This video sums up some of the excitement we’ve felt this summer.
It has been one of the most energising summers in memory. A summer of celebration, achievement and pride. Can we top summer 2012?
What videos sum up the summer for you?
Archive for News
What have I missed?
I’ve been suffering from something of a digital drought. A combination of limited internet access and my phone’s quick demise has left me struggling to keep up to date online. For example, I have no access to Twitter at all. Can you imagine?
There’s been a few stories worth mention during the last few months, but I simply have been unable to blog about, so here is a quick roundup!
Paralympics
There is an empty space in our lives now that London 2012 has come to an end. The Paralympic closing ceremony saw the finish of an excellent summer of inspiring sport. While we may have missed out on second place, we did fantastically, every one of our athletes is a credit to us.
Olympic Sponsors
The economic boom resulting from the Olympics has failed to materialise, as Sunday Trading Laws are once again enforced, shops will bitterly count their takings, and they’re not likely to be good. Rather than increasing footfall in the streets of our capital, we saw an empty London as tourists and workers avoided the expected chaos.
One group however have done alright for themselves, official merchandise has done very well and sponsors are likely to have benefitted from winning contracts to sell it. Sponsors such as Adidas claim to have made back their investment before the games even began. This is another plus for sponsorship as a marketing campaign, and if anyone fancies sponsoring a university ultimate Frisbee club, I happen to know one…
Parliament
The Palace of Westminster is in desperate need of a refurb. This would leave parliament without a home and one argument is that they should leave London. As a country we woefully lack the second city that most countries enjoy. While cities like Manchester and Birmingham try, they don’t quite match up to the likes of Barcelona or Frankfurt. Would moving parliament to a different city help move the power from our capital and spread it more evenly across the country? Should we be ruling the country from a city a significant journey from large parts of the UK when it could be in the middle? Or would moving our MPs and Lords really make a difference at all?
Cabinet Reshuffle
I declared the cabinet reshuffle my favourite day ever. My only defence for such a statement is that it was a slow week. It was however very interesting and does give one plenty to speculate upon. I was particularly interested in the demotion of health secretary Andrew Lansley, replaced by former culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt. Unfortunately I dare say he hasn’t been given an enviable job, handed the chart of an unpopular NHS reform. What he does next could be quite telling, turning his back on the reforms will send out a strong message that they were a wrong decision in the first place, but is it wise to support a decision with such condemnation?
It was also interesting to see my local MP, Anna Soubry, awarded a role in the Department for Health. While this is a positive promotion for her, although she’s already causing a storm with outspoken comments on the ‘right to die’, it is unlikely to win her much favour in her local constituency. Some say Anna’s 0.7% victory over the labour candidate is simply a result of tactical voting, and some may say its time she was moved to a less marginal constituency!
If you think this story will change the actions of our coalition government, think again, it is simply one of the first political stories since the parliament recess. After a summer of cheering on our sporting heroes we needed a dose of something to return us to our cynical routes.
Royal Privacy
You can’t get away from our young royals at the moment. They’re everywhere, spectating at the Olympics, going on royal tours, appearing naked in our publications…one could say we’ve seen too much of the trio. Both Harry and Kate were embarrassed by naked photographs and it leads us to ask, how much privacy do the royal family deserve? Should we allow them to lead anonymous lives, would they even want us to let them lead anonymous lives? Or should we snap them every time there’s a possibility of a nipple on show? I’d like to think there is a happy medium. One argument is that Kate signed away her right to privacy the moment she popped that ring on her finger, and that this is the downside to having exotic holidays with a personal hairdresser. Apply that same argument to her brother-in-law and the flaws are hard to avoid. Harry lost his right to privacy the moment he had the misfortune to be born to his parents. Doesn’t quite seem fair! There may be perks to being related to Queen Elizabeth, but that shouldn’t mean you run the risk of seeing your private parts on a magazine cover!
