Wadds' tech pr blog
Friday, December 22, 2006
Christmas in London
Hello All,
My new blog is up on the BBC website.
Have a look to see what a young 'un working in PR gets up to in London.
That is all.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!
Tim Permalink | 4 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 3:35 PM
Hello All,My new blog is up on the BBC website.
Have a look to see what a young 'un working in PR gets up to in London.
That is all.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!
Tim Permalink | 4 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 3:35 PM
Web of intrigue
The FT has today published an article outlining the future for those working within the marketing industry. One of the key points is that by 2016 internet marketing is predicted to be the biggest advertising medium. It is also expected that advertising and editorial will be less defined and the consumer's power to edit messages will continue to rise.
With technology continuing to move at a fast pace so too does the environment that we operate in. The old adage that 'the only constant is change' can be no more apt. However, in comparison to previous years, the marketing environment should be aware that change is constant and they will have to regularly alter their operations. Permalink | 1 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 11:35 AM
The FT has today published an article outlining the future for those working within the marketing industry. One of the key points is that by 2016 internet marketing is predicted to be the biggest advertising medium. It is also expected that advertising and editorial will be less defined and the consumer's power to edit messages will continue to rise.With technology continuing to move at a fast pace so too does the environment that we operate in. The old adage that 'the only constant is change' can be no more apt. However, in comparison to previous years, the marketing environment should be aware that change is constant and they will have to regularly alter their operations. Permalink | 1 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 11:35 AM
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Tech screw-ups
Tis the time of year when every man and his dog collects up his thoughts and announces to the world what they thought about the year, saving them from doing any proper work. However, standing out from this slew of favourite sporting moments, videogame of the year, best company, most inane award award, etc, is PC World's Top 21 Tech Screw Ups of the year. It's no big surprise what's number one.
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| Stephen Waddington @ 11:32 AM
Tis the time of year when every man and his dog collects up his thoughts and announces to the world what they thought about the year, saving them from doing any proper work. However, standing out from this slew of favourite sporting moments, videogame of the year, best company, most inane award award, etc, is PC World's Top 21 Tech Screw Ups of the year. It's no big surprise what's number one.
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1 comments
| Stephen Waddington @ 11:32 AM
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
3i acquires VNU
3i has acquired VNU Business Media citing its strength in the recruitment sector, as well as technology, business and finance and its "existing platform of a leading on-line offering". Speculation has already begun as to what this means for the Mike Magee who sold the Inquirer to VNU in January.
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| Stephen Waddington @ 8:26 AM
3i has acquired VNU Business Media citing its strength in the recruitment sector, as well as technology, business and finance and its "existing platform of a leading on-line offering". Speculation has already begun as to what this means for the Mike Magee who sold the Inquirer to VNU in January.
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| Stephen Waddington @ 8:26 AM
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Speed camera sat nav mash up
Sat nav manufacturers have yet to provide databases of so-called road enforcement cameras because of the questionable legality of providing a warning system for drivers to circumvent the law. What manufacturers have done is helpfully create an open Application Programming interface (API) so that third parties can provide databases of cameras as a service.
Yesterday I spent £2 to download a point of interest (POI) database of enforcement cameras in the UK from PocketGPSWorld.com for my Garmin C310. The database covers more than 11,000 cameras in the UK: 3,869 Gatso/Monitron/Truvelo, 6,074 mobiles, 26 temporary, 167 specs and 996 red light cameras.
Sat nav has transformed car journeys for the Waddington family removing the burden of map reading. But now sat nav overlaid with speed cameras has become my favourite gadget for 2006, even beating in-car DVD (great for keeping the kids quiet in the car) and the Squeezebox wireless audio player.
