On April 26, 2012, FIR co-host Neville Hobson gave a keynote presentation at this year’s annual conference of the Public Relations Institute of Ireland (PRII) in Dublin. The overall conference theme was Reputation Management in the Age of Digital.

Could we genuinely have foreseen the extent to which technological innovations would have disrupted our way of working? asked the PRII. How social and digital media, in particular, would have given rise to consumer power and citizen journalism? Or that we would face unprecedented competition from a new wave of competitors?

These are powerful themes that were touched in every presentation and discussion. The PRII video-recorded every conference session (if you’re a PRII member, you can view the videos in the member area on the PRII website). They’ve kindly agreed to the audio of Neville’s presentation – called Reputation Management at Internet Speed – being made available to you in this FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast. You’ll get the most from it if you view the presentation deck as you listen, embedded below (or, if you don’t see it, view it at Slideshare).

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This FIR Speakers & Speeches podcast is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe outro music – extract from On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

In the Wikipedia and Public Relations presentation to Wikimedia UK that Philip Sheldrake and I did last weekend when we participated in the Wikimedia UK annual conference in London, a significant aspect was sharing some content from a draft document prepared by the CIPR that’s designed to help CIPR members understand more about the Wikipedia community and how to engage with them.

It’s good to see that the draft text has quickly been posted to Wikimedia and is openly available for anyone with an opinion (literally) to comment. If you have a relevant view about Wikipedia and public relations that you wish to share, this is your time, your place and your opportunity.

So, have at it!

• Also, read Philip’s post that he’s just published with his assessment of events and backgrounds. And, see Paul Wilkinson’s post – credible views from someone who’s both a CIPR member and a Wikipedian.

Related post:

• Wikipedia and public relations

Content summary: FIR interview with Grantoo co-founder and CEO Dimitri Sillam is up. The Speakers & Speeches file from Neville’s talk in Dublin is coming this week. Neville recounts the talk he and Philip Sheldrake gave at the Wikimedia UK Annual General Meeting over the weekend. A discount code is available for FIR listeners interested in attending Like Minds Exeter 2012. News That Fits: brand humanization is not a social media fad; Ragan Communications promo; the rise of social influence marketing with Klout and PeerIndex; listener comments discussion; CustomScoop’s Media Monitoring Minute; Dan York’s report addresses audio apps for the iPad and iPhone, DRM, and the 2,000-plus applications received for new gTLDs; social TV on the ‘second screen’ evolves into content in its own right; TemboSocial promo; half of UK internet users say online ads are worth it in exchange for free content; music from The Scarred; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for May 14, 2012: A 74-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #651 bookmarks on Delicious

Names of blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Notes pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute time stamps – see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #618 show notes at The New PR Wiki

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So, until Monday May 21…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Very interesting assessment of in-car technology with some quotable predictions from Intel, eg:

• By next year the car will be the third most-connected place in which people spend time.
• By 2016, how connected a car is will be a critical buying decision.
• In the future, if car ownership declines but increased use is still needed, connectivity might allow users to “log-on” to a vehicle. So it could even change colour and add the accessories of your choice. Just like a PC desktop, a machine would take on the persona of its user.
• In the US, the average driver spends the equivalent of two months of every year in car; it’s impractical for us to give up connectivity inside of the vehicle. The car is the mobile device of the future.
• We see people bringing physical goods into cars to personalise them, and we expect a digital equivalent to emerge.

Embedded Link

The connected car: coming to your street soon – Telegraph
Intel is investing in ‘connected cars’, which are the logical precursor to self-driving models. Matt Warman looks at the ways tech is getting into the car.

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• See also: “Volkswagen People’s car project, Hover Car, the flying two-seater” video on YouTube. And if you don’t recognize the car in the large image at the top, read on…

The Science Museum in London is a fascinating place. I spent quite a bit of time there yesterday – and have some pics to show for it – in my first visit in twenty years.

It never ceases to amaze me that such an astounding place of learning, wonderment and inspiration is free, as in, it doesn’t cost you money to go in. You can contribute through donation, if you so wish, but you have no direct obligation.

A fitting place, then, for a meeting of an organization that offers something that mirrors many if not all of those values. I’m talking about Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia and probably the most visible and well-known product from the Wikimedia Foundation, a US-based non-profit organization.