GCSE Results
If GCSE results are to be believed our children are getting increasingly clever every year, until this year, but even this year’s lot have outperformed those from 2006 when I collected my results. This is brilliant news, it means that we are breeding a fantastically clever bunch of students. Somehow though, it doesn’t quite ring true. Call me a sceptic, but I do wonder if today’s students are actually no more brainy than those from past years. The real victims in this story are the teachers (and yes, I am the daughter of one of these teachers), this story will simply lead to them being hounded for having failed. Maybe it’s time to create a fair form of assessment, and maybe that concept is but a dream.
Related articles
- A Reshuffle for the British Cabinet? (politicaldeficit.wordpress.com)
- Olympic Sponsors Go For Gold Online [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
- Five PR lessons from the Olympic Games (behindthespin.com)
- This has nothing to do with the London Olympics… (themediablog.typepad.com)
Social Medialympics
Social media joined the Olympics this year. We may not have seen a Tweeting competition; however we did see the Games shared over social networking faster than the news sites could manage.
Unfortunately I did not manage to watch as much of the Olympics as I would have liked, but not at one point did I feel I missed out on an important achievement. I felt delight as Mo Farrah got his double gold, I felt the pain as Rebecca Adlington missed out on the medal she wanted and I shared the wonder as Usain Bolt showed the world just how amazing he was. I may not have watched it, but I definitely did not miss out. As one Olympics played out on our screens, another could be seen developing on our mobile phones, tablets and computers.
My Olympic view
I was able to have my own Olympic experience as I went to watch the Women’s Hockey on the first Sunday of the Games. We were actively encouraged to participate in the social discussion through the use of hashtags on Twitter.
Reading through the Sunday Times this morning, there was a report on Olympic sponsors using social media during the Games. This should come as little surprise to any of us, basic marketing comms theory teaches us that sponsorship requires a communication campaign to support it and make it truly effective. Common sense probably tells us those texts are unnecessary! Having paid millions to affiliate their names with the five rings, it would make little sense to try and disguise this association for many of the companies.
Social media has also been bad, we’ve seen Tom Daley through Twitter. However this is something we have grown to expect. Social media has been known to give people too much freedom to target people. It also lets people hear the criticism they don’t want to hear and we don’t necessary know how to take that.
It seems quite sad that the Olympics has already been and gone, but I loved it this year. I loved being able to keep track by Twitter, how about you?
Related articles
- Noted: Social Media Speeds Up Criticism of Olympians – Noted (nytimes.com)
- Olympics and Social Media: The View From London (mashable.com)
- How Twitter gave a behind the scenes look in to London 2012 (itv.com)
- Social Media Connects London 2012 Athletes, Attendees [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
Looking beyond the Olympics
There is a certain upcoming event in London later this month. It is an event many years in the making. It is an event which has seen 70,000 people give up their time to volunteer. And it is an event which has caused many logistical headaches. I am not about to talk about the Olympics, although it creates many interesting areas of PR and marketing conversation and debate. I wanted to remind you of those sports we forgot, the ones which do not feature in the Games. Have a look at this blog to read up on some of the most unique sports found being played in the UK. Reverting to an old favourite, although unfortunately a sport I have recently neglected, I was interested to read this week that UK Ultimate, the governing body for Ultimate Frisbee have partnered with Wham-O Europe to support the Frisbee@schools project. This strikes me as an excellent partnership which hopefully will encourage some very positive outcomes. I personally look forward to seeing its development.
200 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I cannot promise this blog will remain Olympic-free, over the past few months I have been fascinated with all the PR and marketing related topics that have arisen as a result of the Games in London. From a non-PR perspective I also have a great personal interest, the tickets for a Hockey event sit in pride of place on my desk. I am really looking forward to enjoying some of the exciting Olympic vibe in one of my favourite cities.
Related articles
- Wham-O Europe links with UK Ultimate Frisbee (toynews-online.biz)
- Pro ultimate frisbee team coming to Toronto (thestar.com)
- Grab the Official London 2012 Results App for Android (news.softpedia.com)
- The is Ultimately the Best Ultimate Frisbee Catch You Will Watch Today (Video) (backyardsportsblog.com)
- Why Ultimate Frisbee is a Sport (alansrants.wordpress.com)
- Impressive BBC title sequence for Olympic games (lostateminor.com)
- London 2012: even Beijing didn’t put an army on the gates (guardian.co.uk)
Making a dog’s dinner of blogger relations
What happens when you get blogger relations completely wrong? You may find yourself trending on Twitter. At least that was the case for Argyll and Bute Council when they asked 9 year old blogger Martha Payne to stop taking photographs of her school dinners, fearing that they were a misrepresentation of their services.
