Yesterday Wikipedia took its English-language site offline as part of protests against proposed anti-piracy laws in the US. I wonder how many people were incovenienced by this…..not that I rely solely on Wikipedia for facts and background info you must understand, but it is the first source that most people turn to. Actually, 400m people a month all over the world use the site as ‘go-to’ source of info…so I am not the only one!

The site carried a banner stating ‘Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge’.  Once I had got over the unnecessary use of capital letters for every word, I did actually start to think about a world without easy access to everyday information. I mean, I use the internet for everything, from finding out what my friends are doing on Twitter or to how to bake a cake (in the run-up to the Berkeley PR bake-off), to understanding the latest technology trends.  Without it I would be stuck.

But it is the reason behind Wikipedia’s decision to shut down for 24 hours that intrigues me. The U.S. Congress is considering legislation that in Wikipedia’s view would ‘fatally damage the free and open Internet’. But the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) protects against online piracy…so surely that is a good thing?!

I understand that the Internet should be an open platform for free speech but surely during these tough economic times the threat of 2.2 million jobs being at risk if the legislation is not imposed might make someone think twice about aggressively opposing it.  

Anyway, what are your thoughts on the subject…I would be interested to hear.

Melanie Johnson

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.

Following our blog post of 7 December, which reported a story widely doing the rounds on Twitter regarding a promotional campaign involving the distribution of 55 goldfishes to media buyers in Australia, we have received an email from Advantage Adelaide asking us to set the record straight. 

We are happy to clarify that none of the goldfish distributed by hand (not mailed) died in transit and that each was given to a person who “had agreed to take custody of it”, well-supplied with food and a large glass bowl containing fresh water.

This story is a salutary reminder of how fast the fire of a story can take hold and spin away from factual accuracy. Social media is a particularly effective touch paper.

The Fact Sheet that Advantage Adelaide sent us says that “every single fish was happy and healthy when it arrived at its destination.”  Caring for a living, feeling being is quite a commitment.  It is one that should not be undertaken or imposed lightly.

I recently read about a PR agency that has enforced an email ban for one day a week. Every Tuesday, employees are unable to use internal and external mail and are instead encouraged to think of alternative ways to communicate. Rather than pinging over a quick email, they are persuaded to use the phone, Twitter and the like to contact peers, clients and the press.

As a PR person, it took me a while to decide if I thought this was very clever or very crazy move. For example, I know many clients and journalists prefer to communicate via email.  Admittedly you miss out on the all-telling non verbal communication signs that could help you pick up on a potential issue or question, but it’s quick, easy and creates a ‘paper trail’ for future reference.

Then only about ten minutes ago, I found myself drafting an email to one of my colleagues who sits about ten feet away from me. Assoon as I realised what I was doing, the draft was scrapped and I managed to swirl myself round on my chair, make eye contact and ask the question. A bit embarrassing and a sign that it’s too easy to go into automatic pilot ‘email mode’ without thinking.

I think they key is in getting the right balance – a balance which may well be different when dealing with peers, clients and the press. There’s definitely a place for email and social media channels when it comes to getting your point across, but you really can’t beat good old fashioned talking.

Lauren Wood

Normally I’m not much of a Twitter fan, but lately it has been a treasure chest of stories and articles I absolutely feel the need to share.

The last blog post I wrote was about the Mexican football team with their Twitter handles on their kit, but I personally think this Twitter story beats that:

Recently a PR firm in Australia made a big, and tragically fatal mistake. In an attempt to get media agencies to promote South Australia, Advantage SA and its co-brand Advantage Adelaide mailed out 55 goldfish in bowls with the message: “Be the big fish in a small pond and come test the water.”

Any guesses as to what happened to the little fishies?

The sad death of nearly all the fish prompted the CEO to apologise and, since then, the story has gone viral. The CEO even offered to come and rescue the lucky survivors and place them in a “good and healthy home “(I’m assuming that would not include the employees of Advantage Adelaide.)

While I appreciate trying to stand out – really I do – this was clearly not the way to go about it. And honestly, a PR firm should know better than anyone the power of negative press. Moving forward, let’s definitely be creative and think outside of the box, but also be aware of any potential risks/threats and long-term consequences -  not to mention the speed at which a medium like Twitter can commuicate our mistakes to the world.

Living in the UK, my knowledge and to be honest, overall awareness, of football has grown exponentially. While I have learned never to refer to it as soccer (unless I’m deliberately trying to annoy my Aussie husband or desk-mate Pete) I am slowly gaining interest.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a woman who loves sports, specifically American college football, but the other kind of football seems too big and complicated for me to fully wrap my head around.

However, that changed this morning when an interesting story flew across my Twitter, flagged by our director Paul, about a football team in Mexico. The team had replaced their player’s names with their Twitter handles and the handle of their biggest sponsor, which, I love this part – is a Mexican beer company.

I think this type of clever, in-your-face integrated marketing, advertising and PR is necessary in our world of saturated media. To get noticed you have to do something different, like Berkeley PR’s tagline, helping companies stand out from the herd. I’m not saying that Twitter handles on kits is the future for all sporting teams, but there is something to be said about thinking outside the box.

The unveiling caused quite a kerfuffle in the sporting and media world and the club even released a statement about the team’s new kit, “In football as in life, 140 characters are enough to decide which side you’re on.” Well, I think that sums it about up.

Olivia Calvert

ITV1’s This Morning’s viewers had a bit of a shock when they tuned into Monday’s show to find a feature demonstrating the latest in vibrator technology and sex positions for the over 60s.

