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About this blog
The Firefly blog features news, views, buzz and ideas around the PR and communications industry.
Social trends, PR and social media tools, communications strategies, attention grabbing WOM campaigns, entertainment hotspots, running integrated and pan-European campaigns, safeguarding reputations and managing crises are just some of the topics we’re talking about.
The PR power in Twitter?
A slambook looks innocent enough: a simple notebook with a series of questions (What is your favourite colour? Who is your favourite actor? What is your favourite subject?), passed around by the owner to his/her classmates for them to fill out. Many a rainy lunch hour in my American sixth grade* class was spent poring over slambooks, reading others’ entries and comparing your own. There were less innocent Q&As, too (Who do you hate at school? Who is the ugliest in our class?), which made for more interesting reading, even if doing so did prick your conscience.
Slambooks were good for another thing, and that was spreading rumours about someone you didn’t like. The slambook was the paper-and-pen precursor to Facebook and in my view, also shares something in common with the more grown-up Twitter. That is to say, neither is a particularly reliable source for the truth with a capital “T”, but their allure is powerful to those seeking information or bite-sized entertainment.
Take super-injunctions. The official headlines have made for good tube reading, but as we all know, the real action was to be found in the Twittersphere. For within Twitter was “the truth” in all its surgically abbreviated, gasp-inducing glory, inviting discussion on- and offline, thus recycling the proclamations thousands of times over.
PRs say if you repeat messages frequently enough, the messages will sink in – and therein lies the danger and the opportunity of Twitter as a part of any PR campaign. Veracity is the more important issue, because as fun as social media is, it often makes us work at twice as hard to find “the Truth”.
*11-12 year olds
Firefly fundraises for Cancer Research UK
After our successful fundraising last year, the Firefly team are again doing our bit for charity and are joining thousands of women across the UK in Race for Life. Similar to last year, we have entered the Battersea Park event on the 18th May and hope to raise vital funds for Cancer Research UK and burn a few calories.
We’ve signed up together, with some of us running and others walking, but we’ll all meet in the pub at the end for a well deserved drink. We’ve got a Firefly sponsorship page, where you can help us raise money for this great cause. Any donations would be greatly appreciated and spur us on to the end.
Thank you
Firefly Accelerates the New Masternaut’s Market Debut
by Firefly news team
Tags: corporate announcement management, Cybit, internal and extral communications, Masternaut, pan-regional media relations, strategic PR
Firefly has just wrapped up a major project for telematics software provider, Cybit, which recently announced its decision to combine with Masternaut, heretofore, its no. 1 competitor in the market for vehicle tracking and fleet management solutions. The combination of the top two brands creates the industry’s first pan-European telematics stalwart.
Firefly’s remit – which included strategic positioning of the “new Masternaut”, internal and external communications, and pan-regional media relations – was led out of Firefly London and implemented by teams in the UK, France, Germany and Nordics .
The announcement marked an inflection point in both Cybit and Masternaut’s histories as well as the broader industry, which is rapidly consolidating to meet the needs of a geographically distributed customer base. Firefly was appointed for its track record in managing corporate announcements for clients in fast-growth sectors and in delivering the infrastructure to ensure a coordinated, seamless approach across multiple markets.
“We selected Firefly having complete confidence that the team would bring the right level of strategic insight, experience and a no-nonsense approach to this endeavour,” said Bill Henry, group CEO, Masternaut. “It was a very smooth process working with the extended Firefly team across Europe and the results they delivered went above and beyond our expectations.”
PR hijacking – The Royal Wedding
Vauxhall are having 16 days of ‘majestic’ deals, Czech students are making gingerbread hearts and a firm in Berkhamsted is ensuring dogs have the right attire for it. Yup, the upcoming marriage of Will and Kate is causing everyone to go, well, a little bonkers. But is there real business value behind the gimmicks and stunts?
From now until April 29, there won’t be a day when one of the nationals isn’t featuring at least one Royal Wedding story. Why? Because so many have taken this opportunity to jump on the back of this smoking hot media topic and create their own story.
There have been a few silly link-ups and without a doubt, journalists are being inundated with Royal Wedding “news”. However, there have also been instances of clever hijacking of the story. For example, Smiths News, the distribution arm of WH Smith, announced a predicted sales boost for newspapers and magazines in the run up to the Will and Kate’s wedding day. The company based the prediction following the outcome of Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981 and achieved national coverage.
Reactive comment to the media agenda is a big part of any PR’s role, especially to keep client awareness up during low news periods. We need to spot and think creatively – fast – in order to capitalise on a good opportunity (and of course get there before others!)
From my observation, the best Royal Wedding media hijacking attempts have these three things in common:
- A nugget of new and interesting information
- A clear and easy to understand link-up to the news being hijacked
- Credibility of the person commenting
My advice for the ‘lost generation of youth’? Visualise your success. Now.
There is something unnerving about the ‘lost generation of youth’ headlines this week, and not just because of the bleak picture they paint. By my estimation, this narrative is at least two years old and doesn’t look set on changing. In fact, I remember participating in a stakeholder debate on this precise topic in late 2009. The only major change since then is the coalition government; that and perhaps, an acknowledgement that it will take longer for the UK to climb out of economic doldrums, making fast growth and job creation seem a distant dream.
Any discussion of youth unemployment, however, is futile without discussion of skills. You can argue that the ‘UK skills crisis’ narrative hasn’t changed much, either, when you consider the dearth of highly-skilled talent in areas like advanced sciences and technology. However, it should make one question whether post-grads understand that they’re competing (or will be competing) in a global market for talent. This was one of the main axes of the roundtable discussion and one of the most interesting points to consider when thinking about the labour market of the future.
Over the course of my career, I’ve had numerous conversations about whether jobs like marketing (including PR) could be offshored to a lower cost base, like India. Before, it sounded alarmist. A year ago, I was told it’s already happening – albeit to a very small degree.
None of these things should be a deterrent for anybody wishing to break into the PR world: it’s a rewarding and infinitely interesting career path. But good opportunities are few, and the way you think about yourself as a candidate today, should have some things in common with how you visualise yourself and your career in the long-run.
Here are my top tips on preparing yourself for the PR long-game:
1. Listen well: sometimes it’s better to listen to what your audience is really asking, rather than jump the gun and dispense a prepared answer. This can be true for job interviews, team meetings, or casual networking. When in doubt, ask for clarification and use that information to respond from a position of strength.
2. In the words of a friend and ex-PR, “To assume makes an a** out of you and me”: when you’re just starting out, it takes a certain bravery to ask someone (especially a client) to make their point or request clearer, or utter the words, “by that, do you mean…?”. Just do it, because not doing so, could be a lost opportunity to anchor your relationship.
3. Consult with conviction: in my view, consultancy is less about bringing problems or issues to light, but being an early warning mechanism, with the ability to make sound recommendations, consistently and with conviction. There’s really only one way to get there and that’s through experience, making work experience a valuable foot-in-the-door.
4. Be interesting. And interested. If you are to survive and quite possibly thrive in the PR business, you need: a body of knowledge that spans high-brow to low-brow; to be au fait with everything from OK! to Eureka!; and go from naught to having an opinion about the Bank of England base rates to memory card speed ratings, and so on.
5. Get international experience, however you can: one of the great benefits of working at Firefly is that our clients operate in far corners of the world, giving us great exposure to how PR works in other markets. You don’t have to relocate to do this, but if that’s one of your career ambitions, factor it in your future-term planning now.
The world of PR may be small, but your outlook need not be.
