Take my fiancé’s voice.  It can be used to whisper tender sentiments that warm my heart, or, more frequently, to express irritation that I haven’t hung up the bath mat / put the washing out / hoovered up properly / {insert suitable misdemeanour here}…

As my German teacher continually used to tell me, I’m being facetious.  But the fact remains, that social media is very much like my girlfriend’s voice.  Why?  Because it too has many different uses – and this truth is something that simply has to become embedded in the minds of companies seeking to use social media effectively. Read More »

People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
- Steve Jobs

What is user experience?

User Experience (UX) is about designing technology so that it meets the needs of users. It ensures products are efficient, easy to learn and satisfying to use. UX is a way of thinking about technology – which is what I’d like to discuss in this post – and also a set of tools for putting its principles into practice, some of which I’ll introduce in future articles. Read More »

Increasingly I’m hearing tales of woe from PR colleagues in Europe and the USA who are defecting from the profession because of overwhelming workloads that see them managing traditional media campaigns, along with social media and SEO efforts.

Clients, I hear, are dumping their social media strategy and execution on PRs who are straddling a very stressful workload that sees them balancing the old fashioned demands of the profession, with the multitude of online approaches. Read More »

Don’t let the title of this post fool you; by no means I am suggesting that social media is no longer an intrinsic part of everyday life in 2010.  What I am claiming, however, is that the current ‘gold rush’ is most definitely coming to an end.

In short, we’ve moved on exponentially from the early days of social media and businesses are now recognising that this discipline needs to be treated as an integrated part of digital marketing strategy rather than its own, poorly organised entity. Read More »

Not content with revolutionising the MP3 and mobile markets, along with creating some of the most iconic and desirable consumer products of the 21st Century, Apple has now turned its Midas touch to the social media sphere.  But will the oddly named ‘Ping’ network prove to be another runaway success for Steve Jobs et al, or is this a step too far for Apple’s all-consuming tentacles? Read More »

Unfortunately in the wonderful world of the digital age it is simply not enough anymore to do blanket CV mail outs to potential employers, on the off chance that they have a job going. Employers are utilising the digital landscape in order to raise their profiles and they expect their prospective employees to do the same. So if you don’t know your tweets from your links then here are some top tips to help you find a job via social networking. Read More »

Along with the new A-Team film, our annual staff rounders night and the phenomenally excellent ‘Mad Men’, email marketing has been a hot topic at the Stopgap Group office this week.  Top ice cream brand Ben and Jerry’s has announced that it will be decreasing its email marketing communications in an effort to focus on customer communications within the Social Media space, which has divided opinions within our marketing microcosm, as well, it seems, as the wider industry.

Read More »

Planning is now in works for the annual European Mobility Week 2010 to take place September 16-22, and this year’s campaign will see an increasing promotional use of social media by cities across Europe who are embracing digital media to tell stories about how they are reducing use of motorized transport.

This week I visited Brussels, to present ideas to the public relations campaign managers for the cities involved with European Mobility Week about how they can increase presence online through social media tools. Joined by other trainers from Pinnacle PR, we helped 80 representatives better understand how to use online tools to engage people and encourage them to bike or walk rather than use a car. Many cities across Europe participating in the campaign host car-free days in city centres, celebrating with pedestrian-friendly events that draw crowds of thousands.

As part of the 2010 campaign, the organizers are busy planning events and promotions that will increasingly see encouragement and use of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, and blogging, to showcase what happens during the week, and increase resident’s participation. Andrew Manasseh, Managing Director of Pinnacle PR’s Brussels office, talked about how the online media landscape has changed the rules of how government engages with people, and presents opportunity to embrace new practices that involve and help two-way conversations happen. He talked about how using online tools show that an organisation is transparent and open to listening to what people have to say.

Incredible examples demonstrate how powerful online communication tools can be, with the recent events of the earthquake in Haiti illustrating how social media helped raise funds, quickly. Other examples presented are the efforts of the World Health Organization’s World Health Day 2010′s campaign of 1000 Cities, 1000 Lives, that is using digital media to tell stories from urban health champions. In one example, a young boy from Japan started a campaign to stop people smoking in public places, to combat asthma problems. His story is posted in YouTube videos.

