Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

Yesterday I managed to find the time to lunch one of my old journalist pals. Now retired, the wizened old hack knew how to harvest my leads because he cut his teeth in an age when press releases were walked into the newspapers and news desks and journalists needed copious amounts of TLC.

In an age of time-compressed newsrooms and the ten-minute news cycle, opportunities for the old school long lunch are pretty much all encased in the British Museum, alongside a sorry-looking stuffed Dodo. This is a shame, as there were valuable lessons to be learned at the long lunch coalface back in the day.

One of the most valuable lessons that I learned from these Bacchanalian skirmishes was the precious skill of face reading. But now we live in a world where nearly all communication is done by email or text and a network of contacts can be built up with a few clicks on a keyboard.
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The Spider-Man musical has previewed on Broadway to a chorus of boos from the press and I am bewildered as to why Broadway has not harnessed the power of social networking to counter the effect of people like the New York Post’s Michael Riedel, otherwise known as the Butcher of Broadway.

It’s a grossly unfair practice, dismissing a show on its technical preview and amping up the pressure on the team behind it who have millions invested, almost a bloodsport. But that’s the way the media’s moved – into a place where they have to keep creating stories to keep ahead of the Internet.

It bothers me that Broadway haven’t realised that they could get fans of Spider-Man in to blog and tweet about the show first, though. Let’s not forget that the heroic arachnid is one of the most popular brands on the planet – surely the team behind the musical could harness the huge fan base (and possibly even create more fans in the process) by inviting them in to given their perspective online, thus diluting the poison pens of some of the more rabid critics.

The publicists for the Spider-Man musical must be troubled by the reception the previews have had, and by balancing the needs of the media against the needs of the show. Currently, the media seems to be winning, as the flurry of articles claiming that the show is doomed suggests. Read the rest of this entry »

DIY PR was back in the news over the weekend, when Stephen Fry landed in hot water with the broadsheets for comments he made about women’s sexuality and then took to Twitter to try and resolve the furore.

It’s a perfect way to highlight the dangers of do it yourself PR; like some hapless DIY electrician, the celebrity who tries to engage in their own publicity is likely to burn the house down if they are not really careful.

If even an articulate, interesting, engaging and thoroughly metropolitan man such as Stephen Fry, a man who knows how to shimmy around a crowd and impress or charm the best of us, can get into hot water and be unable to fix it via Twitter, there is surely something to be said for good PR after all. Read the rest of this entry »

“May you live in interesting times,” says the old Chinese curse. Somebody seems to have willed interesting times onto the X Factor of late and much of it is to do with the ubiquity of social networking.

Cowell’s money machine TV show has always trodden a fine line between seeking privacy for its big announcements and demanding that everyone talk about the show around the water cooler, be it real or virtual, but that need for word of mouth has come back to bite the show on the backside with a vengeance in the last week. Depending who you listen to, that is.

On the audience’s side, there widespread disgruntlement on the social networks at Cheryl Cole’s dismissal of Gamu Nhengu Read the rest of this entry »

JetBlue have been undergoing a little turbulence of late – from being perceived as the high watermark of budget airlines their reputation has dipped and then revived, all thanks to an irate employee’s sudden departure, his elevation to folk hero on the internet and an outburst of ire at JetBlue’s response via their previously impeccable social networking from, seemingly, pretty much anyone who cared to look into the story.

Ever since flight attendant Steven Slater swore at a passenger over the PA, grabbed a beer and descended to the tarmac at JFK airport down the emergency chute, the entire internet has been leading the response, whilst JetBlue’s corporate arm squashed the company’s previously golden child social networking department’s ability to respond. JetBlue were caught between a rock and a hard place. The brand was powerless, trapped in the headlights of an extreme action, one which captured the global wave and birthed another fabulous internet nobody. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter is the place on the net to have fun with publicity, as a brilliant new Halloween stunt, featured in The Sun, proves beyond doubt.

“Twitter users will get the chance to communicate with departed showbiz stars this Halloween — in the world’s first online séance,” proclaims the paper. “Tweeters can choose which of their deceased idols they want to talk to, pick a question — then follow the ‘Tweance’ in real time using the social networking site.”

The ‘Tweance’ has been cooked up by Angels Fancy Dress, doubtless keen to move some spooky costumes this October. Mundane considerations aside, they clearly have an almost psychic understanding of the way the web works and, more importantly, the way people engage with social networking sites; they have drawn in all the triggers needed for a publicity windfall – celebrity, the chance to communicate with dead celebrities and the opportunity for millions to nominate who will be spoken to and to see all the answers coming out in real time.

