Ged Carroll

Blog

  • Duracell, Buffett & more things

    Duracell

    Warren Buffett buys P&G’s Duracell business | Marketing Interactive – I think that this is smart, Duracell is a powerful brand. It has been extended from beyond its traditional high quality alkaline batteries to include rechargeable batteries, chargers and related products. Beyond distribution, the fit for Procter & Gamble is less obvious. Having Duracell under more focused management should bear dividends

    Branding

    Nokia would like you to know that it’s “up to something” — Tech News and Analysis – Nokia is more focused on the business to business space now, I wonder if its more than a licenced brand deal? Nokia says vanishing consumer brand may return | Reuters – as a licenced brand, think Bush, RCA or Philips

    Consumer behaviour

    Instagram is killing teen girls’ self-esteem – Quartz – an exaggeration, am sure you could have put in magazines, models or TV role models in this title just as well

    Finance

    China bad loans rise as growth slows | SCMP – medium businesses suffering

    Kuwaitis to get Dow’s divested shares | Shanghai Daily – interesting move

    Morgan Stanley pushed murky China stock to market | AP – Tianhe story probes and is a warning for due diligence`

    Marketing

    Is Adblock Plus Killing Your Conversions? | Kissmetrics – it is more the issue that they are counted as false impressions

    Hong Kong Tramways: West Island MTR Line opportunity to grow ad revenue | Marketing Interactive – Hong Kong’s trams are a great outdoor advertising option which I’ve used to Tommy Bahama in the past

    Security

    The Nor » All Cameras Are Police Cameras – interesting article on the paranoia imbued by surveillance technology. It opens serious questions about devices like Ring security cameras

    McChrystal warns against ‘police state’ | Politico – sweet spot between police state and anarchy

    Technology

    TSMC Predicts Next Big Thing | EE Times – MEMs and CMOS together on the one chip

    Tencent’s Quarterly Earnings Disappoint As WeChat And Mobile Gaming Growth Slows | TechCrunch – games growth wouldn’t run at the same rate in the west anyway?

    Build Your Own Tiny Titan Supercomputer for Less than a Grand | Motherboard – gives you an idea of how technology has changed

    Tools

    YouGov Profiler – so handy for throwing together personas

  • Is PR dead?

    Before I get into the question of is PR dead, I need to make a disclosure: I am a ‘non-PR’ person working in what was until recently a PR agency, but now describes itself as an ‘integrated marketing communications agency that offers influencer identification, mapping and engagement, social and traditional media strategy and execution programmes, digital marketing and creative capabilities.‘
    Press Conference with Rt Rev Kieran Conry

    Executive summary of is PR dead?

    Is PR dead? It depends on how you define PR as to whether you think it is dead or not. There is a role for PR thinking and PR skill sets.

    Main post on is PR dead?

    It depends by what you define as PR. I consider PR to be the managed interface between an organisation and its publics. It can manifest itself in many ways:

      • The way it does customer service. Wong Kei restaurant in Soho was known and loved for its rude customer service. For the likes of BT or Vodafone, customer service is front line reputation management
      • It is the user experience: paper bills that are clear, correspondence that doesn’t try to bully the recipient, a website that doesn’t try to gouge charges (like Ryanair used to), architecture that adds to an area (like the glass cube of Apple’s famous New York store)
      • It is wrangling regulatory, government and investor relationships
      • There will always be a place for that interface. The people involved lubricate business and help drive growth. PR practitioners have a lot to bring to these areas. They are guardians of brand value.

    Many people consider PR to be a generator of earned media be it a parliamentary question, a broadcast interview, product placement or article.  To this has also been added earned media: corporate reports, press releases, blog posts, social content etc. This area in aggregate looks much less healthy to me.  The work that is safest in this area is where the interface is the critical part of the product: the relationships with the MPs or the key financial journalists and equity analysts and positive coverage is a secondary attribute.

    The problem with is with media being the product that the relationship with a organisation is mediated through. I usually give a Johnny Rottenesque sneer when someone name drops the attention economy. In this particular explanation, having attention and economy together in a term is useful. It is probably the most proper use of ‘attention economy’. There are so many publishers delivering messages (paid and unpaid). It is becoming much harder for the audience to to come across, find, discover and retain messages from media. There is an over-supply of content in comparison to an inelastic number of viewers. Much of the content published is of poor quality.

