1) It takes 24 hrs for them to return my call/email. If it’s taking this long, either your account handler is too junior to know the answer, too busy on the 15 other accounts they ’service’ or off with stress because the agency financial structure demands they work 16 hours a day.

2) It takes a month to get a press release back. So who’s writing this stuff? Is it going up and down some bureaucratic chain of command at the agency, being amended for style not substance. When it does appear, is it lost in jargon with no discernible news hook?

3) I haven’t seen the account director since the pitch. All the IP and experience you saw in the pitch has been very busy with internal projects and has become merely a CC on hundreds of emails from the AM asking questions, questions, always with the questions.

4) You’re their smallest account. If you’re the smallest account at a large agency, they just don’t care enough about you. Doesn’t matter how well known the agency is, you won’t benefit from their award winning expertise. more »

When Mark Lawrenson criticised the referee in the world cup final last night, using  the line “should’ve gone to Specsavers” the optician’s marketing people must have whooped as loud as the crowd in Madrid.

While their catch phrase has clearly now surpassed mere advertising and entered the common lexicon, their viral video is still no match for a cat in a box, who’s clocked up to 1.3 million views.

Their Lynx Effect spoof advertisement, which has 850K views to date, was no doubt fuelled by the TV advertising campaign. The new viral released today, a spoof of the ’80s hit TV show Das Boot, will only run online and is an attempt by Specsavers to take ownership of their ‘viral space’, according to a report in The Drum.

Personally I prefer the cat. Here’s both, What do you think?

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Two very different videos virals featuring the iphone 4 are topping the video viral charts in the UK & US this week, one ’smaltzy’ the other subversive, begging the question, does the UK online video audience want more edgy content than their US cousins?

YouTube has announced a film project in collaboration with  Ridley Scott & The Sundance Film festival to make a movie created from public video submissions.

YouTube describe the “Life in a day” project as: ‘a historic cinematic experiment that will attempt to do just that: document one day, as seen through the eyes of people around the world.’

Curbside Cupcakes, a Washington DC mobile cupcake vendor has customers queueing down the street for its products, having dropped the traditional press release for Twitter and Facebook marketing.

Shane Warne, an unlikely consumer hero has spoken out for the oppressed air traveller everywhere in eight vitriolic tweets sent from his first class British Airways seat on Friday night.

Flying to a poker tournament in Las Vegas from London, Warne blasted the seating plan, the broken air conditioning, the pilot’s constant interruptions, but had the greatest beef for BA’s cabin staff:

“Look I’m very lucky to travel first class, but the way British airways have spoken to the people and treated everyone, is a disgrace..”

“They spoke to this young family in front of me like they were criminals, they where traveling first class to, so rude and abnoxious”.

The influence of Warne’s comments is expanding exponentially, from his 116K followers on Twitter, to the electronic Telegraph’s 3m+ unique users and a similar number on Mashable’s worldwide readers. Pretty soon the incident will be famous and BA’s reputation will sport another sizeable dent. more »

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog” said Keith Weed, new CMO of Unilever at Cannes last week, answering the question “do big agencies do the best work…or small agencies”.

Interesting too that he was saying it to Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP – one of the world’s largest comms groups (138,000 employees in over 2,400 offices in 107 countries) for whom Unilever is a major client.

Weed goes on to say that when working with a big agency, his aim is to make sure he has that agency’s best people on his account, implying that in a big agency, employees are a mixed bag.

While it’s feasible to demand the best staff if you’re Unilever with a budget of £5bn a year, if you’re looking for a PR agency and have say £60K a year to spend, the size and quality of the agency you’re dealing with become more mission critical factors. more »

Company Profile

Freedman International implements marketing campaigns worldwide for leading consumer brands, specialising in bringing new levels of efficiency and innovation to the global marcomms process. Headquartered in London, they employ over 150 staff with overseas offices in New York, Singapore and Atlanta, working for well known global brands including Electronic Arts, InterContinental Hotels Group and Philips.

The Challenge

Disillusioned by previous PR experiences that had delivered piecemeal coverage and failed to prove value and with an international marketing customer base that had no clear media routes to it, Freedman were unconvinced that a PR solution could work for them at all.

What they needed, if it indeed existed, was a PR campaign that could cross international borders and convey a complex, but compelling narrative of their work direct to global marketers, encouraging engagement, raising profile and reputation and ultimately generating new leads.

Following an article on online pr, that Freedman CEO Kevin Freedman had read in a Furlong PR email newsletter, he invited in the company to discuss online pr strategies. more »

Forbes has added a social media ranking to its annual most powerful celebrities list, topped by Lady Gaga.

Forbes explains, “Because of the growing power of social networks, we added a social media ranking that reflects each celebrity’s presence on Facebook and Twitter.”

The Celebrity 100, which includes film and television actors, TV personalities, models, athletes, authors, musicians and comedians, is a measure of entertainment-related earnings and media visibility (exposure in print, television, radio and online).

Oprah Winfrey topped the overall money and fame list, followed by Beyonce Knowles and James Cameron.

Cameron came second on estimated income – $210 million whilst being at the bottom of the social media rankings at 81st, proving that in 2010 at least, you still make shed loads of cash without a million Twitter followers.

Nice use of viral video by tennis racquet brand Head, starring Andy Murray performing some cool tennis trick shots. 550K views in a week since the release on YouTube.