They’ve brought in “top psychic” Jayne Wallace, who has already “contacted the spirit of Jade Goody in a séance organised by The Sun” – she “will quiz four late stars nominated by Twitterers between 10am and 12pm on Friday October 30”.

Whatever you think of psychics and the possibilities of contacting the dead, there is no escaping the fact that there are plenty of people out there who believe – and no doubt that they will be following this Tweance religiously as well as nominating their favourite dead celebrities and sending in questions. This could go right round the world.

What excites me most about this is the way that Twitter is being used to break new ground. I ran the first ever Twithibition, an exhibition of great publicity stunts at the Edinburgh Fringe, in the summer. This Tweance is the next step towards making Twitter the communication channel of choice for the world, a place where things can happen instantly and effect real change whilst you watch. It’s thrilling.

All I need to decide now is whom to nominate…

Day fifteen of the Telegraph’s ongoing revelations about MP’s expenses rumbles into view with no end in sight and I’ve just recorded a piece for the Trevor Macdonald show on the affair – another in a long list of opinions given to the media. It may seem easy for a PR pundit to hand out opinion from on high, but this is fundamentally a PR issue – it has been created by a poor understanding of PR on the part of MPs and will be solved by good, transparent PR. The dispiriting thing is that there are MPs out there who believe that this is a recoverable situation without help – MPs who believe that this will all be over by Christmas, as it were.

There are a couple of things that need doing before trust can be restored. First, politicians should be paid a wage that befits their job, as they are in Germany. It needs to be a wage that makes the need for fiddling expenses redundant, that makes the need for expenses redundant; a wage that they can then spend how they see fit on running their homes. If they have moats to clear – and there will most likely always be rich men in Parliament who need to clear their moats – then the cost must come from their own pockets.

Secondly, the rules must be changed. There are most likely a number of politicians out there who have let their accountants loose on their expenses whilst they pursue a comfortable life in politics, often with little understanding of anything beyond a blinkered vision of their next step up the greasy rungs of Parliament.

There are a lot of MPs out there who have no sense of the real world, who are so wrapped up in stepping from Oxbridge to politics without ever setting foot in reality that they cannot see or understand why there is so much anger directed at them by the electorate.

There is a lot to be said for age and wisdom in parliament – for politicians with a sense of the world, who have had time to live and make mistakes in business and learned from them when the integrity of politics and the country is not at stake. Perhaps we should not allow people to stand as politicians until they are 35 or older?

You might argue that this would not allow in the next William Pitt the Younger – who, it should be remembered, campaigned vigorously against the rotten boroughs that allowed him to enter Parliament, was seen as the honest candidate by the electorate and yet only clung on to power thanks to the patronage of the King. Much has changed since Pitt’s day. Perhaps, then, an aptitude test should be set up, testing potential MPs on how well they understand the world and their place in it?

Britain needs MPs who are savvy, who understand PR – and not in the Machiavellian sense. We need MPs who are able to look clearly at the world and at their place in it, who are able to communicate transparently and effectively with voters through Twitter and the blogosphere, who are willing to be completely accountable for their failures and mistakes and who remember that they are in a position of power by the grace of the people who voted for them and that if they betray that trust, they must pay the price and stand aside for someone else.

So, an über-Cardinal in Rome feels that it’s time for a generation to detox from technology. Forget fasting for lent, the Pope’s publicist has floated a story that we all need to curb our technology obsession and digital addiction. “Thou shalt not text or play games for lent” is the missive from the Vatican. Transformational storytelling it’s not.

I think the Supreme Being will be pulling cosmic hairs out of his signature big white beard with frustration. This sort of reactionary fundamentalism is plain silly. The Catholic Church is missing a trick. They need to embrace the myriad of platforms available and use them. If the church was to think creatively about what could be achieved by hooking up to the gaming universe, mobiles and social networking sites, it might just become relevant.

I am not suggesting a repeat of some of the stunts that have emanated from the odd funky priest – sermons in txt or text voting for hymn choices. No, I propose something much more immersive; to use church buildings and communities as the springboard for a major digital rethink.

Get the game play right for a religiously themed Xbox game and think about the potential of communicating with groups of gamers. What about apps on Facebook and iPhone? There’s a whole generation out there that any religion that wants to try can only reach by becoming digital missionaries.

The Vatican needs to grasp vitality and stop proffering a hair shirt!