Wildfire PR - Business and Consumer Technology Public Relations

Another one bites the dust: Guardian Tech

Danny Whatmough — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:01:27 +0000

It’s no secret that the traditional media industry is in chaos at the moment. Today, the tech sector felt the force of this with the announcement that the Guardian’s Thursday print Technology supplement is to close at the end of the year.

This came alongside news of over 100 job cuts at the Guardian, following revenue losses of £33m.

As if this wasn’t enough doom and gloom for the Guardian Media Group, yesterday it was revealed that the Observer, whilst still suriving, will lose its monthly Music, Sport and Woman magazines.

Declining advertising revenues, combined with more news being available for free online, not to mention the rise of professional blogging, has really hit the media sector and the tech industry is no clearly no different.

So what’s the answer? Rupert Murdoch has made no secret of plans for properties in his media portfolio, including The Times, which will move to a paywall charging structure online from next Spring.

The Guardian’s technology editor Charles Arthur was hinting at a similar outcome this afternoon on Twitter (see right).

Whilst Arthur was quick to point out that charging separately for online technology news wasn’t currently being considered, it does beg the question: would you pay for specialised content? And if so, how much would you pay? And what would you want to receive?

Only last week, we covered news about how NMA are to begin charging for subscriber-only content.

Dan also covered research recently, which suggests that if the publishers think we are all going to start paying for online content, then they should really think again…

What do you think? Would you pay for tech news from the Guardian? Or do we already have enough access to content online that the print supplement was a superfluous?

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Research: The importance of online brand engagement

Danny Whatmough — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:45:11 +0000

Razorfish has released some interesting research today that warrants a closer look. It is a survey of 1,000 US consumers, but I think the findings are useful for UK brands too.

The respondents are web savvy or, as Razorfish terms them, ‘connected consumers’. Many of the responses were fairly predictable, but there are a couple that were surprising, either because the results were higher or lower than you might expect:

We don’t often talk about clients directly on this blog, but the above links in quite closely with some recent research conducted by one of our clients, Tealeaf. The slideshare is below and more can be found here.

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Are you happy to pay for trade publications?

Danny Whatmough — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 10:43:35 +0000

new media age announced yesterday a change to its online offering:

“new media age has made online access to all its magazine content, apart from opinion, paid-for only. Comment from the magazine, including columnists such as Mark Cridge, Richard Huntington and Nigel Walley, will remain free, in addition to weekly new media age staff columns Farber on Mobile, Bearne on Media and Cooper on Search. Daily breaking news will also remain free for seven days.”

This follows the announcement last week that trade publisher EMAP (owners of titles such as Retail Week, Drapers, Screen and Construction News) is going to put all its B2B puiblications behind a paywall.

Does this move demonstrate the depths to which the media industry in the UK has sunk?

Or is it a smart move by publications where (I expect) subscriptions are generally paid by companies rather than individuals?

In my mind, as I’ve said before, the whole issue boils down to one thing: ‘value’.

I’ll pay for something if I think it is ‘worth it’ and as long as I’m not able to get it somewhere else for free.

Publications like NMA are going to have to prove that their content is sufficiently superior and unique that it justifies the exchange of hard cash.

Obviously for NMA, it makes total sense not to provide online content that subscribers have to pay for in print, for free. But, in the long term, they’ll have to work harder (as print continues its decline) to maintain and increase subscription revenue.

There is a lack of online innovation in my mind amongst traditional print media publishers. Just putting your offline content online isn’t enough anymore. It’ll be interesting to see whether publications like NMA and Retail Week can innovate sufficiently to add value to their online offerings.

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Saving their best till Sunday

Dan Howe — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:57:02 +0000

On Tuesday, Claire and I went on a Wildfire field trip. With the wide-eyed wonder of the little PRs that we are, we spent the morning exploring the halls of a national newspaper. We took in the sites and sounds of the busy newsroom, and, overwhelmed with curiosity, we bombarded our journalist host with all the questions we had always wanted to ask about the inside workings of a national paper.

We talked about the best way to secure coverage in the national papers, ways PR can make it easier for journalists and the process an article goes through between the editor and journalist. One of the biggest reoccurring themes we discussed was the changes and effects the internet has had and will have on newspapers, specifically paid content.

In a recent blog, Danny wrote about the Harris Interactive survey for Paid:Content UK that found that “if their favourite news site begins charging for access to content, three quarters of people would simply switch to an alternative free news source”. And a new survey from Lightspeed Research and The Global Web Index found similar results, that nine in 10 UK consumers would never pay for news stories online, regardless of how cheap it was.

So, things are not looking good for the online newspaper sites that are considering charging for content. But what about the Sunday paper’s content?

Our journalist host’s opinion was that news is broken in the dailies and this is the type of news people could find free elsewhere online, from sites like the BBC, if a newspaper website started charging. But the Sundays offer something beyond just news, they have news analysis, opinion articles, in-depth reviews, thorough travel stories and the longer investigative articles. This is the type of content that people could not find anywhere else and if any content has a chance as pay-per-view online, it would be the Sundays.

