Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Event report: NMK – Clients in the wild
Last night both myself and Wadds went to NMK’s Clients in the Wild seminar (disclosure: I work both for Rainier PR and NMK) in Piccadilly Circus.
I’d encourage anyone who is interested in social media whether you work in PR, marketing or in-house to attend these things (whether NMK or These4Walls or other events) not just to listen to the three talking heads of early 90's boyband lookalike Drew Benvie (the first blog I ever subscribed to), Will McInnes from Nixonmcinnes and Sarah Ogden from Midnight Communications, but also to network afterwards. You end up learning so much.
The debate began with the startling news that we were no longer in control of the message. Whilst hardly a revelation along the lines of string theory or Newton’s laws of gravity – it was a good place to start and a good place for Will to sound off about how screwed up the PR industry is. Will’s argument wasn’t whether PR can control the message (has it ever been able to?) but more with how the PR industry demonstrates value in PR 1.0, let alone PR 2.0.
My main bug bear with the debate was that no one gave a sufficient answer to the question how do you measure influence? Mat Morrison, unfortunately not the 90s rap star who got a friend to do his community service but the Digital Planning Director for Porter Novelli showed me the model they used. It was a spider diagram showing how influencers are interconnected to their audiences though much like every other diagram couldn’t show influence just numbers.
Personally, like the panel, I think the measurement depends on the objectives of the client – they are the ones who pay the fees – if they think a feature in The Times would sell x amount of products then all the PR industry can do is advise – push back if unrealistic or help them achieve it. And ditto if they want to target bloggers. Simon Collister asked whether we should scrap the way we ‘do’ PR in this new world. I’d be inclined to disagree- certainly the tactics we (and many other companies) use for our clients still works and is profitable. And as Sarah rightly pointed out, PR tactics should include social media as part of the strategy (depending on the objectives) not just tagged on to existing campaigns. What we have is good it just needs to evolve quicker with the change in the environment.
Most of the more interesting discussions came after the actual seminar with Adam Parker from webitpr elaborating on an earlier point he made about the Northern Rock fiasco. Adam asked why the directors of the company didn’t engage with the public and communicate the huge sums of money they donate to charity (5 per cent of all profit apparently) by visiting local branches.
Ged Carroll has written an excellent post about the event which I urge you to check out.
Last night both myself and Wadds went to NMK’s Clients in the Wild seminar (disclosure: I work both for Rainier PR and NMK) in Piccadilly Circus.I’d encourage anyone who is interested in social media whether you work in PR, marketing or in-house to attend these things (whether NMK or These4Walls or other events) not just to listen to the three talking heads of early 90's boyband lookalike Drew Benvie (the first blog I ever subscribed to), Will McInnes from Nixonmcinnes and Sarah Ogden from Midnight Communications, but also to network afterwards. You end up learning so much.
The debate began with the startling news that we were no longer in control of the message. Whilst hardly a revelation along the lines of string theory or Newton’s laws of gravity – it was a good place to start and a good place for Will to sound off about how screwed up the PR industry is. Will’s argument wasn’t whether PR can control the message (has it ever been able to?) but more with how the PR industry demonstrates value in PR 1.0, let alone PR 2.0.
My main bug bear with the debate was that no one gave a sufficient answer to the question how do you measure influence? Mat Morrison, unfortunately not the 90s rap star who got a friend to do his community service but the Digital Planning Director for Porter Novelli showed me the model they used. It was a spider diagram showing how influencers are interconnected to their audiences though much like every other diagram couldn’t show influence just numbers.
Personally, like the panel, I think the measurement depends on the objectives of the client – they are the ones who pay the fees – if they think a feature in The Times would sell x amount of products then all the PR industry can do is advise – push back if unrealistic or help them achieve it. And ditto if they want to target bloggers. Simon Collister asked whether we should scrap the way we ‘do’ PR in this new world. I’d be inclined to disagree- certainly the tactics we (and many other companies) use for our clients still works and is profitable. And as Sarah rightly pointed out, PR tactics should include social media as part of the strategy (depending on the objectives) not just tagged on to existing campaigns. What we have is good it just needs to evolve quicker with the change in the environment.
Most of the more interesting discussions came after the actual seminar with Adam Parker from webitpr elaborating on an earlier point he made about the Northern Rock fiasco. Adam asked why the directors of the company didn’t engage with the public and communicate the huge sums of money they donate to charity (5 per cent of all profit apparently) by visiting local branches.
Ged Carroll has written an excellent post about the event which I urge you to check out.
Labels: after work, blogger, media, PR, social media, technology
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Comments:
Swapped emails with Ian Delaney and Drew Benvie this morning. My concern is that the marketing agencies with their research tools and bottom line led analytics and metrics will become the trusted advisers at the marketing director's top table.
Ahem, Hoang, it was **Mark** Morrison "the 90s rap star who got a friend to do his community service..."
Tim, next time I'll get Wadds to introduce me, that way I'll be able to put a person to the writing.
We weren't there to talk about measuring PR.
What we ended up talking about was 'what is the future for PR' and one of my main challenges is that other agencies and providers are eating the PR pie, while you guys continue bumbling along down the same old paths. Take measurement, technology players like Onalytica are helping to measure influence.
I your post here captures the core of the challenges to PR at all. Measurement is just one part of that. So I guess the onus is on me to explain myself more clearly, which I'll do tomorrow!
What we ended up talking about was 'what is the future for PR' and one of my main challenges is that other agencies and providers are eating the PR pie, while you guys continue bumbling along down the same old paths. Take measurement, technology players like Onalytica are helping to measure influence.
