It’s not often you see journalists (and broadcast journalists at that) openly requesting ideas on what tech stories they should be working on next.  However, Wednesday 15^th February saw Benjamin Cohen, Business Technology Correspondent at Channel 4 News decide to shake things up and invite people to post their ideas on his Facebook page.

At first I assumed this wouldn’t really take off.  But Ben really wanted to hear his followers’ ideas and views on the technology industry; and, 90 comments later, I think this was an incredibly smart move on his part.

Not only does this open platform allow Ben to collate a host of ideas in one place, in a way that won’t clog up his (probably over-full) inbox; it allows him to see who the big thinkers are and get the ‘edgier’ stories before his colleagues and counterparts.  It also means that Ben is able to begin an immediate dialogue with any contributors who suggest an idea he likes.  It also lets Ben see who is paying attention to what he’s tweeting about and covering; only the people with their eye on the ball would have spotted the tweet and invitation to post onto his Facebook page. 

What was nice to see is that it wasn’t just PRs pitching to him  -  Channel 4 News viewers were also asking for themes that they would like to see covered by the show.

So, is Facebook the way forward in terms of journalist pitching? I’m not sure.  All I know is that this time it worked well and I bet Benjamin manages to research a really great news piece out of it.

Berkeley’s CEO, Chris Hewitt, was recently asked at a new business pitch, “So, how exactly would you make, say, a data centre interesting and news worthy?” Funny you should ask.

Last week, one of our clients, PMB Holdings, held a kick-off event for its new data centre, due to be built on a site in Milton Keynes previously owned by the media tycoon Robert Maxwell.

The demolition of the derelict buildings currently occupying the site was scheduled to begin on the day (so the site was full of large-scale construction equipment!) but we needed a bigger hook to get the attention of the media. To add some flavour to the demolition and supply the media with some colourful characters to interview, we scoured the Internet for bloggers and local residents who had a personal tie with Maxwell. We ended up with guests including the site’s former Day Supervisor, as well as an 84-year-old pensioner who had been made redundant by Maxwell several decades ago.

A Times photographer, BBC Look East, ITV Anglia, BBC Three Counties Radio and the local Milton Keynes Citizen all showed up for the big demolition day. Needless to say, the pensioner, Terry Power, looked charming in a hard hat and was a favourite of the media for interviews and photographs.

We ended up with some fantastic coverage and an ecstatic client who said the eventful day left him with a ‘spring in his step’ and a good feeling about the overall business venture.  As any PR knows, good coverage and a happy client is the holy grail, and is the reason why so many of us do what we do.

Having volunteered for a charity (Radio Wexham) for just over nine years, I have become quite familiar with the trials and tribulations of having to raise funds for a not-for-profit organisation. In fact, during these tough economic times the competition between charities to raise funds has become fierce. Simply getting volunteers to shake buckets at passers by on the streets is no longer enough to sustain a charity organisation’s activities.

I personally believe that voluntary and charity organisations offer many people the chance to be involved in activities that could be life changing.

Recently, through our work with veteran property developer, Peter Beckwith of PMB Holdings, to launch a new data centre in Milton Keynes, Berkeley PR was approached to help support the Wimbledon Civic Theatre Thrust (WCTT), a charity he is a trustee of.

The WCTT aims to improve access to performing arts for young people aged between 11-16 and  living in the local Merton and Wimbledon areas. The Trust focuses its work on individuals that have been potentially disadvantaged in some way, such as through physical, mental, social, financial and ethnic  issues, or even the inability to make friends and socialise. With famous patrons such as Sir Cliff Richard, June Whitfield, Lady Macmillan, Matthew Bourne and Tony Hawkes, the Trust relies fully on donations to continue its work.

As a young thespian myself, this cause stirred quite a few emotions and Berkeley PR agreed to partner with the Trust to help promote its community work to boost the vital funding needed to support each youth project in 2012. Hopefully our support will raise the group’s profile and position it as one of the leading independent charitable local youth groups in the UK.  

If you do have a spare five minutes, please have a look around the WCTT’s website (http://www.wctt.org.uk/index.html) and check out the upcoming projects. And if you are feeling generous please donate: http://www.wctt.org.uk/HTML/howtohelp.html

Melanie Johnson

So, after an intense two weeks of planning, the Great Berkeley Bake- off finally took place earlier this week. And what an event it was!

At 13:00 on Monday, after a busy Sunday evening of baking, nine tired contestants lined up armed with the fruits of their labour. The selection of cakes was truly amazing, even the head baker at Greggs would be proud! Here’s a list of the contestants, along with their submissions:

• Denis: Chocolate and cola cake
• Lucy: Raspberry and white chocolate muffins (x6)
• Claire: Carrot cake
• Melanie: Rum and banana loaf
• Liam:  Chocolate and orange cake
• Louise: Chocolate fudge cake
• Rhiannon: Rocky Road and meringue topped lemon cupcakes
• Lauren: Chocolate and raspberry torte
• Laura: Flapjacks

But who were the winners? Well, the judging was tough. Chief Exec of Berkeley PR, Chris Hewitt, had the arduous task of tasting all ten creations.