The Pocket GPS World database is updated constantly and in true Web 2.0 fashion any user that spots a camera that isn’t in the database gets a year’s free subscription worth £20. Subscribe now. Permalink | 2 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 9:20 AM
Sat nav manufacturers have yet to provide databases of so-called road enforcement cameras because of the questionable legality of providing a warning system for drivers to circumvent the law. What manufacturers have done is helpfully create an open Application Programming interface (API) so that third parties can provide databases of cameras as a service.Yesterday I spent £2 to download a point of interest (POI) database of enforcement cameras in the UK from PocketGPSWorld.com for my Garmin C310. The database covers more than 11,000 cameras in the UK: 3,869 Gatso/Monitron/Truvelo, 6,074 mobiles, 26 temporary, 167 specs and 996 red light cameras.
Sat nav has transformed car journeys for the Waddington family removing the burden of map reading. But now sat nav overlaid with speed cameras has become my favourite gadget for 2006, even beating in-car DVD (great for keeping the kids quiet in the car) and the Squeezebox wireless audio player.
The Pocket GPS World database is updated constantly and in true Web 2.0 fashion any user that spots a camera that isn’t in the database gets a year’s free subscription worth £20. Subscribe now. Permalink | 2 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 9:20 AM
Wishlist for Christmas
I’m nowhere near high profile enough to make it into the Crowdstorm social shopping site entrepreneur’s wish list for Christmas but those more worthy have put together a neat list of tech gear. A couple of things caught my attention: Glassesdirects’ Jamie Murray Wells selection of USBCELL Rechargeable NiMH AA Batteries and Guitar Hero 2 Bundle with Guitar selected by Crowdstorm’s own Philip Wilkinson.
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| Stephen Waddington @ 9:07 AM
I’m nowhere near high profile enough to make it into the Crowdstorm social shopping site entrepreneur’s wish list for Christmas but those more worthy have put together a neat list of tech gear. A couple of things caught my attention: Glassesdirects’ Jamie Murray Wells selection of USBCELL Rechargeable NiMH AA Batteries and Guitar Hero 2 Bundle with Guitar selected by Crowdstorm’s own Philip Wilkinson.
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| Stephen Waddington @ 9:07 AM
Monday, December 18, 2006
HM Revenue & Customs Spam
Had an email from Her Majesty's Customs, at first I thought I was in trouble for those 9000 fags I brought back from Calais
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| Stephen Waddington @ 12:52 PM
Had an email from Her Majesty's Customs, at first I thought I was in trouble for those 9000 fags I brought back from The format of the mail looked genuine enough, relying on greed or stupidity to snag individuals. No doubt a few members of the great unwashed will provide these enterprising individuals with their account details.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Cock-A-Google-Do!
Tearaways and delinquents of Yarm School in Teeside, we salute you! Not only have your teachers completely missed one of the finest (and largest) acts of vandalism in history, but you've also drawn a a male appendage large enough to be seen from space! Thanks to Holy Moly for the link.
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| Stephen Waddington @ 2:00 PM
Mirror mirror on the floor
The fallout from Trinity Mirror's decision to "streamline" its operations by shedding more than 138 titles has implications for regional hacks.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has condemned the move stating that Trinity has already squeezed cash hungry regionals for all they've got and is now just cutting and running. Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 11:11 AM
The fallout from Trinity Mirror's decision to "streamline" its operations by shedding more than 138 titles has implications for regional hacks.The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has condemned the move stating that Trinity has already squeezed cash hungry regionals for all they've got and is now just cutting and running. Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 11:11 AM
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Blogging to Peak in 2007
Analysts Gartner have predicted that blogging will peak sometime in 2007 because ‘most people who would ever start a web blog had already done so’.
Whilst I agree that the blogging phenomenon will eventually level out, the majority of bloggers are still in their youth and blogging is still very popular. This will only increase until they find another tool to play with that is just as user friendly as blogs.
For older people with other commitments, this may well be the case but I don’t think this will sound the knell for blogging just yet. Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 1:47 PM
Analysts Gartner have predicted that blogging will peak sometime in 2007 because ‘most people who would ever start a web blog had already done so’.Whilst I agree that the blogging phenomenon will eventually level out, the majority of bloggers are still in their youth and blogging is still very popular. This will only increase until they find another tool to play with that is just as user friendly as blogs.
For older people with other commitments, this may well be the case but I don’t think this will sound the knell for blogging just yet. Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 1:47 PM
Monday, December 11, 2006
Surf all about it!