While Martha has since been allowed to continue taking pictures for her blog, this story offers up some important lessons for anyone dealing with blogs.
1) Never underestimate the power of blogging
Blogs continue to be on the up, they provide people with a perception of word-of-mouth information and recommendations that work to our preferences. It is still in marketing terms a relatively new form of communication, having only gained popularity in the last decade or so, and as a result many people still do not understand its power and how to use it.To gain perspective on its power let’s look at a few statistics:
- 4 out of 5 internet users visit social networks and blogs (The Social Skinny)
- 61% of social media are willing to give feedback on brands or products (Salesforce)
- And finally, one 9 year old schoolgirl from Scotland has raised £45,889.46 through her blog (Never Seconds)
If numbers the don’t convince you, the final one should. Through the buzz around her blog Martha has had over 4,264,492 views (a count that was increasing rapidly when I last looked) but more impressively raised enough money to feed over 5,000 in poor countries. Now that’s impressive.
Not all blogs have gain the same visibility as Martha’s, but this does not mean they should be underestimated. Many blogs develop small, but loyal followers and all have the potential to hold influence over your potential public.
2) Do not try and hush a problem away
The local council felt that Martha’s blog misrepresented the meals they were serving, their solutions appears to have been to try and get rid of the problem by telling Martha she could not take photos. Did this work? Martha’s blog ended up on international news websites, trended on Twitter and had more page views than most blogs have in their lifetimes. Sometimes trying to hush a problem is the worst thing you can do. This is where effective blogger relations come in handy. There are many positive examples littering the web showing companies who have engaged with bloggers after negative reviews and salvaged their reputations.
Blogger relations is an area of growing importance, and one which I have barely scratched the surface of here. Done correctly and it has the ability to build important relationships with customers, done badly and it could be disastrous!
Related articles
- Let them eat cake, but no cameras: British council gags 9 year old school lunch blogger (thenextweb.com)
- You’ve Got Questions – Do Writers Need to Blog? (wosushi.wordpress.com)
- 9-Year-Old Who Changed School Lunches Silenced By Politicians (wired.com)
- Thus I refute them: Argyll and Bute Council don’t just censor little girls, they also hate the English language (blogs.telegraph.co.uk)
Why now is the perfect time to care about politics
“Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains.”
I have met my fair share of people who declare that they simply have no interest in politics. These are the same people who will then happily debate about political issues for hours. I believe we should all take an active interest in politics, and if you currently avoid it, I will tell you why now is the perfect time to begin.
Since 2008 we have experienced one of the worst recessions in history. This has resulted in huge job losses, painful budget cuts and has changed the political landscape as we knew it. After 13 years of New Labour, we ended up with a bizarre coalition between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Can you argue this is not an amazing time for politics? In the past few years we have seen unpopular decisions such as lifting the cap on tuition fees and public sector budget cuts. Decisions such as these have ignited such passion in people that they have taken to the streets.
Another reason why this is a great time to care about politics is how accessible it is. Social media has made many changes, one of which means that we are now closer to politicians than ever. Public figures take to Twitter to discuss issues and interact with their people. There is no longer a need to search out politics, it now comes to you.
If you make it to university without taking an interest in politics, it is the perfect environment to develop an interest. Meeting hundreds of new peoples, understanding new ideas and greeting new experiences, all of these allow you to get a great grasp of your own beliefs and give you the opportunity to identify these to a political party.
Political beliefs can be private or public, personally I choose to share mine with the ballot box and few else. Other people share their views with the world, what is important is having political beliefs, there is nothing more damaging than complete apathy.
Political beliefs are also prone to change, we change in our lives and so do our opinions, priorities and who we want to represent us.
