Whatever...

"WHAT THE XXXX ARE YOU CALLING ME AT THIS TIME FOR??!"

By Tom Kirkham

Debate is rife in workplaces up and down the land regarding the plan of action for tomorrow (June 15th), when England take on Trinidad & Tobago in the World Cup.  In some cases, the discussion will focus on whether people can sneak out early to make the five o'clock kick off in the pub; in our office, it's more a question of 'where's the television going to go?'.  Not that the JK faithful are a bunch of slackers - it's just that none of us fancy scoring a PR own goal by ringing journalists at a time when, like the rest of the nation, they've probably got more important things to concentrate on.

Of course, this is a perennial problem for PRs throughout the rest of the year too - there are times when a journalist just doesn't want to hear from you.  In fact, for that growing band of journalists apparently spending their entire working lives exclusively on email, it could be argued that all times appear to be out of bounds. 

It's a real minefield - if you call someone at the 'wrong' time, it could literally be the last time they pick up the phone to you.  Of course, herein lies a problem - PRs are not generally employed on the basis of their psychic abilities.  While press days and deadlines can be easily established (though can become surprisingly fluid if a journalist doesn't want to speak to you), it's considerably more difficult to anticipate headaches, marital problems or last minute holidays to Antigua.  The sensation when you call up a reporter to find out that it's 2am where they are does not bear repeating.

The key to success is combining common sense with a good knowledge of the journalist and the publication they write for.  If you can get it right a few times, it's a great relationship-builder, and is likely to get you off the hook if you ever slip up in the future.  So come tomorrow, we'll be giving journalists a 90 minute rest, and sitting down instead to watch the match, beers held proudly aloft... in the sure knowledge that as soon as it gets underway, the phone will ring, and it'll be "Hey guys, how you doin'... What? You mean there's a soccer game on???"

Imagineers go World Cup crazy

By Claire Ayles

There's nothing like a World Cup to send the marketing industry into overdrive.  Apart from the likes of Coca Cola, Yahoo! and Gillette spending zillions on becoming official sponsors of the tournament, we're seeing a raft of other firms 'adopting' the World Cup or England team in order to flog more stuff.  On some occasions, the links to football are so tenuous they are almost genius.

For me, top prize goes to UK kids store Mothercare, which is offering a Cross of St George pushchair, complete with matching parasol.  If I was a toddler, these would be the only wheels to be seen in this summer.  (That is until the England team crash and burn in a penalty shoot out, when I would order my mum to replace it with a Brazilian branded one.  Note to Mothercare: you may want to extend your range.) 

A 'highly commended' also goes to DIY giant B&Q, which is selling England branded bags of BBQ coal.  Presumably, they make the food taste more like... errr...roast beef?  I guess there's only one way to find out.

Whatever next?  Maybe MB Games should bring out a Wayne Rooney version of 'Operation', where you have to fix the Big Man's metatarsals or face the wrath of a nation...

PRs aren't immune to World Cup fever either.  Take SmartTrust, which has secured column inches by predicting fans will take 4.5 million snaps at this year's tournament.  Don't worry SmartTrust, I won't ask to see your workings. 

Other creative examples include Keynote, which has used its nous to assess the performance of popular fantasy football league websites and Packeteer, which warns businesses of the perils of allowing employees to watch games online.

(Errr, these last two are JK clients - wonder where they got their ideas from...?)

Anyway... Come On England!!!

Would You Buy A Phone From This Mouse?

By Amy Mills

Anyone who spends any time with children cannot help but be aware of the prominent role that brands, advertising and marketing ploys play in their lives. Hearing my younger siblings insisting that they want a certain cereal simply because of the "cool" cartoon characters featured on its packaging has led me to question the morality of this type of marketing.

My own, private debate went office-wide recently, when we heard of Disney's plans to begin selling a new, branded mobile phone this June, specifically targeted at children and their parents. While the special security features of the phone are being promoted to the parents, the success of this latest product from Disney will no doubt be based on the concept of 'pester power', where children harass their parents until they agree to enter into long-term and costly phone contracts. A spokesperson from Sprint, the network supporting the Disney-branded mobile phone service, has said that Disney Mobile could be targeting children as young as 8 years old, and that the organisation 'is fully capable of focusing on that market and causing an acceleration' of growth. Well, there's something to boast about!