Media companies are still at odds at how to mobilise the internet to combat falling newspaper sales, according to the BBC. Some established names in the world of journalism – such as France’s Libération face closure as a result.
What stuns me is that many papers are only now thinking of their web strategy. For years we’ve known it’s the future – how do you compete with free? It’s all about the experience and those that do it best will benefit most.
Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 12:25 PM
Media companies are still at odds at how to mobilise the internet to combat falling newspaper sales, according to the BBC. Some established names in the world of journalism – such as France’s Libération face closure as a result.
What stuns me is that many papers are only now thinking of their web strategy. For years we’ve known it’s the future – how do you compete with free? It’s all about the experience and those that do it best will benefit most.
Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 12:25 PM
Going green with energy
Global warming is front page news, especially with all the weather related disasters currently doing the rounds. Regular readers will know how keen I am on being green and Rainier PR has tried to do its bit to save the planet, though we have still yet to find a method of sourcing completely green energy without a massive disruption to our operations and/or massive cost.
However, I’d like to bring your attention to Ecotricity. Ignoring the rather clumsy punning, it can supply power using only wind farms and match your supplier’s current price.
According to the Centre for Alternative Energy, the average electricity usage per house in the UK is 4,000 kWh per year, which produces 1.64 tonnes of CO2. If 10 of us do this – that’s 16.4 tonnes less per year. If everyone of this 10 persuades another 10 households, that’s, er, 182 tonnes. If the pattern continued for just another three iterations, that would be 16.5 million tonnes of CO2 saved! Well, you have to be optimistic.
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| Stephen Waddington @ 12:05 PM
However, I’d like to bring your attention to Ecotricity. Ignoring the rather clumsy punning, it can supply power using only wind farms and match your supplier’s current price.
According to the Centre for Alternative Energy, the average electricity usage per house in the UK is 4,000 kWh per year, which produces 1.64 tonnes of CO2. If 10 of us do this – that’s 16.4 tonnes less per year. If everyone of this 10 persuades another 10 households, that’s, er, 182 tonnes. If the pattern continued for just another three iterations, that would be 16.5 million tonnes of CO2 saved! Well, you have to be optimistic.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Social media pitches
Object Marketing's Andrew Smith spotlights Nick Booth’s cracking use of a blog as a tool for PR agencies to pitch stories that he is writing. PRs pitch responses to questions that Nick poses.
It’s a cracking use of social media: the quality of feature submissions should increase under open scrutiny and arguments will naturally develop as comments are made.
But will we need to read the finished article? Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 5:23 PM
It’s a cracking use of social media: the quality of feature submissions should increase under open scrutiny and arguments will naturally develop as comments are made.
But will we need to read the finished article? Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 5:23 PM
Dead good story
One of our teams pitched a stonking tech story this week that landed on page two of the Metro, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, and GMTV, amongst others.
The story developed as a campaign for client Informatica, highlighted the issue of junk mail being mistargeted or untargeted, and clogging postboxes and landfills in the UK.
Smart as we are, we can’t claim that our meticulously-executed strategy was everything – load a pitch with emotional languages and the story almost sells itself.
But there is a serious point to the story: clean up your data or risk your marketing strategies becoming dead themselves. Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 5:21 PM
The story developed as a campaign for client Informatica, highlighted the issue of junk mail being mistargeted or untargeted, and clogging postboxes and landfills in the UK.
Smart as we are, we can’t claim that our meticulously-executed strategy was everything – load a pitch with emotional languages and the story almost sells itself.
But there is a serious point to the story: clean up your data or risk your marketing strategies becoming dead themselves. Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 5:21 PM
B2B marketing debate
I was thoroughly outclassed in the B2B Marketing debate on Monday afternoon by Chemistry Group’s Richard Adams. I was arguing the case that B2B blogs can drive business value. There’s a summary of my pitch here and the complete speech here.
After 90 minutes the consensus was that while B2C blogs are proving successful as a marketing channel successful B2B blogs are extremely rare. In this medium approved copy replaces honesty, moderation and editorial policy replaces openness, and spin replaces truth.