What do you think? Would you pay online to view the unique content that the Sunday papers offer or is even that not enough to get you to open your wallet?
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We talked about the best way to secure coverage in the national papers, ways PR can make it easier for journalists and the process a story goes through between the editor and journalist. One of the biggest reoccurring themes we discussed was the changes and effects the internet has had and will have on newspapers, specifically paid content.

So, things are not looking good for the online newspaper sites that are considering charging for content. But what about the Sunday paper’s content?

Our journalist host’s opinion was that news is broke in the dailies and that is the type of news that people could find free elsewhere online, like from the BBC, if a newspaper website started charging. But the Sundays offer something beyond just news, they have news analysis, opinion articles, in-depth reviews, thorough travel stories and the longer investigative articles. This is the type of content that people could not find anywhere else and if any content has a chance as pay-per-view online, it would be the Sundays.

What do you think? Would you pay online to view the unique content that the Sunday papers offer or is even that not enough to get you to open your wallet?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steeljam/3154882268/

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Give me a break

Louise Andrews — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:50:46 +0000

I’ve recently returned from a month’s sabbatical, touring the South Devon and Cornwall coastline. Although I must confess that amongst all the cliff walks and strolls on the beach I did indulge in more than a little ‘daytime TV’.

The counties of Devon and Cornwall embarked on their digital switchover earlier this year, so I had a multitude of Freeview channels at my fingertips in the places I stayed. But goodness, what is it with the ads they are running?

I promise, I really don’t have any old gold lying around in my home and I don’t need a lawyer as I’m not in the habit of tripping up or falling over at work. Sigh. All too often I found myself channel-hopping in the hope of finding something else to entertain me for a few minutes.

But perhaps I’m being unfair. It’s unlikely the ads are aimed at someone who normally works an office job from Monday to Friday. But it did make me think about the way I usually watch TV.

I was missing my digital TV recorder; that clever little box that captures all my favourite programmes so I can watch them whenever I want to – with my finger poised over the fast forward button waiting for the little fuzzy black and white box to appear that marks the looming ad break.

Digital TV recorders are already in more than a quarter of UK households and the switchover is only now really beginning to ramp up to its completion in 2012. Wow, I thought, we could be on track for an exciting revolution in the way we all watch TV!

But then I started to worry about what ditching live TV would actually mean.

You see, while I’m not really a fan of ad breaks, I am a fan of decent TV content. If we’re not watching the ads, then why will brands bother spending money on them? UK internet ad spend overtook TV for the first time this year and ITV’s falling advertising revenues have been reported widely this month. How, with falling revenues, will the stations be able to commission, or buy, lovely new dramas, documentaries and entertainment shows?

Could we be condemning ourselves to a multitude of commercial digital TV channels that show nothing more than repeats of Friends, Murder She Wrote and the like?

And here’s another thing. I have a nagging feeling that if we skip the ads too often we may well miss out on those gems of genius that show the creativity that our ad agencies are capable of.

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Too much data can be dangerous

Danny Whatmough — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:46:31 +0000

“The great benefit of digital is that it is measurable”.

This old adage (yes, time moves fast in the digital world!) is the reason online marketers will tell you their discipline is far superior to offline equivalents. And it’s true: online campaigns produce vast amounts of data. Whether we’re talking click-throughs, conversions, downloads, followers… the list goes on and the numbers keep soaring.

This road is fraught with danger however. With these data points we end up quoting obscure, meaningless digits that only serve to quantify, but not qualify, end results. We measure without a purpose, without an end goal.

Beware measurement without an aim

Measurement for measurement’s sake is a waste of everyone’s time. It has to be focused and tied to an overarching goal.

For example, it’s great we can measure Twitter followers, but a thousand followers is a pretty meaningless statistic by itself. What lies behind the figures? Who are these people? What actions have they taken? Have they visited our website? Are they increasing brand awareness? Does the effort justify the business impact?

These are the questions that, no matter how many measurement metrics we are blessed with, are still difficult to answer – offline and online.

Decide goals and then decide what metrics meet these goals

The easy mistake to run into is failing to set and agree campaign objectives from the start. This renders effective measurement impossible and the efforts to achieve the impossible are a waste of time for everyone involved.

Having a Twitter profile, for example, should not itself be the key objective, but part of the strategy to achieving an overarching business goal. To truly measure its effectiveness, it needs to be tied to a particular anticipated outcome: user engagement, customer service, prospect nurturing, direct sales etc.

Measurement is an absolutely fundamental part of marketing. The web arms us with the tools to finally be able to prove (in most cases) that marketing efforts are making a difference to a business. But numbers alone won’t hack it.

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Seven steps to effective social media measurement

Danny Whatmough — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:44:50 +0000

At a Marketing Week conference I attended recently, one of the speakers asked the assembled crowd (all senior marketing people from some of the UK’s top brands) if they were participating in social media. Amazingly, only three out of about a hundred put their hands up!