In other areas of life, communicating with children is vitally important eg. health, anti-bullying, and road safety campaigns. And there are, of course, people who argue in favour of targeting consumer marketing campaigns at children - living in a consumer society as we do, they believe it is important that children are given the opportunity to develop the ability to detect and assess marketing messages.

This makes sense as long as companies do so ethically, and don't merely set out to take advantage of children's natural naivety in order to boost their profits.  But in the case of Disney, I don't buy its parent-friendly branded phone spiel - it's a money-making tactic, pure and simple, and one that many children, and their parents, will unfortunately buy into.

The Real Big Brother

By Jacqui Depares

This week, Amnesty International and The Observer launched irrepressible.info, a campaign demanding freedom of expression over the internet and the end to repression online, as people continue to be persecuted just for voicing their opinion on the net.

In a country where freedom of expression is taken as the norm, we often close our eyes to the fact that this is not a right afforded to all. In countries such as China, Vietnam, Tunisia and Iran, governments censor access to the internet and imprison political dissidents, using cameras in internet cafes, internet police and even search engine providers, such as Yahoo, to track down and convict so-called offenders.

The Web as we know it is a constantly evolving source of communication - allowing us to see, at a click of a button, the views and opinions of people worldwide. It has revolutionised not only the way we communicate, but more importantly, the way we think. It is this that has struck fear into governments abroad and prompted them to restrict what their people view and say online.

Like the Big Brother of '1984', repressive governments watch their citizens' every move on the web. Some even place a little policeman in the corner of all screens as a reminder that the government has changed the very nature of the World Wide Web to We Will be Watching. However, unlike the Big Brother of 2006, getting caught breaking the rules doesn't just lead to a verbal warning - it all too often means prison, for anything up to 12 years, for simply Googling the term "democracy".

Amnesty International has called upon us to question the acts of these governments and do something to stop it. If you would like to join the campaign, go to: http://irrepressible.info/

ROI - Relying On Ignorance

By Joe Banks

An interesting statistic came out the other day off the back of the quarterly research published by e-Skills UK. The survey revealed that only 11% of companies put any kind of benchmark in place to measure the return on investment (ROI) of IT spending. 

That’s a pretty shocking figure, but to be honest, it won’t come as much of a surprise to anybody involved in tech PR, particularly if you’ve ever tried to develop a customer story on behalf of a client.  Pitching the story to a journalist as a potential case study, one of the first things any hack worth his salt will ask is something along the lines of “so, how much money/time has this amazing piece of technology actually saved them?” or “how exactly has this ‘improved productivity’ and ‘impacted positively on the company culture’?”  These are perfectly fair questions, but often, the PR is at a loss as to how to answer them.

Of course, justifying tech spend to the media should be the least of an IT director’s worries – what about accountability to the FD/board, especially if the project has gone way over budget or has decidedly failed to deliver on promised benefits? Though on saying that, what about when those stories do get leaked to the papers – it’s usually a pretty uncomfortable experience for all involved.  The irony is that projects usually get out of control exactly because definable ROI benchmarks haven’t been put in place.

The age of IT directors assessing the success (or otherwise) of a new IT implementation through the application of ‘informed guesswork’ or ‘personal intuition’ surely needs to come to an end.  And while the humble PR agency may not have a great deal of influence in changing a nation’s business culture, we can at least keep on pushing our clients to encourage their customers to quantifiably measure the impact of new installations.  It’d certainly make those case studies a damn sight easier to sell in…

Blue Security, and why it's a bad move to go after the spammers

By Tom Kirkham

The demise of Blue Security is a stark warning to the IT industry that trying to spam spammers is like fighting fire with fire.  The Israeli anti-spam firm called it a day after a Russian spammer launched denial of service attacks against practically every organisation associated with the firm. 

Blue Security's tactic was to encourage its members to report every spam email they received.  The firm would then contact the spammers, often multiple times, to request  the removal of members' email addresses, in an attempt to give spammers a taste of their own medicine. 