    The internet is only a part of the phenomena, digital has only accelerated the process.  Media fragmentation and the corresponding over-supply of content in comparison to the amount of available attention has been on us for a while:

        • Multi-channel TV – back in 1992 Bruce Springsteen wrote 57 Channels (and Nothin’ On) – hardly an academic study but it only feels more relevant now.
        • Racks of magazines – going into a WHSmith or through the Gorkana database confronts you with a sea of publications you have no idea would have existed. And I suspect the amount of magazines and other media that have gone out of publication would dwarf the number of those currently in publication
        • Record label back catalogues – before the iTunes catalogue and Amazon the total sum of records available to order from a record shop was contained in about 3  desk busting directories from the main record distributors. These books were like a few phone books put together in terms of thickness. Items regularly got deleted from circulation. With each change of format: vinyl, cassette and CD different back catalogue content didn’t make the transfer. Bit torrent was popular among people I knew because they could get ripped recordings that weren’t available in digital formats elsewhere. And yet new content keeps coming out
        • Free newspapers – my Dad loves the two free newspapers that come through the door of my parents house each week. They protect the carpet when he is painting, wrap apples from the garden that he puts into storage around about this time of year and act as packing material for the parcels that are sent back to the family in Ireland. But he doesn’t read them. The Tower Hamlets council-published paper I receive goes straight into recycling unless I have something to sell on eBay
        • Film archives: a quick glance at iMDB shows the amount of content that was created and wasn’t transferred on to laser disc, DVD, Blu-Ray or digital video files. It is a similar pattern to music libraries, yet YouTube has some 100 hours per minute being uploaded

    Psychologists have found that even small decisions around consumer choices require energy and add to fatigue. The content surplus only exasperates that psychological process.

    When we look at social platforms we see the decline in reach for a mixture of reasons:

        • Maximising revenue by encouraging brands to use advertising to put content in front of their communities
        • The sheer volume of content driving brand content out of feeds as a ‘firehouse’

    When I started in PR I often heard Elvis Costello paraphrased that ‘yesterday’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper’. But now that flow is generally much shorter. This means that there is less of a chance to get a return on investment on a given piece of PR activity. It will reach less people and relevant for a shorter time.

    There are extreme effects at the end of the bell curve. Google ‘BP rig disaster’; there are about 2,400,ooo results related to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Look up ‘Kryptonite lock’, and on the first page you find a video about opening the lock with a Bic pen. This is some ten years after Benjamin Running’s famous video demonstration. Both brands still have their reputational crises.

    A secondary aspect of the content over-supply is the effect is had had on the media industry. Many ‘traditional’ media brands have struggled to make a profit. The Guardian is one of the most progressive publications, in terms of the future of media. The Guardian has been at the forefront of technological development and still doesn’t make a profit. It has tried to improve by getting bigger with its US online edition.

    Other publishers like News International experimented with varying degrees of success around paywall models. At the time of writing, The New Yorker has introduced a metered paywall, which is watched eagerly as the media industry still can’t agree on a successful business model. Economics have disrupted the influencers that PRs most cared about.

    The reach issue now means that we consider using advertising to gain more traffic to the best pieces of coverage that we get for some of our clients. From a marketers perspective, PR starts to look less attractive. It also means that including PR in their bag of tricks makes more sense for other marketing disciplines.

    I went to the IAB’s session during Social Media Week London. Advertising and media agencies presented back PR campaigns. These were done using social channels, promoted with varying degrees of advertising on social platforms. This PR activity was described as social media marketing or content marketing. PR becomes a small increment on the existing advertising spend. When PR agencies branch into other areas they look like a riskier risk as this often represents multiples on their previous budget.

    Chipotle and post modernism

    Finally there is the business of PR and that’s where I think it gets a bit post modern. How many PR agencies are really PR agencies any more? Richard Edelman talks about his company still being a PR agency. Yet how many clients who would think that, given the company’s flagship work for clients like the Chipotle?

    The scarecrow film was done in conjunction with Creative Artists Agency. Work like this positions Edelman much more like an advertising agency.


    In my own agency, I have colleagues that do a lot of media and blogger relations. I support their work through insights but the the bulk of my work is around media buying. From straight-up search pay-per-click ad campaigns to promoted social accounts.

    I have just finished a new business pitch, a key tenet of our big idea was for the brand to publish their own sector media outlet with a light touch of branding. This was because there was a void in their sector.