The meeting was the 2012 annual conference of Wikimedia UK, the Wikimedia chapter covering the UK. Together with Philip Sheldrake, I was there as an invited guest where both of us presented some thoughts on how Wikipedia and public relations could work together to achieve some common objectives.

Philip and I spent an afternoon in the company of some 60 or more Wikipedians to talk about Wikipedia and PR. If you’re in the PR profession or you’re a Wikipedian, you’ll undoubtedly know of the barriers between two communities that, over some years, have prevented those communities from seeing the commonality of much purpose both really have.

While I recognize that some of those barriers are significant, and require hard work to bring them down, we didn’t want to talk about historical issues – indeed, we checked all the historical baggage at the door – and talked instead about what we’d like to see happening next, looking ahead to actually working together for the benefit of both communities.

We had a simple PowerPoint deck to help us stay focused and convey some clarity to the messages we brought – view it here (or, if you don’t see it embedded below, at Slideshare).

A significant part of our short session – the agenda gave us 15 minutes but in reality we had about 8 due to the inevitable time overruns that you tend to find at any conference – was in presenting extracts from the CIPR‘s draft Best Practice Guidelines for Wikipedia, a new document in preparation by the CIPR’s Social Media Panel that will be a cornerstone of plans to be developed for education and awareness-raising among CIPR’s membership about Wikipedia, PR’s relationship with it and best-practice approaches to engaging with the community to address content creation and editing.

Next week, the draft document will be posted on a Wikimedia page for everyone in the community to add their comments and opinions about the draft if they wish to. After that, the CIPR’s goal is to publish the draft as “version 1.0″ in June.

Frankly, I think Philip and I getting together with a group of Wikipedians in this way is a pretty big deal (and we continued the conversation in the pub afterwards).

As I mentioned earlier, there’s hard work ahead to bring down barriers. But yesterday, we really did want to make the most of our time to look forward, and we shared our thinking on this topic with our three “we believe” statements:

1. We believe PR and Wikipedia have much in common regarding what each of us looks to achieve
2. We believe there are significant and measureable mutual benefits in working together
3. We believe that working together is an effective way for both communities to achieve their goals

There are many people, Wikipedians and PRs alike, who deserve recognition for what happened yesterday. The time will come for that – some of the names are mentioned in the last slide in our PowerPoint deck.

Big changes happen with small steps. Building trust and understanding is a big part of that.

[Later:] Thinking that one of the best ways to build trust is to be part of a community, I applied to join Wikimedia UK. It’s just £5 for annual membership. A small price to pay.

Related posts:

• Closing the chasm between PR and Wikipedia
• A death is announced: the printed Encyclopaedia Britannica
• The SOPA blackout
• Updating the Wikipedia experience

Change just one letter and it becomes a universal story.

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This is how to tell a story.

Congratulations to P&G on what I think is the best ad I’ve seen this year.

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See P&G’s Facebook page for more about their ‘Thank You Mom’ ad campaign for the London 2012 Olympics.

When you look at big corporations and who uses social media well as an integral element in brand and product marketing, one of the companies that stands out is Ford.

The US-headquartered vehicle maker has a well-established and credible social media presence and embraces literally all the primary social channels you can think of. I’ve interviewed Scott Monty, Ford’s social media kingpin, a few times about Ford and social media for the FIR podcast.

With vehicle launches, social media has played a prominent role in Ford’s activities in various markets – think of the European launch of the Ford Fiesta a few years ago. Consider also how Ford’s use of social media played a role in Twitter’s decision to open an office in Detroit, announced last month.

And now something else Ford can add to its roster of creative thinking and imaginative use of social media – a campaign launching today with the PeerPerks programme from PeerIndex that offers qualified individuals a special gift about Ford’s new ‘baby people carrier,’ the Ford B-Max, that will launch this summer.

In the campaign – Ford says it’s the largest social media influence marketing project ever to be undertaken in Europe – the company will be identifying and reaching out to 1,000 influential social media users in six European markets (France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Romania and the UK) who have significant social influence on topics such as cars, lifestyle and technology, to offer them a special free gift to mark the launch of the new car.

Those influencers will be invited to visit a dedicated microsite (http://www.peerindex.com/vip/bmax) where they can run their Twitter and Facebook presences through PeerIndex to see if they qualify for the free gift.

And the gift? A 3D hologram rendering of the Ford B-Max created with technology previously only used by the US military. It comes with a special torch which, when shined on the image, will reveal the hologram.

