Archive for the ‘PR’ Category
Twitter close to overtaking Facebook on status updates
Twitter has announced its number of daily status updates or tweets has now passed 50 million, closing in on Facebook’s claimed 60 million.
Announced on its blog, Twitter describes the exponential growth of the service since it began:
“Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.”
According to a report by RJ Metrics last month, while Twitter is adding accounts at the rate of 6.2 million per month, only 17 percent of these are active each month.
Posted by Bronwen Moore , 23/02/10,
Comic reputation management – it’s all in the timing
It’s been some weekend for reputation management, allegations of bullying at number 10, Tiger Woods’ public self-flagellation, Ashley Cole and Vernon Kay’s errant texts – skeletons not so much falling out of cupboards as walking out of them into a TV studio and making full, boney confessions.
Tiger’s one on Friday was 3 months too late (and comically stage-managed). If he’d done it in December and got back to playing golf, he could have played the Accenture World Match Play this weekend, sponsorship deal intact. Instead he’s disappearing into extended penance – and more sex therapy (blimey, how bad is it) – the image crisis defining him rather than he it.
Somehow it’s not a stretch to believe table thumping Gordon Brown could be difficult to work with, a man who’s bulldozed his way to the top job by hook and by crook, will have chewed up a lot of staff in his wake. It will now take more than a cosy Piers Morgan interview to convince the public he’s a nice guy.
Meanwhile, Vernon Kay must be thanking his family good fortune that Ashley Cole exists. While Kay apparently sent some inappropriate texts to women, in the same week, Cole reportedly sent PICTURES to his.
In reputation management as in life, timing is everything.
NBC wins the Twinter Olympics
For some reason the Winter Olympics has left me cold this time, practically frost bitten in fact but as a sports fan, I worry I’m missing something so the Twitter Tracker from US news channel NBC looked a good bet – you click on a photo of an Olympic star and it shows everything being said about them.
Not knowing who any of them are though, is a drawback and in terms of holding interest, Twitter Tracker goes downhill rapidly from there – like whoever won the skiing.
The main Twitter feed is a better bet. NBC’s has 65K followers – a gold medal winning ski jump ahead of the official Vancover 2010 one which has 13K followers – worldwide, slightly embarrassing, Richard Madeley has more than that.
There’s a volte-face when you compare their Facebook pages though, Vancover 2010 has almost one million fans, while NBC’s Facebook icon directs to my personal Facebook page, at least on my computer – and I have no fans at all.
Furlong PR has a mighty 7 fans though, a very select bunch, I urge you to join and unlike private members club, One Alfred Place, I promise I won’t try and throw you out for overuse.
By the way, does that Evan Lysacek have a look of Robin Cousins about him?
Google sued over Buzz
Law firms in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have filed a class action lawsuit against Google Inc, alleging that Google Buzz service shared personal data without the consent of users, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The suit has been filed on behalf of one Eva Hibnick from Florida – chosen to represent the proportion of 31.2 million Gmail users who are unhappy with Buzz.
Hibnick’s lawyers reportedly accuse Google of breaking laws in relation to legal communications with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act alleged to have been contravened.
The lawsuit reportedly asks for an assurance that Google, which says it has not yet seen the lawsuit, will not repeat Buzz Read the rest of this entry »
YouTube’s most watched video has 160 million views
YouTube turned five on February 14th, which I guess is about the same age as Charlie’s brother, whose finger was bitten in the most popular YouTube video of of all time with 160 million views.
YouTube now streams over a billion videos a day and is visited by roughly half of the world’s internet users. In the UK, 16.9 million or 43% of the UK internet population visited the site last month representing a 150% growth in three years, according to UKOM.