    Harmful labeling

    As you can see on the introduction to this post, we don’t even bother calling ourselves a PR agency. We have done this because that is the business reality that we have to live with. So in some respects even the PR business has given credence to supporting a viewpoint towards PR less future as an answer to the question of is PR dead?

    And I am ok with this. In some cultures, you have a ‘true’ name that you never use or give out widely. There also have a given name that used during their everyday interactions. The true name has power, a magic of its own, that can be used to harm the person. For the PR business; the true name has a negative power and many of use will shrug it off despite what professional bodies may want.

    Is it PR any more?

    Others may stumble into doing PR work and not even realise that they is the case, are they then part of the PR business? I am happy for my industry to become post-modern, for PR to become it’s secret ‘true’ name as a marketing singularity pushes agencies towards a mix of paid, earned and owned media. I am even happy with the ‘white’ lie that PR is dead because then I can just get on with what I do for a living. I can move between agencies without silos and advance my career further. Give me a shovel and I will help bury the PR business.

    More information

    The media is dying, does PR have cancer? | renaissance chambara – an old post of mine from 2009, much of what I said in it I still consider to be valid, but it now has an added sense of urgency
    YouTube Statistics
    PR isn’t dying, but PR agencies might… | Jed Hallam
    The future of PR starts with you | Stephen Waddington on LinkedIn
    The public relations industry’s confidence problem | Stephen Waddington

  • Chinas massive foreign reserves + more

    No easy fix for Chinas massive foreign reserves | SCMP – Chinas massive foreign reserves surplus presents a similar challenge to what Japan faced in the 1970s and 1980s. China massive foreign reserves will likely be used to try and reinforce its existing hegemony. We are already seeing state banks giving mobile network providers negative interest loans to buy Huawei equipment, software and services. Funds will be made available for sovereign debt capture, strategic technology acquisitions and undermining the US dollar as a defacto word reserve currency. This means that US treasury bonds will be less attractive to China. It also explains why it has laid the foundation for a ‘Euroyuan’ market alongside the ‘Eurodollar’ market in the financial district of London.  (paywall)

    Richemont H1 profits down 23pc – Luxury Daily – looking at this they were hit by a slowdown in APAC and the increase in Japanese sales tax

    China’s 24-hour online shopfest explodes into life with $2 billion spent in first hour | Techinasia – 11/11 is remembrance day in many western countries but in China it is singles day, a made up festival to drive online sales

    Foreigners buying from Japan get free stuff?! But not all buyers are impressed | Rocketnews – the UK is too cynical and jaded

    Michael Douglas | Canali – I love this content that Canali have done with Michael Douglas

    Masque Attack: All Your iOS Apps Belong to Us | FireEye Blog – iPhone users, enterprises are a security weak spot for you

    Obama says FCC should reclassify the internet’s regulatory status – Vox – this is huge. Seriously.

    Meet Shingy, AOL’s “Digital Prophet” | The New Yorker – how the fuck haven’t I managed to blag a job like that?

    Uber is recruiting 50,000 veterans as drivers | The Verge – the sub header is ‘are they being taken for a ride’ as sub prime Uber driver debt mounts

    HKTV eyes second test after problems in first round | Hong Kong Economic Journal Insight – reading this gives you an appreciation of how much of an achievement the likes of RTE Player and BBC iPlayer achieve

    A major misconception about Facebook visibility – Campaign Asia – tips: mirror audience language and semantics, have opinions

    We’re seeing a very different Microsoft — Gigaom Research – a very different Microsoft: one that is willing to partner, willing to accept the new economics of mobile, and learning how to coax customers to its web services with premium features instead of absolutist tactics.

    Juniper shrinks its MX monster router onto a USB stick • The Register – really interesting development, I wonder what’s the minimum hardware it could run on?