I love following and understanding politics, from its history, to predicting how its future is shaped. I know this is not the same for everyone but I would urge people who have not previously, now is the time to take an interest in politics.
Related articles
- Addressing the ugliest risk: internal politics (normanmarks.wordpress.com)
- Business and politics don’t mix – who you trying to kid? (stuartbruce.biz)
- Forget ‘Local’ – Now, All Politics Are Social [INFOGRAPHIC] (mashable.com)
- Politics vs Ethics (onlyagame.typepad.com)
- So, you think reason guides your politics? Think again | Simon Jenkins (guardian.co.uk)
- Why I’m spending my time on the frontline not the front bench (mirror.co.uk)
An entirely British occasion
The Royal Family are never far from British culture and lifestyle, however in the last couple of years they seem to have grabbed more attention than normal. The highly anticipated wedding of our future king to a “commoner” and now the celebration of 60 years of our Queen’s reign.
The bunting is up, the events are planned and, in keeping with tradition, the weather is not looking promising. The Jubilee weekend is nearly here, an opportunity to celebrate our British heritage, traditions and our Queen. It appears we are playing ball, according to internet searches we are embracing the Jubilee.
My three favourite Jubilee-related campaigns:
- Heathrow create royal runway
- Union flag sausages
- The Royal Sims
If nothing else, the Jubilee has gifted us an extra long weekend, so pray for sun and enjoy everything British.
For Nottingham readers keen to meet our monarch, the Queen will be visiting our city on 13 June. Read about the Queen’s previous visits to the city here.
Source: londonist.com via Rachel on Pinterest
Related articles
- Punks of ’77: Still angry after all these years? (bbc.co.uk)
- Queen’s Diamond Jubilee: The best royal apps (telegraph.co.uk)
- Biggest ever image of the Queen, and she also appears made out of stamps, cheese and BEER (thisislondon.co.uk)
- Should UK abolish its monarchy? (edition.cnn.com)
What is $1 billion?
If 1,000,000,000 people gave you $1 you would now be a billionaire. Where would you find these people? Well, if you speak to the whole population of the United State, Brazil, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Germany and France, then you might just about be able to scrape that kind of money together. It is a huge number.
1 billion is equivalent to one thousand million and not quite the million millions that some would expect. Does this particularly reduce the enormity of the sum? Yes and no. A million millions would be an even more ridiculous number to comprehend, but the current billion is still hugely grotesque as a number.
The average UK salary is about £25,000 p/a, if you did not spend a penny of your wages it would take 25222 years to save a billion dollars.
You could buy this rather smashing 10 bedroom, detached, late Victorian residence in a desirable area of Birmingham 1096 times. They were only asking for £575,000, that would be sure to keep one estate agent rather happy!
According to other sites on the internet, you could also treat yourself to 285,714,285 McDonald’s Big Macs. 6 F22 Raptor fighter jets. 1,177,856 iPhone 4S. You could also feed 682,583 malnourished children in Africa 3 meals a day for a whole year. (Thanks to Infobarrel for the facts!)
In basic terms it is a lot of cash!
Related articles
- Facebook Acquires Instagram for $1 Billion (dirtech.in)
- What is Facebook doing with Instagram? (michaelwchapman.wordpress.com)
- Facebook Buys Instagram for $1,000,000,000 (one billion dollars). In Instagram Years, That’s $184,000,000 (intelligentdesignsmedia.com)
- Facebook Finally Beats Google’s Orkut … in Brazil (mashable.com)
Save the Hobbit
I visited the Hobbit in Southampton some years ago, and while the night itself is hazy (not necessarily as a result of alcohol, rather the length of time that has since elapsed), the place made its impression on me and I was enchanted. So, when I heard that the pub was facing legal action from the Saul Zaentz Company, a Hollywood company holding the rights to many of Tolkien’s works, I was as shocked as many of the other fans of the pub were. They were being to asked, or should I say told, to rebrand an image they have had for 20 years, an image key to the identity of the pub.
The support for the Hobbit has been remarkable, from almost 50,000 fans on their Facebook, over 6,000 on their Twitter and several celebrity supporters including Gandalf (or Sir Ian Mckellen to non-middle earthians) and Stephen Fry.