“It was one of the toughest decisions of my life, I have to admit,” said Mr. Hewitt. “But ultimately there had to be one winner, and only one really stood out for me.”

The winner of the Great Berkeley Bake-off was Rhiannon Clarke, whose Rocky Road delighted the tastebuds of everyone involved! Second place went to….Rhiannon (again),  this time for her meringue-topped lemon cupcakes that were worthy of afternoon tea at the Dorchester. And third place? No it wasn’t Rhiannon but instead, Lucy Knighton, whose Raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes were wonderful.

And the wooden spoon of hotly contested event? Well that was shared by two people: yours truly for my chocolate and cola cake, and Melanie Johnson for her rum and banana loaf.

The contest raised £128, all of which will be donated to the Sports Relief appeal which takes place in March. A great success all round, and who knows, this could make its way into Berkeley PR’s annual diary!

(Note from the blog editor: the mountain of crumbs on the carpet and the many empty cake tins lying around suggest that it will!)

@denisdavies

The internet has transformed the way we live.  It is difficult to remember life without it. Yet its greatest strengths – including unfettered access to information, entertainment and communications - also make us vulnerable to new and unexpected dangers and risks.  There is growing awareness of the need to protect young people from these dangers, but what about their parents, and grandparents?

Yesterday’s annual  Safer Internet Day (SID) aimed to address this, with a national theme of ‘Connecting generations and educating each other.’ This is something our client Kaspersky Lab, an internet security provider, supports wholeheartedly – so over the past few weeks we have been working with them to launch a high profile campaign around this theme.

We targeted media at both ends of the generational spectrum – from parenting blogs to retirement magazines, as well as the nationals and broadcast media.  Kaspersky Lab internet security expert  David Emm spoke live on Hayes FM, BBC Radio Jersey, BBC Radio Oxford and Tower FM about cyber bullying and keeping social media accounts safe from hackers, and pre-recorded an interview on the subject with SID Radio. SID-related statistics published by Kaspersky Lab resulted in coverage in the Daily Telegraph, and a competition to win Kaspersky Lab’s brand new consumer product Kaspersky ONE (which provides internet security for devices such as Android phones and tablets as well as computers) secured loads of coverage – including this one on MadeForMums.

Kaspersky Lab supported other SID activity by publishing a list of essential tips to help everyone stay safe online – whether they were nine or 99-years-old.

By the end of the day, we had secured 22 mentions for the company, and, more importantly, helped to spread the message of how to stay safe online.  Happy surfing!

Every PR would be utterly lost without their trusty Gorkana Database or Features Exec login. These resources are vital to the day-to-day working life of a PR, especially when you work in an agency where you have a variety of clients that communicate to a variety of audiences.

Here at Berkeley, we use these tools to create press lists, broken down by industry and sector, so that we make sure that we only email relevant news to targeted publications. We  have received training from both Gorkana and Features Exec to optimise the effectiveness of these tools. Now our lists update automatically when someone leaves a publication, and we have learnt more about how to use these resources to distribute releases and search for planned forward features.

This last feature has highlighted a topic of considerable debate within the PR industry: the decline in the number of publications that publish forward-looking editorial calendars. More and more titles appear to be moving towards a topical approach for both news and features. This is particularly the case for consumer lifestyle and broadcast media.

The PR game is fast-paced – and now we need to be more proactive and targeted  than ever.  With the help of our trust logins!

AmyKStevens

Here at Berkeley PR, we’re big fans of anything that involves pastry. Whether it’s a sausage roll, doughnut or wild mushroom vol-au-vent, we all harbour a secret passion for anything pastry-related. So it came as no surprise to find that half the office avidly followed the Great British Bake-Off on television.

This event, which took place during January, saw twelve homebakers take part in a ‘bake off’ for Sport Relief 2012. The show tested every aspect of their baking skills as they battled it out to be crowned the Great British Bake-Off’s Best Amateur Baker.

Much to her amazement, radio presenter Anita Rani secured victory after producing a particularly tasty and stunning three-tiered chocolate and orange cake with chocolate ganache, and a sugar-paste teapot inspired by the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

In honour of Anita’s creation, we at Berkeley PR have launched our own version of the competition – the Great Berkeley Bake-Off. It’s taking place on Monday 30 January and will be just as competitive as the real thing, if not more so…

Although we won’t be in a tent or having to bake while wearing a blindfold, each contestent will need to prepare a cake of their choice before 13h00.  All cakes will be on sale in our office and in those of neighbouring companies, with slices going for £2 each (and all proceeds going to Sports Relief 2012.) 

If you’re in the Reading area, feel free to pop in!  The entries will be judged by CEO Chris Hewitt, and the winner will be announced next Monday at 15h00, so make sure you tune in for an update on how delicious (or horrid!) the cakes turn out.

Sports Relief 2012 runs between Friday 23rd to Sunday 25th March.

