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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.
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.
Firefly Germany Celebrates 10 Years in PR
You might think just a few weeks after 9/11 and in the wake of the dotcom bust was a daunting time to establish an overseas branch of a European PR agency – and it was – but it didn’t stop Firefly. Ten years ago, we scoured many of the 16 states of Germany to find a suitable home for Firefly’s German office. We chose Munich, known locally as the “Silicon Alps”. The name says it all: at the time, our PR clients were largely active within the technology field and many of them still are, although a third of our client base is now consumer-focussed, spanning the retail, fashion and lifestyle sectors.
The past decade has seen huge developments in the way we communicate including the launch of Facebook, the iPhone, iPad and the rise of social media, to name a few. It’s a decade that’s seen production of the VW Beetle come to an end, the first German Pope for almost 500 years, and even Germany win the Eurovision Song Contest! The face of public relations has also changed dramatically during this time.
I was recently asked what things had the most impact on me since moving here from working at Firefly London in 2001. Aside from the 187th Oktoberfest which has just finished down the road, below are 10 events which have undoubtedly had a profound effect on Germans and German society over the last decade:
1. The introduction of the Euro. My first half-year in Germany was spent getting acquainted with the currency of the largest economy in the European Union – the Deutschmark (DM) – before switching over to the Euro in early 2002. Overnight, the groceries in my supermarket basket cost more and Germans complained of many retailers and restaurants, for example, cashing in on the new currency. Today Germany is locked into wider-reaching debates, such as the EU bailout funds and the future of the Eurozone.
2. First female Bundeskanzler. Angela Merkel or ‘Angie’ as she is also known is Germany’s first female chancellor. She swept to power in November 2005 and in 2007 she became only the second woman to chair the G8 summit, after Margaret Thatcher.
3. Healing the German psyche, one World Cup at a time. Although vuvuzela-less, the noise and atmosphere surrounding the opening World Cup game in the Allianz Munich arena in 2006 is something I’ll never forget. From a personal perspective, this was the first time I had seen Germans ‘allowed’ to wave their national flag en masse since the reunification. Germany’s relationship to its symbols improved, as did its reputation, and undoubtedly the national optimism of the ensuing “Sommermärchen” (summer fairytale) helped melt away the hold of the second recession in a decade.
4. The 20th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall took place in 2009. I was lucky enough to be studying in Frankfurt when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. I immediately hopped on a train and made the trip to Berlin, which shortly afterwards became the capital of the new Germany. The atmosphere was unforgettable. Much has happened since that initial euphoria. The former Soviet-dominated east has struggled to catch up with the more affluent west after reunification. People in west have had to pay a higher than expected financial price. But the difference between eastern and western Germany has never been as small as it is now.
5. “Wir sind Papst” (“We are pope”) was the front-page headline of mass-circulation daily newspaper, Bild back in 2005, delighted at the election of (the then-Cardinal) Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy. Formerly in Munich, he even christened a member of our German Firefly team many years ago and another member of our team once placed water and wine on the altar for him as a “Ministrant”. We do still believe in miracles (!) but since then, Pope Benedikt XVI continues to divide German society and his nationality has invited greater scrutiny from his compatriots. His most recent visit to his homeland last weekend opened a minefield, as he continues to face criticism from liberal Catholics, MPs, gay and lesbian groups and progressive theologians. Emotions for and against him have always been very strong.
6. The economic Autobahn. Not only is limitless speed something that has always simultaneously amazed and terrified me (nothing says, “I’m back!” louder than touching down at the airport before tearing down the Autobahn at 200km/hr), it seems there are also no limits to Germany’s economic machine. Germany’s recent economic performance stands out among rich economies. Last year its GDP grew by 3.6%, the fastest rate since the country was reunified in 1990. Exports have been Germany’s economic engine: no other big, rich economy has seen its exports to China grow so quickly in the past decade.
7. U-turn for nuclear power. The strength of Germany’s Green party was apparent to me as soon as I arrived. Home recycling even a decade ago was not about two, but three, four even five different containers. Even public transport litter bins were clearly sectioned. I now live in a house that has heating bills a third of my old ones back in UK, as my hot water and central heating runs entirely on pinch-sized eco pellets that look remarkably like hamster food! So I wasn’t entirely surprised when, in the wake of March’s Fukushima disasters, anti-nuclear protests across Germany caused the coalition government to announce a reversal of policy to phase out all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022.The decision makes Germany the biggest industrial power to announce plans to give up nuclear energy. The search for sustainable energy is on. Germans aim to cut electricity use by 10% in the next decade through more energy-efficient machinery and buildings.
8. Christian Wulff was elected Germany’s 10th post-war president in July 2010 to replace Horst Koehler, who was the first ever German president to resign. “Who?” you may rightly ask. Before I lived in Germany, I had no idea about the president who holds a ‘Head of State’ function in the absence of a monarchy and represents Germany overseas (including at royal weddings!). Germany’s international profile has been growing over the past decade. The country sent peacekeepers to the Balkans and its forces have been involved in operations in Afghanistan.
9. The uptake of Facebook and leading local social networks such as Xing and StudiVZ was slower in Germany than in the UK. But by the time I’d returned to work after a year’s parenting leave from mid-2007, it really hit home: social media was a well-entrenched part of our daily business, radically changing the way we planned and implemented our PR strategies. By March 2011, nearly 80% of Germans (65.1 million people) were online, Internetworldstats reported.
10. It’s official! Germans are much happier than in the past! According to the first German happiness study or “Glücksatlas Deutschland 2011” and also involving one of our clients behind the scenes: “Germans are happier today than they have been in the past ten years. The financial crisis of 2008/2009 lowered happiness levels only a bit. The German happiness level is 7.0 on a scale of 0 to10. The last time it was this high was in 2001.”
Coming from a recent celebration of 10 years in Bavaria, 2000m up a mountain, I can certainly vouch for the latter.