There’s more on Richard Adams’ blog. Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 5:09 PM
I was thoroughly outclassed in the B2B Marketing debate on Monday afternoon by Chemistry Group’s Richard Adams. I was arguing the case that B2B blogs can drive business value. There’s a summary of my pitch here and the complete speech here.After 90 minutes the consensus was that while B2C blogs are proving successful as a marketing channel successful B2B blogs are extremely rare. In this medium approved copy replaces honesty, moderation and editorial policy replaces openness, and spin replaces truth.
There’s more on Richard Adams’ blog. Permalink | 0 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 5:09 PM
Cred-IT where IT’s due
Last night the Grosvenor House Hotel in London’s swish Park Lane played host to the British Computer Society Awards 2006, an event attracting 1,500 IT professionals and hosted by BBC News anchor, Kate Silverton. Rainier PR, sponsor of the Mobile Computing category, presented the award to Active Web Solutions for its work with the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI).
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| Stephen Waddington @ 3:14 PM
Last night the Grosvenor House Hotel in London’s swish Park Lane played host to the British Computer Society Awards 2006, an event attracting 1,500 IT professionals and hosted by BBC News anchor, Kate Silverton. Rainier PR, sponsor of the Mobile Computing category, presented the award to Active Web Solutions for its work with the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI).
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| Stephen Waddington @ 3:14 PM
White papering over the cracks
I agree with Lewis PR’s Mark van der Wolf’s comments about whitepapers. In general, they are poorly written, impenatratrable and wholly boring and are typically littered with marketing bullshit.
But then marketing is the name of the game and the trick is to avoid crossing the boundary into sales. Something which Mark doesn’t do, “That being said, I must consider that Lewis offers white paper writing as a service, and that I’m personally involved with that.”
For the record Rainier PR writes excellent whitepapers as well. Permalink | 1 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 2:50 PM
But then marketing is the name of the game and the trick is to avoid crossing the boundary into sales. Something which Mark doesn’t do, “That being said, I must consider that Lewis offers white paper writing as a service, and that I’m personally involved with that.”
For the record Rainier PR writes excellent whitepapers as well. Permalink | 1 comments | Stephen Waddington @ 2:50 PM
Thursday, December 07, 2006
More parties
Chris Lee is leading a party to the BCS Awards at The Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, tonight. Rainier PR is a sponsor. If you’re there, look Chris and the gang up, and I’m assured that they’ll buy you a drink.
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| Stephen Waddington @ 11:19 AM
Chris Lee is leading a party to the BCS Awards at The Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, tonight. Rainier PR is a sponsor. If you’re there, look Chris and the gang up, and I’m assured that they’ll buy you a drink.
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0 comments
| Stephen Waddington @ 11:19 AM
In the red for going green
The Carbon Neutral Company recently appeared on the front page of PR Week slamming the industry for its lack of environmental awareness (PR firms slammed for lack of ‘green’ action, 10 November – sub required).
Rainier PR has got a bunch of green initiatives in place but we’re always keen to find out how we can do more, so we contacted Carbon Neutral.
The story in PR Week reckoned that the industry was neglecting green issues while other marketing firms had firmly embraced the environmental agenda.
It turns out that it is going to cost nearly £3,000 for Carbon Neutral to audit the agency and make recommendations on how we get our green story straight. Oh, and we get to use its logo on our web site and in marketing collateral.
Does Carbon Neutral have just the environment in its sights, or pound signs too?
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| Stephen Waddington @ 9:38 AM
Rainier PR has got a bunch of green initiatives in place but we’re always keen to find out how we can do more, so we contacted Carbon Neutral.
The story in PR Week reckoned that the industry was neglecting green issues while other marketing firms had firmly embraced the environmental agenda.
It turns out that it is going to cost nearly £3,000 for Carbon Neutral to audit the agency and make recommendations on how we get our green story straight. Oh, and we get to use its logo on our web site and in marketing collateral.
Does Carbon Neutral have just the environment in its sights, or pound signs too?