Denis 

January. The month of resolutions.  A friend of mine has dispensed with the diet, fitness, detox approach and is instead resolving to be always ‘on time’, in every area of her life – from getting out of bed on dark January mornings, to the school run, gym classes and work meetings.   She is one of life’s ‘just in time’ people and is determined to take this up to the level of ‘with plenty of time to spare.’

This set me thinking about my own timekeeping.  I’m the complete opposite to my friend, or so I thought.  My ‘on time’ is five minutes early, if not more. Just as I was congratulating myself on this fact I heard myself telling a colleague that the regular weekly internal catch up meeting we had planned would need to be in twenty minutes ‘or so’ – rather than on the hour as scheduled.  I didn’t articulate why, redefine the time effectively or even apologise.  

Now I wouldn’t dream of casually informing a client, journalist or prospect  I would be ‘twenty minutes or so’ late. Why this internal meeting should be any less important than an external appointment, is a question I couldn’t answer, but it made me realise that I that  I  rank my timekeeping according to the perceived importance of the meeting. 

Turning up on time is a sign of good manners, respect and an indication of conscientiousness that sets a precedent.  In some organisations the door is locked at the start time of meetings  and if you’re late, you’re out.  A little extreme perhaps, but I think I understand the point.  If you don’t keep to an agreed time you are assuming the party you are meeting can afford the time to wait for you. 

I am resolving here and now to change.  An appointment time should be kept unless circumstances beyond my control mean it can’t.  Anyone else up for the challenge?

Just before the Festive break our client, Beyond Analysis, experts in all things customer loyalty, asked us to  launch a new online game, designed to showcase the power of its analytical technology and drive traffic to its website.

Achieving a business goal using entertainment can be tricky, but we were instantly bowled over by this one! Twitter Analyzer 3000 uses sophisticated technology to tell you what your Twitter handle says about you.

After you type in your twitter handle and hit enter, you’re presented with an infographic unveiling the true personality behind your chosen name/messages. The technology works by mining and analysing your last twenty or so tweets, and, based on the information within your timeline, generates a (scarily accurate!) profile.

With just two days to launch the game, the Berkeley PR office came together as only PR offices can. We analysed the Twitter profiles of hundreds of celebrities, actors, politicians, sportsmen and Z-list celebs from around the world. We were looking for anything that would be newsworthy or interesting. And we found it.

The tool concluded that London Mayor, Boris Johnson, was ’100% party animal’ ! By contrast, the artist formerly known as Jordan – AKA Kate Price – is apparently ’100% workaholic’. We had our (slightly tongue-in-cheek) story: ‘LONDON MAYOR OUT-PARTIES GLAMOUR MODEL KATIE PRICE.’

The news alert was accompanied by a delivery of handmade cookies to twenty journalists, each one iced with the recipient’s results. Journalists, including Caroline Donnelly, Stuart Sumner, Jo Best, Lucy Hedges and Luke Westaway, entered into the fun and tweeted both the link to the tool and their own results.

Over the next few days we watched the tide of messages grow as everyone tweeted the story and their own results. By the time the Berkeley PR office closed on Christmas Eve we had generated an 89% increase in visitors to the website.

As for my own results?  Well, it seems that I am 50% couch potato, 25% tech geek and 25% foodie. A lazy, overeating, gadget freak? To be honest, I think the game knows me better than I know myself.

We’re a bit partial to a sweepstake here at Berkeley PR, so you can imagine our excitement at this weekend’s Strictly Come Dancing final. With the loot currently standing at an impressive £14 (enough for a ‘vending machine lunch’ as pointed out by our Director, Paul) we’ll be watching with baited breath to see who takes home that glitter ball trophy.

But although Strictly is now a Saturday night-in stalwart – how many of us will be watching it in 3D? Last week presenters Tess and Brucey announced that the final will be one of the first BBC shows to be transmitted in 3D via Freeview HD.

3D television has been steadily streaming into Britain’s living rooms for a while now, but Strictly is one of the first family entertainment shows to be sprinkled with the 3D magic dust.  Avid cinema goers have been dabbling with 3D for a while now, and even football matches have been given that extra dimension.

Broadcasting live in 3D is still fairly experimental, so it’s a brave move from the BBC to invest in this new technology on one of its biggest viewing nights of the year. But to turn your home from living room to ballroom, you’ll need to invest in the right equipment. That not only means wearing the silly glasses, but also forking out for a telly with 3D capacity.

Many have been sceptical of investing in 3D while the technology is still in its infancy, but it seems to be a development which is in no danger of going away. In recent years, the quest of television manufacturers is to make the images on screen as real and lifelike as possible.

It started with HD, which is now pretty much standard, as are LCD screens. And now that 3D television is becoming less sci-fi and more day-to-day-life, it was really only a matter of time before Saturday night TV got in on the act.

If you have got a 3D television (and the glasses to match) make sure you watch Strictly on the right channel, as it will be being filmed in both 2D and 3D. As for our sweepstake, only Liam and Carolann (supporting Harry and Jason respectively) stand in between me and that £14 bounty.

Who knows, maybe I’ll put my winnings towards a 3D TV? Or, more realistically, just the glasses.