(Just writing about it does little justice to the concept, though – you need to see it. Watch this example video produced by Zebra Imaging, the US firm behind the technology. [Later:] PeerIndex posted a video of the actual Ford B-Max hologram and how it’s made. Neat.)

It’s an appealing-looking gift, a little out of the ordinary when you think about incentives offered via social media, and draws attention to an aspect of engagement that’s we’re increasingly hearing about - that of influence marketing.

According to PeerIndex:

[...] PeerPerks is a new service that lets people benefit from their social media profile by giving them the chance to receive free products from brands based on their activity and influence on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The service connects social media users with brands who want to reach people who are influential in specific topic areas.

The company’s technology assesses an individual’s social media profiles to identify people with influence on specific topics. It then facilitates a sampling interaction between the brand and the individual, giving consumers a great experience which they can then share with their friends via social platforms.

Azeem Azhar, CEO of PeerIndex, said: “This is a major moment for social influence marketing. The adoption of this approach by one of the world’s biggest brands for a pan-European campaign really shows that it’s come of age.”

How is this different from services like Klout? you may be wondering. And if you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know my views about Klout.

I see it as quite different in one significant way – PeerPerks is separate from PeerIndex. Such transparency makes it’s far easier for me to see PeerIndex as a useful tool for influencer identification, and PeerPerks as the separate marketing arm, as it were. No confusion to me on what PeerIndex is actually about. Plus I’ve met Azeem Azhar and most of his team; I like them!

So I’m looking forward to receiving my Ford B-Max 3D hologram; it’ll take a couple of weeks to arrive apparently, coming all the way from the USA. I’ll post a video of it when I get it.

In the meantime, Ford is rolling out this social campaign in Europe so if you want to learn what happens with it – and Ford has a great history of sharing their learnings from social media and related activity – keep an eye on #FordBMax

Related posts:

• FIR Interview: Azeem Azhar, Founder of PeerIndex – April 4, 2011: “Azeem explains how PeerIndex works and its focus on opinion-formers and -leaders rather than influencers. He discusses the benefits for companies in understanding online authorities and their reach, shares his insights on the evolving ecosystem of online monitoring and measurement in the wake of the Salesforce acquisition of Radian6, and more.”
• FIR Interview: Scott Monty and Paul Thomas, Ford Motor Company – January 13, 2010: “The conversation includes a contrast in what Ford is doing in North America in social outreach and engagement with what’s going on in Europe; the state of the auto industry in Europe and what engagement with customers and others might look like in the future; how technology is rapidly changing the motoring experience, (putting Twitter in cars, for instance), and more.”
• FIR Interview: Scott Monty, Head of Social Media, Ford Motor Company – December 12, 2008: “Scott talks through the events surrounding a Ford fan site and alleged counterfeit Ford parts, how criticisms of Ford’s legal moves blew up across auto-enthusiast and other websites and blogs in a 24-hour period, and the key role Twitter played in enabling Scott to rapidly defuse and help to successfully address those criticisms.”

Student loan debt in the US has reached $1 trillion. Charitable organizations are suffering, but young cash-strapped students haven’t developed a giving habit. Organizations invest considerable sums in corporate social responsibility initiatives for which they get little recognition. Companies want to grow their levels of engagement with important young-adult audiences but struggle for relevance.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if all of these issues could be addressed with a casual social game? In fact, they have.

In this FIR Interview, FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz speak with Dimitri Sillam, co-founder and CEO of Grantoo, which blends all of the issues listed above in a single game-playing environment. Playing in tournaments, students can win money for tuition while getting into the habit of donating to charities that hold meaning for them. Meanwhile, organizations can channel their philanthropic dollars into a cause that engages the organization with an important demographic while raising their CSR profile.

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• Download the MP3 file (10.7Mb, 26:43)
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About our Conversation Partner

Dimitri Sillam is a seasoned and successful entrepreneur. He founded OrientalPeople.com, the first dating site focused on the Middle East/North Africa region (MENA). After selling the site to Maroc Telecom (Morocco), he founded LAZEO, a French beauty/health care franchise. Now, Dimitri is co-founder and CEO of Grantoo, where his experience in social media and consumer marketing will help students play their tuition bills.

Dimitri is 26, French with Tunisian and Russian roots. He holds a BA in Economics from America’s Brandeis University and completed a program on Negotiation and Strategy from Harvard Law School.