The vast majority of brands think they should be embracing social media, and most want to be there, so why this reluctance to take the bull by the horns?

Social media is still unexplored territory for many and marketers want to be sure it will actually make a difference. By putting in place a measurement strategy right from the outset, you are taking the first step to gaining a clear justification for your social media activity.

Here are our seven steps to getting social media measurement right:

1. Put in place an overall objective – if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve through social media, then any kind of measurement will be impossible. Keep it simple and top line, at least to start with.

2. Identify the specific measures that will demonstrate progress - these goals will likely change over time, but try and put in place some metrics that can be easily benchmarked.

3. Don’t tie metrics to specific platforms, but to conversations – it’s very tempting to chart success against metrics tied to a certain social network – e.g. Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Flickr group numbers. But what does this actually mean to your overall objective or business aim? Monitoring conversations across the whole social media space is a much better success metric as it charts engagement right through to conversion.

4. Be patient, don’t expect instant results – this is not an exact science and there is (quite rightly) still a certain amount of trial and error in social media campaigns – and it’s likely there always will be).

5. Choose your destinations carefully – nine times out of ten, the conversations you participate in during a campaign will usually focus on some sort of end destination – be it a microsite, webpage, Slideshare presentation etc. Choosing the right destination, with the right content, is crucial and make sure you also have the right tools to measure their effectiveness.

6. Review the campaign on a regular basis - a day is a long time in social media and campaigns need constant care and attention. Don’t forget that the real-time web doesn’t have nine to five hours. Measurement needs to be ongoing.

7. Always try to tie metrics to specific business goals - at the end of the day, if you are unsure whether social media is helping your business, then either the campaign is wrong, you’re not measuring the right things, or it’s time to call it a day!

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Byte Night 2009

Danny Whatmough — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:42:12 +0000

We survived!

Earlier this month, the Wildfire Byte Night team (Debby, Dan and Danny) packed sleeping bags and longjohns to spend the night sleeping beneath the lights of Tower Bridge on London’s Potter Field.

It is the second year in a row that Wildfire has sent a team to the IT industry’s annual sleep-out in support of Action for Children, so this year – a year wiser – we came fully prepared for London’s crisp, autumn air.

We tried some different fundraising tactics this time around, including children’s facepainting and cupcake decorating at the Surbiton Festival – a bit of an adventure!

But as all the money we raised went to support vulnerable children, it was definitely worth it.

Our clients, friends and family stepped up again this year with donations and help in abundance. Along with the other Byte Night teams we contributed to an incredible £440,000 (to date) for Action for Children.

Thanks again!

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AVE – Almost Virtually Extinct… or at least I thought so

Debby Penton — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:39:28 +0000

For those of you that don’t know, AVE stands for Advertising Value Equivalent. Something that sends shivers down the spine of any PR who was an account executive in the days before the internet.

Rulers and scalpels at the ready for measuring column inches of all coverage, multiplying that by the cost for ad space in said publication and then multiplying that again by a number, of anything between 2 and 7, to show how much more important influential PR was than advertising.

I really thought that AVE was pretty much a Dodo these days, so was amazed to find it was the most common form of measuring of the value of PR, especially consumer campaigns, while presiding as a judge for the 2009 PRCA Awards over the last few weeks.

Shouldn’t the industry have moved on by now?

AVE is so outdated for a number of reasons:

1. It only works for print media – column inches do not work on the Web

2. Advertising space is becoming cheaper, so PRs using it are already devaluing their work

3. But most importantly, it totally ignores business impact. All it does it give the board a nice big figure of how much it would cost to buy the equivalent amount of space.

We all know that PR is notoriously difficult to measure, and it is clear that there will never be one killer method of measurement. But what we should be striving for is a blend of measures that are aligned to specific business and campaign objectives. Things that actually mean something to our clients, like sales, market share, web hits, trials, and referrals.

I’m not saying it’s easy. But falling back on AVE is no way to win over clients, let alone win awards!

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A third of kids think high search rankings = more truthful

Danny Whatmough — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:53:13 +0000

If ever there was an argument for why SEO is important then this is possibly it: an Ofcom study into media literacy has revealed that some kids believe sites ranked higher in search engines are more ‘truthful’!

“Among children aged 12-15 who use the internet, almost all have experience of using search engine websites (94%).

“Those who use search engine sites were shown a list of options and were asked to say which, if any, apply in terms of the way results are shown on search engine sites.

“There is no clear consensus among search engine users, but 12-15s are more likely to respond that results are ranked on their usefulness or relevance (37%) or their truthfulness (32%) than they are to respond that websites pay money to be at the top of the list (14%).”

With the rise of importance of search engines and the power they now hold, this is perhaps hardly surprising. SEO is a complex art; I wonder how many adults would be able to explain exactly how sites are ranked.

But then again, as long as they find what they are looking for, does it really matter and does anyone really care?

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