I your post here captures the core of the challenges to PR at all. Measurement is just one part of that. So I guess the onus is on me to explain myself more clearly, which I'll do tomorrow!
Nice to meet you at last, Tim. Re. measurement - a guy at Headshift had an interesting post recently all about measuring social sites. He suggested building the site, running the campaign and create your measurements around what people are doing with the site. Crowd-sourced metrics. Sounds daft until you consider your eg. about measuring just what the client wants you to. Same thing?
Also, my point isn't we should scrap the way we do PR... rather what the internet is doing to business models, cultural and political institutions is changing the way society works. If PR is to stay relevant to business, cultre... anything involving the 'public' - then it needs to adapt fully. That doesn't mean just shoe-horning a Facebook campaign into your usual program. :)
Also, my point isn't we should scrap the way we do PR... rather what the internet is doing to business models, cultural and political institutions is changing the way society works. If PR is to stay relevant to business, cultre... anything involving the 'public' - then it needs to adapt fully. That doesn't mean just shoe-horning a Facebook campaign into your usual program. :)
re: Will - agreed but i've not seen Onalytica's work and cannot really comment on them, though i'd be surprised if they really measured influence. the term influence itself is a bit ambiguous - does it mean influence one person to purchase, carry out a specific action (and then how much do they really want to do it) to pass on the information to others (how well will they do that and how receptive are the audience?) - i personally think that it is impossible to measure influence (and therefore to some extent PR) effectively. But the PR industry needs to find some way of doing it.
which nicely brings me on to Simon's feedback. I think it is right that it is down to the client as to how we measure the effectiveness of the campaign, afterall they pay us. If they're not happy with it then we are screwed and no amount of bleating on about this metric or that bollocks is going to help. We can advise as much as we can though and that should be our role. This is obviosuly not the way to go - that's why we need the likes of the CIPR (which for me is pretty much annonymous) to establish some sort of measurement metric so at least we can tell clients this is the standard measurement. but then again every campaign will be different and have different objectives. I'm just going around in circles aren't i?
Agree in your last point though - social media only works if it's relevant and thought through, not tagged onto to an exsisting campaign.
Although i'm disappointed that you didn't pick up on why you have two links on the post.
By the way - what the hell do i know? i'm pretty new in this business
which nicely brings me on to Simon's feedback. I think it is right that it is down to the client as to how we measure the effectiveness of the campaign, afterall they pay us. If they're not happy with it then we are screwed and no amount of bleating on about this metric or that bollocks is going to help. We can advise as much as we can though and that should be our role. This is obviosuly not the way to go - that's why we need the likes of the CIPR (which for me is pretty much annonymous) to establish some sort of measurement metric so at least we can tell clients this is the standard measurement. but then again every campaign will be different and have different objectives. I'm just going around in circles aren't i?
Agree in your last point though - social media only works if it's relevant and thought through, not tagged onto to an exsisting campaign.
Although i'm disappointed that you didn't pick up on why you have two links on the post.
By the way - what the hell do i know? i'm pretty new in this business
# posted by 
: 11:52 PM
: 11:52 PM
Drew wasn't pleased when I suggested you might be referring to Lee Ryan from Blue in your post on Twitter. But look at the pictures. Just saying.
"Man is the the measure of all things" says the quotation. Which I think means that reducing everything to a spreadsheet calculation is bollocks.
At the same time, it also means that some man (or woman) will be the measure of everything you do. Empirically, that's proven true of everything I have done - it's not been the numbers, it's whether they reckon that's OK. Measurement is always going to be relative to the context of the measurer. (is that a word?)
"Man is the the measure of all things" says the quotation. Which I think means that reducing everything to a spreadsheet calculation is bollocks.
At the same time, it also means that some man (or woman) will be the measure of everything you do. Empirically, that's proven true of everything I have done - it's not been the numbers, it's whether they reckon that's OK. Measurement is always going to be relative to the context of the measurer. (is that a word?)
Good point Ian and the measurer in the case of Pr will be the people that are paying us in my opinion, unless we can convince them otherwise.
Good debate though -which means that according to Will we are all f*cked.
Which is why those in the PR industry who can influence it should be getting together once a week to sort this out or i won't have a career!
Ignore my last point about CIPr -it's obvious they are not going to pull their finger out. LEt's start a new CIPR esq group even if its just a facebook group in order to establish something we can all work towards and can show to clients as a basic measurement. We all know its not perfect but if its an industry standard then it looks good - It's PR - just like when we parade all those awards that go to the IT PR company that has bought the most expensive table (joking). i've been unemployed and queued up at the job centre before and believe me its depressing and you don't even get that much.
Why aren't you lot doing anything?
Wadds? Bruce? Benvie? Byrne?
Also in reply to Davies - he's bitter because i did a quick straw poll round our office about how handsome he was and he got an average of 6/10
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Good debate though -which means that according to Will we are all f*cked.
Which is why those in the PR industry who can influence it should be getting together once a week to sort this out or i won't have a career!
Ignore my last point about CIPr -it's obvious they are not going to pull their finger out. LEt's start a new CIPR esq group even if its just a facebook group in order to establish something we can all work towards and can show to clients as a basic measurement. We all know its not perfect but if its an industry standard then it looks good - It's PR - just like when we parade all those awards that go to the IT PR company that has bought the most expensive table (joking). i've been unemployed and queued up at the job centre before and believe me its depressing and you don't even get that much.
Why aren't you lot doing anything?
Wadds? Bruce? Benvie? Byrne?
Also in reply to Davies - he's bitter because i did a quick straw poll round our office about how handsome he was and he got an average of 6/10
# posted by : 9:41 AM
: 9:41 AM