Alex Burmaster of Nielsen predicts that in the next five years, the nature of YouTube’s content will change:
“The past five years has seen YouTube grow into the world’s consciousness based on its first-mover advantage around consumer-generated content. The next five years will see Read the rest of this entry »
79% of consumers won’t pay for website content
A cautionary tale for publishers looking to build paywalls around online editorial content from Nielsen, whose latest survey of 27,000 consumers in 52 countries shows 79% will not pay, assuming that content is available elsewhere.
However, consumers will pay for movies, music and games, which top the rankings of things we will pay for online.
Blogs and consumer generated video ranked lowest of all and were generally expected to be free.
The research firm found that consumers expect content to meet certain criteria before they are willing to pay for with 78% saying they should get free online access if they already subscribe to a newspaper, magazine, radio or TV service.
Nielsen found that 47% of respondents are willing to accept more advertising to subsidise free content. In turn, 64% believe that if they must pay for content, there should be no ads.
Manchester City needle Liverpool with Craig Bellamy viral
Manchester City has released the third in a series of moody player videos in advance of their clash against Liverpool on Sunday, starring their North West rival’s former player Craig Bellamy.
In a reversal of his established image, Bellamy is depicted in introspective mode, contemplating the game, wearing a…cardigan, before switching to a more familiar image – in football kit, with a wisp of what could be smoke from the mouth of the fire breathing welsh dragon*
City has done well galvanising support with provocative micro-campaigns since they became belligerently wealthy in the summer, the ‘Welcome to Manchester’ posters of Carlos Tevez kicking off a new era of ‘needle marketing’.
Choosing Bellamy to front their Liverpool game campaign is more of the same, both motivating fans and also making a virtue out of Bellamy’s often ‘over-passionate’ nature on the field of play.
The ads have been created by Manchester agency Music, to promote City’s clashes against the Premier League’s ‘Big Four’ – Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool.
Dave Simpson, Music’s creative director commented “Our ad conveys Bellamy’s tireless dedication and demanding hunger to play football, and to win. When he plays he gives his all and we wanted to illustrate the passionate change that happens as he crosses the white line.” Read the rest of this entry »
HBO’s ‘How to Make It in America’ premieres on YouTube
The first episode of the latest series from HBO, the esteemed makers of shows including The Sopranos and The Wire, is premiering on YouTube prior to its network launch on Sunday.
‘How to Make It in America’, starring Bryan Greenberg (One Tree Hill), Eddie Kaye Thomas (American Pie) and rapper Kid Cudi, follows the escapades of two twenty-something New Yorkers trying to ‘Make It’ in the fashion business.
The YouTube marketing approach for HBO follows the success of ‘The United States of Tara’ which launched online last year, notching up more than 500,000 YouTube views on its first day.
YouTube is believed to be actively pursuing deals with programme makers while cable channels are seeing the potential for social media promotion of new releases via YouTube.
Sadly the pilot episode is blocked on UK YouTube so here’s the trailer instead:
77 percent of marketers to increase social media spend
A new report from Forrester and the Association of National Advertisers shows 77% of marketers increasing spend on social media in 2010,
Social media therefore tops marketer’s adjusted spending agenda, followed by web advertising, SEO and email marketing.
The determined march towards new channels emerges in the context of a TV advertising study that shows 62% of marketers think TV advertising is less effective than it used to be.
19% go as far as to predict the 30 second TV ad will be dead within 10 years.
Marketers are also looking closely at online video as an alternative to TV, 46% saying they will move spend into this area. Read the rest of this entry »
Corporate reputation in the post-yuppie era
Back in the late eighties, the reputation of city institutions seemed bullet proof. As mysterious as they were venerated, ambitious graduates of the day would talk in awed terms about big fives and big fours, while leafing through prospectuses made from linen and parchment.
In private banking, one name soared above them all, a name guaranteed to score big yuppie points with the stripey shirted city aspirants of the day.
In 2010, that bank’s reputation is in danger and in this guest blog for Stopgap Group, Furlong PR CEO Ross Furlong lays out why venerable institutions need to wise up to the new world of online reputation.
