Archive for the ‘PR’ Category

B2B marketers intend to increase spend on social media by 43% in 2010, while overall marketing budgets remain static, a survey by US research firm Outsell has reported.

However, when asked which social media sites carried the most influence for B2B marketers, surprisingly, Facebook was considered effective by the most respondents – 51%, followed by LinkedIn – 45% and Twitter – 35%.

As eMarketer points out, this is at odds with Hubspot’s survey of lead generation amongst North American B2B marketers where 45% considered LinkedIn most effective with Facebook at 33%.

The contradiction perhaps reveals a gap between understanding that social networking is important and knowing how to implement a social media strategy in the B2B market. I’m with Hubspot, LinkedIn is definitely the better route for B2B marketers at this point, combined with Twitter.

The well choreographed Mark Owen affair unfolding in the British papers is a lesson in how celebrity indiscretions can be managed without apparent loss of reputation or a dent in earning power.

The photos of sad, charmingly scruffy Owen, reflecting we imagine, his tortured, repentant state – his downcast yet forgiving wife at the door of their Wandsworth home – it’s so right, it could be from a Take That Christmas video.

And there’s the killer reference to Robbie Williams, Owen’s pal who is helping him through his alcohol problems – the perfect image reference point. Whoever put this together is some sort of PR Jedi.

The Tiger Woods affair(s), on the other hand was not so much image management, as a cautionary tale. Woods finally hired a PR adviser this week – Ari Fleischer whose previous clients include..George W Bush.

Fleischer has some experience of golf related issues – back in 2002 it was Bush’s antics on the golf course rather than off it that caused a few red faces, specifically this video clip: Read the rest of this entry »

A survey into the perceived risks of social networking to organisations has found most employers unprepared for potential employee misuse, according to Brisbane City News.

Conducted by social media legal specialists, Rostron Carlyle, spokesperson Malcolm Burrows, said while 76 per cent of respondents claimed they used social networking sites at work, 54 per cent said their work place did not have a social media policy.

“When it comes to legal safeguards, it seems most are unsure what to do, or simply underestimate the dangers involved,” Burrows said. “Social media comes with serious risks, such as loss of confidential information, breach of copyright and privacy, discrimination, defamation, even infringement of industry specific legislation.”

The survey also found that while 55 per cent of companies fear social media will affect their business reputation, few precautions have been put in place to protect it.  Read the rest of this entry »

Excerpt from Australian news programme The Hungry Beast on why Google is actually quite scary:

During an average PR week, there’s usually a journalist somewhere moaning online about how PR people pitch to them, typically large attachments that crash in-boxes, irrelevancy or email box bombing.

No doubt you could hear the same number of moans from PR people about journalists, tales of junior account handlers reduced to tears, staggering arrogance, but of course you don’t, because you don’t bite the hand that feeds your client’s stories into the marketplace, you bite your tongue instead.

Having said that, it’s understandable that journalists may occasionally crack under an onslaught of badly researched pitches, inspiring no doubt this funny send-up of a silicon valley start-up PR embargo. I shouldn’t laugh, but I did.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has conceded that 140 characters are not always enough to get your message across, especially when it comes to summarising the amazing growth of your micro-blogging site in the last year.

Stone used 1552 characters in his email newsletter to account holders yesterday, offering some insight to the highlights of Twitter’s ‘annus miraculous’

Accounts opened were up 1,500%, Twitter employees rose 500% to 146 – the latest being Aaron, “an engineer focused on building internal tools to help promote productivity, communication, and support within our company. We celebrated with a little dance party.”

Stone mentions the new features introduced – Twitter lists, retweets and mobile apps, plus the humanitarian and charitable uses Twitter has been put to, “Twitter is more than a triumph of technology — it is a triumph of humanity. Projects like Fledgling and Hope140 were inspired by you.”

In a veiled reference to the huge proportion of unused accounts, estimated to be 83% of the 50 million plus opened, Stone says in the opening paragraph “If you haven’t visited in a while, we’d like to invite you to come have a look at http://twitter.com — we’ve been busy!”

According to estimates from blog Inside Facebook, revenue for the pre -eminent social network is expected to exceed $1bn in 2010.

Revenues have typically doubled each year, according to the research carried out amongst industry experts, from $150m in 2007, to $300m in 2008 and so on, with advertising revenue from fan pages believed to be the main driver.

2009 is seen as an important transitionary year for the site which grew to more than 350m monthly active users, from 150m at the beginning of the year. Of those, 100m were in the US and another 100m were in Europe – the two markets where brand advertising brings in the most money.

Brand advertising is estimated at $225m for 2010 and Inside Facebook predicts this stream could eventually grow to $20bn, taking share away from more established sites like Yahoo and MySpace. Read the rest of this entry »

Social media is proving a valuable crisis communication tool for people affected by the Chile earthquake.

Mashable reports that one woman was able to track down her sister-in-law via Twitter using local hashtags which were picked up by a man in Santiago who was able to confirm her safety. Photos of the aftermath have been uploaded to Twitter and Twitpic, providing a photo log of the destruction.

Google has launched a version of its person finder application for Chile, to aid  those looking for or offering information about friends and family.

On Facebook, pages like Chile Earthquake have sprung up, with 8,500 fans creating links, photos, videos and links to Google’s person finder. Read the rest of this entry »

Managed hosting provider NetBenefit has appointed Furlong PR to implement an online pr and social media strategy, following a three way pitch.

Furlong will also undertake traditional media relations work for NetBenefit in the UK

Kristel Scattergood, Marketing Manager for NetBenefit commented, “We appointed Furlong PR because we were impressed by their ability to combine expertise in online pr and social media, with an ongoing traditional media relations service.”

NetBenefit is the third new client Furlong PR has added to its portfolio in recent weeks, following appointments by FESPA and Freedman International.

Ross Furlong, CEO of Furlong PR commented “Online pr is generating a lot of interest from companies who seem just a little jaded with traditional pr approaches. Online and social media pr strategies are proving an attractive proposition, not least because their success is more measurable” Read the rest of this entry »

An ad made by Audi to promote its electronic car concept e-tron, which appears to send up Toyota’s accelerator problem, has become a YouTube sensation with 500K views.

Audi admits, in a report by Brandchannel, that they did make the viral called ”Toyota lawnmower recall’  but that it was released in September, before Toyota’s recall of some eight million vehicles worldwide.

The Toyota related  title was allegedly added by an anonymous party more recently.

However, Audi does have a history of competitive advertising and recently took aim at BMW with ‘Friendly Competition‘ in which Audi capitalises on independent comparison road tests that found in their favour.

Our guess is the headline is the work of some online wag, part of a long tradition of advertisements being deliberately adapted or taking on a comic dimension in the light of new events – Tiger Woods print ads a recent example.

Here’s the lawnmower: