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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.
Google + for brands = new channel for PR consultants to communicate directly
Today sees the launch of Google’s long awaited brand pages for Google +. Burberry, Mumsnet and Angry Birds have become the first to launch profiles according to The Daily Telegraph. But for any PR consultant, the question of why Google + as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?
Firstly to answer that, a public relation agency needs to think about what the purpose of Google + is. Bradley Horowitch, vice president of Google + comments, “the primary purpose of brands creating a presence on the social network, which hopes to take on Facebook, was to market themselves and talk directly to their customers.” For PR communications, this will mean instant connectivity with fans via the most visited and powerful search engine.
Brands can:
- Use circles to send different messages to audiences – allowing you to segment and target based on demographics and interests
- Create hangouts to interact directly with customers and cover events – how about PR’s offering stories in an exclusive hangout?
- Integrate – Google isn’t going to go anywhere and with an explicit indexing of Google + into it’s search results means it more important than ever for a brand to set up a page to be used. There is also an integration with video site: YouTube making it easier to share photos and videos.
Google has also launched ‘Direct Connect’ which means that whenever a person types ‘+’ ahead of a company or group name into Google’s search engine, they will be directed to that company’s Google+ page if they have one.
It seems that Google + is an extension of a brands presence through Google’s increasing product range allowing them to communicate directly with customers. This coupled with potential SEO benefits shows how serious Google is – it’s not something that’s going to go away.
How to manage a PR budget cut without bringing your communications effort to its knees
If only quantitative easing applied to marketing budgets. How many of us wouldn’t love to inject resources and energy into innovative, new campaigns? Instead, the more likely scenario is one of creative austerity, as PR and marketing departments the world over struggle to do even more with less and less.
Having worked in PR for nearly 30 years, I’ve met plenty of marketing and communications directors who, when the budget axe fell, were completely unprepared and forced to take drastic measures that hurt more than they helped.
Today, cuts hardly come as a surprise, although the fallout from slash-and-burn tactics still manage to leave some budget-holders befuddled. Of course, there will be negative impacts. We’re all in favour of greater focus and more efficient working, but when cuts are really deep, most people are ill-prepared to make the right trade-offs.
If you’ve recently stared the budget axe in the face and lived to tell about it, you might find the following insights helpful for preserving what’s important and setting yourself up for sustainable success.
It’s not a solo effort – When faced with budget cuts, don’t shoulder the entire burden of deciding what activity to cut, and how much, entirely on your own. I’ve had situations where clients slashed their budgets and my first instinct would always be to gather the team, discuss the situation and brainstorm the best possible outcomes. This collaborative process made it easier to come back with informed recommendations that the client hadn’t considered, and often we were able to reach a comfortable compromise. Talk to your teams, internal and external – give them a heads up and reasonable time to suggest ideas, and consider these with an open mind.
Get it on paper – At Firefly, we’re big fans of scope of work documents. They’re different from PR plans in that they cover the full extent of PR activity that we actually perform for our clients. “Scope creep” will be familiar to in-house and agency PRs and we recommend curtailing it as early as possible. After all, you have to wonder: if an activity wasn’t in the original plan or your list of priorities, was it really that strategic or important to begin with? Insist that your agency keeps detailed scope of work documents to be able to assess (quickly) which activities are suffering from bloat.
Be prepared to flex and negotiate your way through tough times. Being nimble and having an open mind can generate some surprising, beneficial outcomes, as you start to think laterally about how to tackle the challenge of cuts. For example: can you consolidate similar or complementary services with one vendor (e.g., a bundled approach like home broadband, landline and mobile)? Can the agency look into the current PR team configuration and whether adjustments can lead to savings? Can you, as the PR or marketing client, provide more in the way of ready-made content that doesn’t require too much retro-fitting to help the team fast-track to implementation? The list goes on…
Socialise the new plans, because whatever happens will inevitably impact other people, and having them on board from the beginning will help the changes settle in faster.
Set expectations – all too frequently agencies are keen to please and often at any cost to themselves. This shouldn’t be the case and clients, in-house teams and agencies should all be clear and transparent about what a budget level or cut means in real terms. For example, a cut from £10,000 to £5,000 per month is not a 50% cut in proactive PR effort; it’s far greater when you consider that the same underlying measurement and reporting has to continue (unless that element of activity is also cut – not recommended!). It can also mean headcount, or adjustment of the senior/junior balance of the team. We live in the real world and have seen agencies fill their teams with interns and fresh graduates (secretly or overtly) just to meet procurement demands, but does the actual client truly expect director or account director-level advice at half the price? No one benefits from this kind of situation. Everyone should aim for a win-win relationship. Having the right expectations is crucial.
Review your cost base – When times are tight and you want to cut and minimise your costs there are two approaches:
Firstly, if some part of your comms plan is simply not working well or the ROI is not clear enough and spend is called into question, extreme measures may be the solution. In the same way that amputation might be the only way to save a patient, stopping an underperforming costly activity might just save the day.
On the other hand, you can save by reviewing your costs, too. This is the easiest, quickest and most effective way to get in control of your cost base. Spend 20 minutes to review every cost – make a full list – then against each item or line ask yourself these questions…
1. Can we do without it altogether?
2. Can we cut or trim, i.e. how much of this do we really need (e.g. cut out trips and settle for Skype calls)?
3. Am I getting a good deal, or am I paying too much? What is the market norm now?
4. Can I share the cost with another department/business or another client, or get this done another way?
You could be surprised by how much you can save.
Fovea’s Pete Corbin discusses ‘beyond viral’, digital PR and video content
In the first of a three-part blog series, Fovea’s Pete Corbin shares his views on video and PR. This first instalment, in the clip below, covers the advantages of using video content in public relations. In subsequent blogs, Pete will cover:
Blog #2: video’s rise in popularity, the most common misconceptions about video, and big PR no-no’s.
Blog #3: Pete’s top three tips for those wishing to push their digital PR outreach.
Technology plays a hugely important role in the development of PR. As different media become more accessible and the public relations industry continues to push the boundaries of tradition, PR consultants and tech PR professionals, especially, have firmly realised the benefits of video and the advantages it has over current methods of media outreach and corporate communications.
Claire Walker Talks Apple to PR Week
The death of Steve Jobs was mourned across the globe last week, uniting strangers who loved his beautifully-designed inventions, the company he built by hand, and everything the Apple brand stood for. Here, fresh from an interview with PR Week UK, Firefly CEO Claire Walker discusses Apple, reputation management and public relations after the passing of one of the world’s greatest showmen.
Reputation management: RIM should seek PR advice
12 October 2011
by Anna Heaton
Tags: crisis management, media, PR, reputation management, Social Media, Twitter
by Anna Heaton
Tags: crisis management, media, PR, reputation management, Social Media, Twitter
This week hasn’t been great for BlackBerry or RIM’s reputation. With severe blackouts reported worldwide, affecting services such as BlackBerry Messenger and email, extreme inconvenience has hit Blackberry users, especially those who depend on the technology for their business and staff. Millions of BlackBerry users have entered their third day of an internet blackout, with no word on when the service will be restored. This isn’t good reputation management – the industry mantra when faced with a crisis is, ‘tell it all, tell it fast, tell it now’. RIM is not telling anyone anything…two tweets during three days of blackout?
Social media has been rife with complaints, with many people threatening to turn their backs on BlackBerry and make the move to iPhone or Android. Since I switched to the smartphone world a few years ago, I’ve always had a BlackBerry and have never looked back. But when the recent blackouts began, I felt worryingly lost without instant access to Facebook, my work emails and BBM. But what really irritated me was the fact that answers weren’t communicated, as RIM declined to comment on the situation, as reported by the national media.
It’s really important businesses are honest and transparent, and keep their customers’ best interests at heart – showing failure isn’t always as bad as they might think! Clearly there was a fault with connectivity and I found it frustrating that these faults were not made public. The RIM Twitter page remained almost silent, at a time when it should have been constantly active. An explanation, even through social media channels, would have made me much more accepting of the problem, as we all understand that technology can be temperamental – even for huge corporate companies such as RIM.
Has my love of BlackBerry been affected? Well, as a loyal user, I haven’t considered switching my phone, but it’s really made me think about reputation management and how important it is, even for the well-established big brands. It’s definitely given me some food for thought this week.
