Daily mantra: We're in PR not ER!

When talking to family and friends about a day in the office, they often comment about how much fun working in PR sounds. This could be down to my genuine love for what I do or maybe because I'm a natural salesperson (tongue firmly in cheek)!

'Outsiders' don't seem to understand why I constantly feel frustrated, infuriated and stressed out. To all of those people this video captures just one aspect of my head against brick wall frustrations!

A wise man once told me - we are in PR not ER! I must remind myself of this and be grateful...

Learning from Obama

I attended a conference a few weeks back and found that the speaker used the same social media slides as me - the same messages, the same visuals and the same statistics. Although this was laborious, I did take away one great nugget of information.

Obama's online campaign had key strategies to achieve its overall objective - raise money and build a community of believers in order to form the 'Obama' brand the way social networks are formed. Hilary on the other hand focused her efforts on advertising and traditional media. Below is a summary of how the two politicians spent their campaign budgets:

Not only did Hilary spend almost three times the expenditure, she also focused her efforts on a medium that Obama's advisors chose to completely ignore. In the first two months of fundraising Obama raised US$91m compared to Hillary's US$37m. The rest, as they say, is history!

This is a fascinating example of how social and digital media is affecting politics, and the wider world, and its approach to influencing people. Even now, if you search Obama on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, you will find cleverly designed vehicles where he delivers his messages and 'wins' your heart.

This is a key lesson to be take on board when devising PR campaigns for clients.

Source: Webguild March 2008

Viral Videos

A colleague of mine produced this video - I quite liked it, especially as I play a small role!

What do you think? Does it satisfy the requirements to be a successful viral video?

Lessons in time management

For all PROs time management and billable hours are key to the way we work. Here is a good example of how we should be thinking, from Dogbert!

Only in Amsterdam

Guerilla marketing and PR can either be a huge success or a massive flop (leading to industry ridicule). With social media, some campaigns don't even stand a chance! But I saw this today, and loved it. I think it is extremely creative and looks to have generated buzz, as well as getting the 'product' into the hands of consumers. Awesome stuff!

Great Advert

It was only a matter of time before someone turned this great moment into an ad - well done to Telekom.

With the power of social media, I think this will do well.

What does a judge know about the internet?!

The US court ruling on the Google vs. Viacom case has surprised me somewhat.

It seems that all users of YouTube will be surrendering their right to privacy as a US court ruled in favour of Viacom regarding allegations copyright infringments. Viacom will now have access to every users viewing log containing log-in ID, the computer IP address and video clip details. The ruling, although being contested, is likely to affect users worldwide.

I feel this is the beginning of the end for privacy rights and will dramatically shake up how video sharing platforms like YouTube will operate in the future.

I'd like to know how much this particular judge knows about how the internet operates!