While the tools are available, free, and relatively easy to use, participants did express concern about how to manage and provide enough time to orchestrate an online campaign, in addition to running traditional media promotions. This is an increasing question private and public companies have, and many are now assigning new roles in communication departments of Social Media Managers, to focus on the many elements an online campaign requires. In some cases, marketing and communication departments are increasingly assigning members of staff, or even teams, to manage social media. Some companies are hiring in specialty social media agencies to manage the effort. To run a successful campaign, it does take planning and dedicated professional staff to be given authority and time to manage all the elements of online communications. Running an online communications campaign can also require a change in organizational culture, transforming the internal process for how messages are shared from just talking at people, to inviting people to talk back by sharing opinions through tweeting, leaving comments on blog posts and uploading videos to YouTube.

European Mobility Week is a terrific opportunity for municipalities across Europe to embrace online communication tools, and already you can see photos on Flickr, connect on Facebook, watch videos on YouTube, and see people tweeting about the campaign on Twitter. It will be interesting to see how this campaign grows momentum online, and to look for the pictures of people smiling as they enjoy their home city on car-free days.

Glad to share digital media knowledge with people from throughout Europe,

-Lisa

It seems to be time for change around here in our little digital world. First we have the transmigration of Revolution, one of our industry stalwarts. Then, today, another – Juliet Blackburn, head of digital for the past nine years at agency selection and management gurus AAR, has taken the plunge and is off client-side. It’s a pretty bold step as it happens, as I think everyone thought that Juliet would either cave in and join an agency one day or remain at the head of the table of digital agency selection forever.

Personally I think it’s a good move – and Skype will make the best of her ability to cut through the bullshit to get to the real thing. Many of us will be sorry to see her go. Some won’t… I’ve heard various agency heads over many years vent their frustration at Juliet’s sometimes disconcerting ability to navigate past flimflam. To be honest, and no matter how we’d all love to have been put forward for more (and here I’m speaking as AAR’s digital agency for the past five years: we’ve had no special favours) it has meant AAR’s client-to-agency matching process has been unimpeachable. Kerry Glazer, AAR’s CEO, will have a challenge on her hands finding a replacement who is half as good.

When Morrissey sang “some girls are bigger than others” was he singing about their size or their generosity?

Talking of size, there’s been a lot of talk about the death of the network agency recently. Amusing though Sir Martin Sorrell’s denouncement of his own agencies’ leadership at AdTech was (for the record – he reminded us that too many of his agency top management knew too little about digital) it can only be part of the picture. Digital isn’t the only thing many of them don’t get. Now I’ve always talked about the creative product, and how to encourage a better version of getting it. This is a common principle that unites many across the industry. Sadly there aren’t many large agencies that think it that important in practice, and would rather run and hide than get an honest debate about agency added value out on the table.

I’ve been lucky enough to have created a very successful digital agency, run a very large network agency, and now operate as a consultant to both clients and agencies in how to improve the way in which they go to market and how to get the best out of each other. I’ve also spent time over the last year reviewing a wide range of creative product for an award or two. Oh and have an experimental creative business model on the go as well. My evidence is broad and deep. And we shall see in the published results of quite a few agencies in the coming months just how poor performance has got.

It’s all too easy to lay into the paranoid nature of agency leadership and the too often disconnected nature of network agencies in particular as they are forced to sign up to targets they can’t reach and client commitments they can’t meet. Many of them are good people caught in a trap. Right now, clients are holding back budgets left right and centre and finding it harder to take risks. The business model encourages internecine warfare, which is, apart from anything else, a shame and waste of energy for sometimes very clever and talented people, and clients’ money. There are of course notable exceptions to this, and I tip my hat to all of them.

I don’t think the agency is dead, by the way. But I do think it has become stale, and forgotten that, as Alan Moore puts it, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Wouldn’t it be rather more fun if we all spent more time thinking about that? How to inspire others. How to create. How to imagine. How to invent. How to argue for quality, and how to improve. And did it. That’s what I’d like for Christmas. I’d like to be reminded that there others in the industry that want it to get better, by being a better, cleverer, more agile industry.

And by thinking of ideas, not excuses.