blogs and automatically turn them into news stories?  One for Charles Arthur to ponder on perhaps…

Thomson Financial, the company involved, stated to the FT that the technology

“…means we can free up reporters so they have more time to think”, what they are thinking about is not specified, but almost certainly involves what direction their new career path may now take.

Although not one to scaremonger, I think I’m right in saying that on other occasions when new technology has threatened jobs, riots have spread throughout the country, resulting in hundreds of people killed or injured.  Admittedly, the thought of journalists running through the streets with pitchforks and torches destroying technology – as the Luddites did during the Industrial Revolution – is a little far fetched (although having met some hacks, perhaps not unthinkable), but it is worth remembering the price of progress.

Thomson admits that for the moment the technology can only cope with fairly basic earnings reports and is therefore no real threat to journalists.  But I imagine something fairly similar was said to workers in the wool mills as the power looms were wheeled through the factory gates!

Vive la France!

By Carol Pender

Figures published recently by the French Association of Internet Access and Service Providers indicate that France has reached the ten million broadband subscribers target set by the Government a year ahead of schedule, far surpassing adoption rates experienced elsewhere in Europe.  With this broadband revolution has come an explosion in triple-play offers where high speed internet connections, TV and telephony services are provided for a single flat fee.  And with competition remaining healthy, this hi tech wonderland can be yours for as little as €29.99 a month.

Wow, where do I sign up?!  It sounds too good to be true!  And of course it is, at least for some 8,600 French subscribers who were incensed enough to complain in 2005 regarding everything from delivery, installation, finalising contracts, billing and of course customer service (France ain’t America…the phrase ‘Have a nice day ma’am’ does not translate!). Everyone in France knows at least one person who is unhappy with his or her triple-play service.  I, incidentally, know several.

A colleague’s sister has to choose between her LiveBox and her burglar alarm as the former keeps interfering with the latter.

After three months without internet access and a completely unsatisfactory response from Neuf Telecom’s customer service, a normally well-adjusted friend is pulling his hair out and threatening to go to court.

Yet another friend installed a Freebox with the annoying tendency of freezing at the most inconvenient moments.  What’s the point of watching a whodunit when the image freezes at exactly the moment you’re about to find out whodunit?

Service providers acknowledge these various problems and attribute them to unexpectedly high demand. Given that adoption rates multiplied by 20 between 2002 and 2006, I guess this is pretty understandable. And for all the complaining from numerous friends and acquaintances, not one of them is thinking of getting rid of their box (the alarm is being replaced by the way).

So a lot of huffing and puffing and then just getting on with it…a trait not unique to the French it has to be said.  I have to admit that the many horror stories haven’t put me off, as I too have succumbed to the lure of cheap, unlimited phone calls to friends and family at home in Ireland.  And as luck (of the Irish) would have it, my service quality is perfect.  Turns out I’m up the road from one of my provider’s transmitters.  I don’t know what all the fuss is about. 

Isn't it time to cut the NHS IT project some slack?

By Eilidh Beaton

So, let's get this straight - the NHS IT infrastructure project is a waste of both time and money, yes?

Sounds crazy, but that's the message that seems to be coming across in the media at the moment.  OK, so the National Programme for IT in the NHS is way over budget, having ballooned to a whopping £15bn, as well as being quite badly behind schedule. 

But let's get this into perspective. I think it's fair to say that a complete overhaul and modernisation of an archaic IT system of the magnitude of the NHS's was never going to be easy.  By attempting to collate 30 million patient records, it is after all the largest current IT project in the world - and believe me, it's pretty darn vital.

Having temped in a number of admin departments in NHS hospitals, including medical records, I was constantly bamboozled by the patient record system - row upon row of dog-eared files, loosely alphabetised or numerated, with random sheets of paper stuffed inside, and often not so much as a tag to hold them in place.  Little wonder that records go missing when hospitals have to send a paper file around the country padded out with Mrs Smith's medical history since 1942. 

OK, so the transition from paper to PC has not been exactly smooth.  For instance, an IT failure at the end of July, affecting 80 NHS trusts in the North West of England and West Midlands, caused appointment issues as well as admission and transfer problems.  However, while the system was restored with no lost data, you'd think fatalities had occurred judging by the way the story was covered in the news.

A re-structuring on this scale needs time and resources.  In the long run - and I know it feels a bit of an uphill marathon at the moment - it might just revitalise an institution that we in the UK take for granted and berate on a daily basis.  But more importantly, it's a system designed to save more lives.  As such, it's pretty harsh on the thousands of people within the NHS trying to make it work - isn't it time we stopped complaining and cut it a bit of slack?