According to reports the Saul Zaentz Company is willing to offer a licensing agreement to the pub. However the campaign clearly is not over according to their own page.
It seems that this whole thing could turn out to be advantageous to the pub, as long as they are able to retain their name. With new support from huge celebrities and new UK/Worldwide coverage, they could see themselves benefit from a boost to business, particularly with the release of the Hobbit film. As a one-time customer who fell slightly in love with the place I completely support the success of this campaign and I hope that the hobbit succeeds versus the evil of Mordor! Now excuse me as I start a 12hour LOTR marathon!
Update:
Related articles
- Stephen Fry joins The Hobbit pub’s fight with Hollywood (guardian.co.uk)
- Hobbit Trademark Battle of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)
- Lawyers of Mordor menace Hobbit boozer (go.theregister.com)
- Save The Hobbit! (jonathanmoya.wordpress.com)
How to follow up #Kony2012
Only last week #Kony2012 took over Twitter. One video created the single biggest response that I personally have ever seen from the online world, so strong that there were claims that this was an example of social media’s power to change the world.
A week later it is no longer trending on Twitter, but people are still talking about Kony. If I was in charge of the campaign, this is what I would be doing now.
Follow up on the original hype
With over 72 million views on the original Youtube video it is clear that Kony 2012 grabbed the world’s interest. Facebook, Youtube and Twitter all went crazy with reaction to the video, it sparked passion from its audience and left millions of people wanting to help make a difference. A week later, people are still interested, the original video gained their interest but it is important to follow that up, continue to send information to those people interested about the campaign and what they can do to help. Once you have got their attention, make sure you use it!
Respond to the critics
With the buzz caused by the video came many critics, with claims of Kony 2012 being irrelevant, out of date and the work of privileged foreigners, including critics from Uganda. One of the best criticism, or at least one of the most relatable ones, I read was not directed at the #Kony2012 campaign but at the earlier work of Invisible Children but remains relevant, it came from Ilto blog:
“Imagine that today you heard about what happened in NYC and Washington DC on September 11, 2001 for the first time. You were shown a video of footage from that day. You saw the planes hit the towers, you heard President Bush’s address, you saw the Pentagon wreckage, you watch in horror as you see people plunge to their death, jumping from the burning towers. Now imagine that you are inspired by this disaster. You want to something to help. What if you went to NYC today, expecting to see piles of rubble to clean up? What if you went, expecting that there would be thousands of people in the streets crying, looking for loved ones? But what would happen when you arrived and discovered that there was none of this, but a whole host of other problems?”
Some people were convinced by the story, but wanted to know how they expected social media support to help the issue. People also questioned what was happening with the money!
The best way to respond to this is through being open and honest with the interested publics, and while researching this post I found that Invisible Children had done just that, they created a brilliant video full of information about how the organisation works.
Thank you, KONY 2012 Supporters from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.
This video is a brilliant PR response to the criticism and I think it is important to continue sharing this information with interested publics.
Continue hype over event
An important part of the campaign was the Cover the Night event, the Leeds event alone has 7,500 confirmed attendees, now it will be interesting to see how this turns out. A lot of people signed up in the full buzz of the campaign, but this event has the potential to be an important and exciting part of their campaign. I would work to continue to create a buzz around the event to keep people interested in the whole campaign.
From a strategic point of view, this campaign is in a brilliant position and they seem to be doing everything right at the moment. As long as they continue to capitalise on their current success and develop this to support their campaign then it could be an example of one of the biggest successful social media campaigns.
Related articles
- Who is Kony? (rachelbarkley.wordpress.com)
- Kony2012: New Media Success Story Or Cautionary Tale? (paidcontent.org)
- ‘KONY 2012′ Tops 100 Million Views, Becomes the Most Viral Video in History [STUDY] (mashable.com)
- Invisible Children Releases New Video in Response to ‘Kony 2012′ Criticism (newsfeed.time.com)
- Social Media Lessons from KONY 2012 (buzzom.com)