Twitter was soon inundated with comments from viewers shocked at the content of the feature and the sight of two OAP’s demonstrating sex position. The Daily Mail featured the story drawing on the Twitter comments to give the piece more kudos.

This shows the power of social media and how a interesting story can escalate online with images. The PR’s of those sex gadgets got twice the bang for their buck as the story continued online following national TV exposure (no pun intended).  Thinking out of the box in PR and positioning your product in a different light or to a different audience to create controversy can prove highly beneficial and can cast a much wider net for a PR campaign.

Rachel Bampton

Over the last few weeks I have been immersing myself in the world of social media monitoring.  With online chat increasing exponentially in terms of both volume and influence, many companies have realised that social media has the power to make or break a brand, product, service or reputation – and it’s about time they started to listen and interact with what was going on.

This is a new area for me and it took me on a journey from social media ‘dashboards’ (computer screens full of lovely colour-coded charts and graphs and tables), through complex text analytics and data processing (the powerful engines that underpin those nice charts and graphs and tables) and on to interactive engagement consoles (enabling us to join the conversation) and the use of social media intelligence to inform business strategy and decision making across an organisation .  Along the way I discovered a fluid and turbulent competitive landscape – which according to Gartner’s Hype Cycle is just about to hit the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations’, after which it is due to enter the so-called trough of disillusionment and a period of market and product consolidation when everyone is expected to get their act together and sort themselves out.

I still feel a little dizzy; but also rather excited.  For us in PR, understanding what is being said about our clients online and helping them to build strong and positive relationships with their online audiences is becoming essential.   It also represents a wonderful opportunity for our industry to energise and re-invigorate itself.   It is a chance we shouldn’t miss.

Tilly Travers

Most PRs have a grammatical nemesis. Whether it causes you to shout around the office for advice on capital letters, or consult your trusty ‘grammar for dummies’ book when faced with a comma conundrum. Every time a colleague proof -reads one of these blog posts, I wait for the inevitable apostrophe amendments in red pen that highlight the creative ways I have managed to use them incorrectly.

For a while now, it seems that speed has become a priority over grammatical accuracy. Text speak evolved because of this, and to keep messages short which minimises cost. Twitter has only fuelled this further as users try to cram their thoughts into 140 characters. The problem is, this lexicon spilled into e-mail and other areas of writing which creates confusion when writing a pitch or press release.

Last week, I saw a news story about Sittingbourne carnival in Kent (bear with me). The organisers made a serious grammar faux pas by placing the signs (shown above) around the town. They quickly gained notoriety in the local community and were covered in the press, which in itself proves that we still care about grammar. As a PR, it’s important to realise we can potentially spark a similar negative reaction every time we contact a journalist with written material. The fact that the carnival received unprecedented publicity due to the BBC news website covering the story is one for the ‘any publicity is good publicity’ argument.

Despite my numerous apostrophe blunders, I still think we should strive for perfect grammar. At the end of the day, if PRs and journalists stop caring about it who else will? A couple of colleagues were recently left frustrated after a journalist spelt the name of their client wrong in a piece of coverage. This is aggravating after working hard to draft and gain approval of copy. On the other hand, I’m sure most members of the press have received an error-strewn case study from a PR at some point, so both sides are guilty.

Grammar is just one of many areas where PRs and journalists must work together. It’s dangerous for either party to moan about the other missing a typo because you will almost certainly make one yourself at some point. The fact is, everyone makes mistakes (even the BBC, see below), but we should make the necessary steps to try and prevent them.

Peter Beck

Make love not war

Hacks and flacks (PRs)  have always had, and will always have, a love/hate relationship. Something like 40% of a magazine’s content is supplied by PR, so clearly they need us. And we need them to help shine a bright light on our clients. But recently, the spat between the two professions seems to have become far more intense. Now normally it’s the hacks who are quick off the mark to expose the mistakes and failings of PRs. Whether it’s a poorly written pitch, a nervous newbie fumbling on their words or a slightly stalker-ish PR, certain journalists are notoriously happy to name and shame (and even print correspondence).

On the flip side, PRs have been far more cautious in their exposing of reporters’ shortcomings.. For us, journalist relationships are to be protected and treasured at all costs. After all, without journalists, we don’t have a job, so naming and shaming them serves at nothing.

Until now…

Earlier this week, a ‘What annoys technology journalists about PRs’- type blog was posted by a freelancer. Within minutes, a flurry of PRs around the country used the @UKTJPR Twitter handle to openly vent their own frustrations. In a couple of hours of madness, the PR industry took offence to this particular article and a collective outburst began. Here’s a taster of what was said online:

• “If the product is that bad – a heads up before the review is published would be really useful”
• “Don’t tell us you’ll come to an event if you have no intention of doing so, or if you’re liable to cancel the day before”
• “As an ex PR: lack of a) understanding of PR process/pressure b) patience for PR effort/feedback c) acceptance – it’s a two way street”
• “Lack of civility at times, and lack of honesty. If you’re not going to cover something, please just tell me”

As you can see, the handbags are clearly out! At the end of the day, the media industry is a small place. We all know this since most of us had to fight tooth and nail to get a foot in the door, let alone the months of interning so that we finally get paid (our expenses at least), so it’s a real shame that there is such a rift. It is understandable, but like any other profession, there will always be people who annoy you. As a PR agency, we are painfully aware that we are considered the enemy… so much so that we invest in training with hacks to better understand what makes them tick, and what turns them off.

Perhaps we should end on a positive note and with the wise words of Paul Ockenden, reviewer extraordinaire:

• “I’m saddened that PR/Journos always turns into a “them vs us” thing. We are both on the same team! Let’s work TOGETHER!”

Denis