Archive

World Cup office fever

24-Jun-10 16:54

Apparently over 10 million of us watched the crucial England World Cup game yesterday, with many expected to have bunked off work to view the match. I still think it's incredible to witness the hysteria and media frenzy that's all part of a competition like the World Cup.

However, even more impressive is that over 800,000 streamed the match online - showing just how far technology has come in the last few years. Before, many people would have missed the match as they wouldn't have been able to leave their desks or wouldn't have had a television in the office. I bet many Brits were sneakily keeping up to date with the football via the internet.

There has been a lot of discussion about how the England match would disrupt work time and affect productivity of staff. But, most of the future matches will be in the evening or at the weekend, so I don't think that 90 minutes watching a match, will really harm future productivity. In fact it'll probably boost morale for the rest of this working week, whilst we feel good about the victory!

Unfortunately some fans in London couldn't watch the football because of a power cut, which won't do much for EDF's profile, much like the criticism ITV received when fans watching the game on HD missed the first England goal. Hopefully England's next match on Sunday against Germany will create a positive mood in the office by Monday morning.

Angela

Is the BP oil spill the world’s worst PR disaster?

18-Jun-10 15:42

BP is currently facing the biggest PR catastrophe of its existence with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but how is it fighting to resolve the situation and repair, not just the ruptured well, but its sinking reputation too?

When the reports first surfaced about the oil spill, most of the headlines were about BP's falling shares and a hike in petrol prices but as the weeks went on and several attempts to block the leaking pipe failed, a state of panic rippled into the UK press from across the pond. Fears about the welfare of marine life, the affect on the tourist industry in Florida and along the coast and the wider environmental impacts escalated to the point that the US President labelled it the "worst US environmental disaster'.

So far, BP's response to the PR nightmare has been to throw money at the problem - £1.1bn to put a figure on it. This includes payouts to Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, 51,000 compensations claims have also been issued to the oil giant, 26,500 of which have already been paid costing £42m.

BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward has faced the worst backlash from the public and government and has been called "the most hated man in America" over his role in the crisis. Yesterday (Thursday) he faced a grilling from a congressional committee where politicians were able to ask whatever questions they wanted. This is just the beginning of his PR battle to win back public trust and in a statement during the conference he states that BP will emerge, "stronger, smarter, safer".

With a permanent solution to the spill yet to be found it seems that BP's PR management team and crisis manager still have their work cut out. What is clear is that committing to pay for the clean-up isn't going to cut it for the public; Heyward will need to commit in the long term to repairing the environmental damage, a battle that could last several years.

Louise

PR power of the World Cup

10-Jun-10 11:38

Love it or hate it - the World Cup will be taking over the world's media and water cooler discussion for the next month. It will be pretty hard to escape all the excitement of the event, whether it is flags flying from car rooftops, beer deals in your local supermarket or World Cup sweepstakes in the office. Apparently, even David Cameron is getting involved, by hoisting an England flag over No 10 during the World Cup.

Years ago the build-up to this event just used to be focused on the football and the team, but now it's become such a multi-billion pound event that companies cannot resist jumping on the World Cup bandwagon. For instance, fans are being offered free bus travel on England match days in Ipswich, Sky Bet is offering new customers a free £5 bet on the event and Toshiba is promising to give customers their money back for a laptop, should England win the trophy.

Whilst I sit back and cheer our team on over the next few weeks, I'll be interested to see how much media exposure the event receives, hopefully for all the right reasons, and how it reaches fever pitch as England progress through the tournament.

Angela

The social media debate

03-Jun-10 17:16

A recent survey by Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia has found that a massive 31 per cent of companies do not set aside any budget for social media activity in their PR campaign. A further 34 per cent said that they had spent money on social media, but only a fractional five per cent of their budget.

Whilst these findings don't shock me (as I have witnessed a fair amount of hesitation from clients and prospective clients over the years) it does highlight that as an industry, we should be doing more to encourage clients to "dip their toe in the water".

I believe, and I think others will agree with me, that social media is not for every business and some companies that are currently engaging in social media may be doing it because they feel they have to, rather than because of any real benefits it will bring their business. Having said that, the response we often receive after mentioning our online PR services in a new business meeting is, "What can Twitter and Facebook actually do for my business?"

The answer is that social media can bring real marketing and relationship building benefits that go hand in hand with a traditional PR campaign. We are strong advocates of Twitter and manage around 50 per cent of our clients' twitter profiles. Each client has a different objective for using Twitter, some clients have asked us to focus soley on building relationships with the press so we are involved in researching relevant journalists and "tweeting" about interesting news and opinions on topical events. Other B2C clients are interested in widening their reach with consumers and our remit would be to run competitions on Twitter and let followers know where they can read about the client in the press. Both methods have been successful and it is a great way of easing new clients into social media slowly. We also manage blogs for some clients and help to track down influential bloggers to build relationships with, as we would a journalist.

The online world is changing at a rapid pace and we are constantly suggesting new ways of utilising the Internet to widen the awareness of our clients. Whilst some companies are understandably cautious about trying something that is still new to many people, we have a range of services that allow our clients to get a real taste for it and to allow them to see if it's right for them.

Louise