Connect with Dimitri via LinkedIn.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 338 7960 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music – On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Huge fun this morning engaging in conversation via a Skype video call with students in David Phillips‘ PR class at the University of Gloucester in Cheltenham.

I had been due to physically be there but a little transport difficulty presented an opportunity to try a virtual alternative instead.

The original plan was to do a Google+ Hangout video get-together where we could use that medium as well to show content, eg, web pages. But I encountered a bad case of the G+ gremlins with the web browser plugin resulting in falling back on Plan B: Skype where I’d be connected and be projected onto a large screen.

Not the best network connectivity I’ve experienced, as the pixelation of the image coming down the wire from Cheltenham shows in the Instagram photo of what I saw on my PC screen.

But it was good enough to enable us all to join in conversation where we could all see and hear each other.

Over the course of over an hour, we talked about a wide range of topics, from ethics in PR and knowing right from wrong to which agencies are doing what with social media; from behaviour shifts in individuals and society at large to what’s the best social network to spend time on, to what’s coming next in social networks, technology and behaviours; and much more.

The session reminded me once more that tech tools like this mean that, if you have a communication device and workable network connection, anyone can connect with anyone else to share ideas, etc, at the drop of a hat, no matter where you are: no formality, no complexity, just a desire to connect and share.

I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Some very bright and sharp minds in this PR class which bodes well for the profession!

• [Later:] Michael White, one of the students (seen in the pic above) wrote his assessment of our session.

What role does the reputation of a company’s chief executive play in the reputation of his or her company and, thus, the likely business success or failure of that company? It’s a crucial question that draws some fascinating answers in the results of new research conducted by PR firm Weber Shandwick.

The second installment of Weber Shandwick’s global research, The Company behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust – CEO Spotlight, explores how executive leadership and communications from the top are critical to helping reverse the tides of waning respect for companies – a key finding highlighted in The Company behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust, Weber Shandwick’s initial research published in January.

In its latest research, Weber Shandwick says that 66 percent of consumers say that their perceptions of CEOs affect their opinions of company reputations. Executives, like consumers, also do not overlook the importance of a leader’s reputation, the PR firm says – they attribute almost half (49 percent) of a company’s overall reputation to the CEO’s reputation.

Executive leadership is critical to “burnishing the overall reputation of organizations today,” the firm says, “particularly when it’s estimated that 60 percent of a company’s market value is attributed to its reputation.”

Other significant metrics from Weber’s report include:

• 66 percent of consumers say that their perceptions of top leadership affect their opinions of company reputations a great deal or to a moderate degree – only seven percent say their views on the leader at the top have no bearing on corporate reputation.
• More than 80 percent of executives say that consumers’ beliefs about a company’s top leader affect their opinions of the company at least to a moderate degree.
• 28 percent of consumers report that they regularly or frequently talk about company leaders with others. While this rate is far below how often consumers talk about product quality (69 percent), it is a topic that comes up as nearly as often as company websites (30 percent) and community engagement (29 percent).
• 59 percent of consumers say they are influenced by what top leaders communicate. Surprisingly, says Weber Shandwick, company leadership communications outranks investment-heavy advertising (56 percent) and social network conversations (49 percent), as the chart below suggests.

Word-of-mouth, online reviews and search results lead the list of what most influences consumers when they do talk about companies in general.

This is timely information, not the least significance being a primary discussion topic in this week’s episode #650 of the FIR podcast, published today, in which Shel and I discuss the topical and in-the-news-headlines matters of CEO reputation, citing three CEOs at the heart of reputational issues embroiling their respective companies – Rupert Murdoch (News Corporation), Scott Thompson (Yahoo), and Ben Baldanza (Spirit Airlines).

Shel and I usually record each week’s FIR on a Monday. But this week’s show was recorded on May 5, two days ago. Events may have moved along with regard to these three issues although I think the discussion points when we talked about them are valid. We ask what should the communicators in those organizations be doing to address the crises enveloping their firms? Are the foundations rotten that would therefore make any task difficult if not impossible to succeed? What effect may damage to the CEOs’ individual reputations have on their organizations?

It looks like some clear answers to that last question at least emerge from Weber Shandwick’s research.

(Via The Holmes Report)

Related posts:

• The Hobson and Holtz Report – Podcast #650: May 7, 2012: includes discussion topic “dealing with corporate reputation crises – Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, Scott Thompson and Yahoo, Ben Baldanza and Spirit Airlines.”
• Other posts in this blog under the Category ‘Reputation.’