    Tech giants who encrypt comms are unwittingly aiding terrorists’, claims ex-Home Sec Blunkett – odd the way this is a consistent message from politicians, it feels like softening up for regulation in the UK that will look more like China’s harmonising the internet. It could be good for PRs involved in reputation management – only a matter of time before censorship is a service purchased like media relations. Expect innovation and digital competitiveness to suffer as the UK loses out to other EU countries. Google HQ in Germany or Ireland anyone?

    prosthetic knowledge — ABB Robots Katana Fight – we’ll look back on this clip as history when we’re all cut down to size by katana wielding terminators

    Adidas China Social Campaign Report | Resonance China – interesting work done including trying to encourage behavioural change amongst groups of young women’s social interactions in the real word – positioning sport as a competitor activity to spa treatments, eating out or shopping

    ‘Smart factories’ could revolutionize production | Shanghai Daily – interesting move as China tries to move up the value chain and deal with the demographic time bomb

    Parallel car imports | Shanghai Daily – interesting action. This will be competition for imported and made-in-country but foreign brands of cars like Mercedes. Will the parallel cars be looked after by the dealer networks? I remember in the UK, BMW disliked servicing parallel imported cars from Belgium and other countries

    Middle East authorities are cracking down on audio that gets you “high” | Quartz – like something straight out of a William Gibson novel

    GT Bankruptcy Provides Rare Look at Apple’s Relationship With Suppliers | Re/code – can imagine ‘put on your big boy pants’ being quoted in business schools for years to come

    CBSN – Live Streaming Video News Channel – CBS News – interesting direct from TV to online transfer of news, I wonder if the ad revenues will stack up? More media related content here.

  • Laura Branigan & things from last week

    Laura Branigan

    Laura Branigan and a remix of her 1984 hit Self Control was my soundtrack of this week. It’s available as a free download. Laura Branigan was covering an Italian record recorded earlier in the year by Raffaele ‘RAF’ Riefoli. The RAF version had a heavier baseline to it than the Laura Branigan version. It was remade by Harold Faltermeyer, who had worked with Giorgio Moroder on Donna Summer’s Bad Girls. Both the RAF and Laura Branigan versions were popular songs as part of the Balearic scene.

    Modern dance and digital art

    I love this modern dance performance that integrates with a digital experiential artwork

    UNION

    I have been working long hours on a new business pitch over the past couple of weeks and this video by Canadian agency UNION resonated more than it probably normally would

    John Lewis

    The John Lewis ad sparked a discussion in our team today, was it just excessively twee or really bad? I am inclined to go with really bad. John Lewis don’t seem to have learned from their previous years adverts that get picked apart for some form of offence.  Previous years were accused of animal cruelty – with the family dog left in the kennel, despite harsh winter conditions. This year you have a child that largely seems neglected by his mother. If you’re a certain age being a latch key kid was a way of life. But nowadays it would be enough to spark an intervention by child services that may result in the child being taken into care. This article by the BBC shows how latch key kids are frowned upon, despite acknowledging that a good deal of this down to a ‘moral panic’.

    CBS News

    Finally CBS News new 24-hour streaming news channel is the closest manifestation to TV advertising on the net I have seen. There is no clickthroughs or interactivity. However with the rise of the likes of the Apple TV may make this a more sensible option.

  • John Galliano + more things

    Court Orders John Galliano to Pay Dior 1 Euro — The Cut – how could he have won that case? John Galliano pushed too far even for luxury fashion. The houses are professionalising due to their public conglomerate status. John Galliano and his conduct was a dinosaur in the modern luxury business.

    Bronte Capital: Nu Skin results | Bronte Capital – Nu-Skin attracted attention due to their MLM model and have had a hard time of it

    Crowd Analyzer::Contact | We’d Love To Chat With You About How We Can Work Together – interesting Arabic language specific social media listening / monitoring tool

    As mobile usage grows, China’s traffic jams aren’t just a problem for car owners anymore | Techinasia – mobile networks not coping

    New EU Digital Chief Floats Tough Anti-Google Regulations – WSJ – Google is going to love him. This still doesn’t address the wider challenges that the EU has had in developing digital champions that grow the same way as Silicon Valley. They either get bought like Skype or ARM, or can’t scale to compete head on with US or Chinese competitors

    With Magazine, CNET Tech Site Makes Jump From Screen to Page – NYTimes.com – interesting move into print, especially for a technology sector focused media house that pioneered the online publishing business model

    Chloé creates ecommerce link with handbag feature | Luxury Daily – interesting use of personas, the creative manifests them directly to the consumer. It is unusual compared to luxury marketing campaigns that I’ve seen previously

    Nokia deal created anti-trust issues for Microsoft and Samsung | Channel EYE – this could get really interesting and the only people likely to benefit are the Chinese vendors

    Xiaomi dominates China’s smartphone market | RTHK – where is Huawei and Lenovo? I am also surprised that BBK’s brands Vivo etc are not making more of an impact, particularly against Xiaomi’s mid-market handset.