But while the company was initially lauded for its approach, it was inevitable that retribution would be forthcoming.  What exactly did Blue Security expect to happen?  Blue Security was attacking organised criminals - a move that is hardly likely to elicit an apology and an assurance that it won't happen again.  On top of this, spammers can draw upon far greater resources than most companies, by virtue of the fact that they operate outside of the law! 

Let's face it, combating the spam problem doesn't require a company to go round pretending to be Dirty Harry - it requires continued education to persuade people from replying to unsolicited email. At the end of the day, how ever annoying it may be to receive a stream of emails offering improved manhood or investment opportunities in Uzbekistan, the Blue Security incident has surely demonstrated that the consequences of retaliation are far worse than the hassle of hitting the delete button.

Security proves to be a major draw – Infosec Europe

By Natalie Shamshoum

People could be forgiven for thinking they were in Vegas this week when they walked through the doors of Grand Hall Olympia to see show girls dressed up to the nines and others climbing up ribbons to perform acrobatics on a certain yellow stand. Yes, this year's Infosecurity Europe pulled out all the stops, and one stand even pulled out the giant jenga blocks in a bid to lure visitors to its stand.  Not that it was hard - by 9am on the first day, there were hundreds of visitors scrambling to get in to Europe's largest security exhibition, which was expecting to draw over 11,000 visitors including nearly 300 press in total over the three day event.

With six clients at the event - Crossbeam, dns, PGP, Mirapoint, Aruba and Sophos - addressing a broad range of security issues, Johnson King certainly felt the vibe.  Journalists attending the show were seen to be embracing new methods of news delivery, with one videoing his morning interviews and couriering them to his publishers so that they could be streamed online the same day, and several journalists planning to podcast their interviews.  A broad range of reporting methods promises to arise from this year’s show.  A major highlight for Johnson King will be the BBC filming at the Sophos stand tomorrow, so be sure to check out BBC News 24 on Sunday.

The main question being asked throughout the show was "What's going to happen when Microsoft launches its own security offering?"  And of course there were hundreds of different answers and opinions on this being bandied around the event.  The DTI research also generated a great deal of interest.  Highlights from the report included the conclusion that businesses are paying more attention to security risks, spending on security and writing and enforcing policies.  So it seems that the combined efforts of the security community are starting to pay off, and at the very least this year's Infosec is showing us all just how high on the agenda IT security is.

PR Week Top 150

PR Week published its annual Top 150 PR Consultancies report this week.  It’s good news for the industry over all, with the majority of PR agencies reporting growth including Johnson King. 

For the first time since the downturn, 23 agencies previously omitted from the rankings, due to Sarbanes-Oxley, are back.  A complete listing of the UK agencies certainly produces more meaningful tables - however, the methodology used to estimate fee income does seem rather generous.

For seven of the agencies in question, PR Week has used a calculation based on average sector annual income per capita multiplied by the number of people employed at these firms.  Whilst no estimation is ever going to be perfect, the figures of £105,000 for generalist practitioners and £195,000 for financial practitioners seem high when compared with the employee numbers and fee income of many of the agencies that actually submitted audited reports, and even some of those who’s fee income was estimated from figures taken from Companies House. 

Take Bell Pottinger Group, the UK’s largest PR consultancy - if the annual fee income for this firm had been calculated based entirely on the generalist practitioner figure, its earnings would have been reported as £2 million higher. This does not take into account the company’s financial division.  Similarly, Edelman’s fee income would be at least £3 million higher, The Red Consultancy’s over £2 million higher, and Consolidated Communications’ over £3.5 million higher.  Perhaps SOX companies are run far more efficiently than their competitors, but I doubt it.

Of course, the figures that PR Week use are inevitably open to criticism, but this approach certainly appears to have benefited the agencies which have not submitted audited figures at the expense of those that have.

Also interesting to note that, according to the table, less than half of the top 150 agencies (64 out of 150) are members of the PRCA, with only 5 of the top 10 listed as members. While this is an increase on last year, it makes it difficult for the PRCA to credibly claim to be the voice of public relations consultancies in the UK.

Finally, why is the UK’s largest tech PR firm, Lewis, absent from the rankings this year?