Penguin PR Blog
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Beware the moneymen turning Twitter tweets sour
02.02.2012
We can’t claim to have much in common with the pneumatic glamour model, mum and “author” Katie Price, but we couldn’t help noticing how, spookily on the same day recently, both our Twitter accounts appeared to be hacked.
In our case, our intelligent, insightful and often thought-provoking Tweets (from @Penguin_PR) were substituted for a message that was of no interest to anyone. Funnily enough, for Katie Price (@MissKatiePrice), it was the other way round – and fans were, apparently, left perplexed when they received tweeted messages such as ‘Great news about China’s latest GDP figures!!’ and ‘OMG!! Eurozone debt problems can only be properly solved by true fiscal union!!! #comeonguys’ .
In both cases, the mystery was quickly solved. Our random tweet was sent by someone unknown who felt that the best way to market their weight loss product was to pretend to be someone else and spam their 350 unsuspecting followers.
In Jordan’s case, her tweets were just a huge wheeze by nut-filled chocolate purveyors Snickers who eventually used her account to send the tweet ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry @snickersuk #hungry #spon’, along with a picture of Katie Price pointing to a Snickers bar.
There is no doubt that social media can be a fantastic, liberating and democratic force which puts significant communicating power into the hands of anyone all over the world. For the PR world, Twitter is a godsend and is out there on its own when it comes to spreading news and opening up genuine conversations with customers.
Yet Twitter and its users should tread carefully. Such power is ripe for exploitation by people trying to make money and when people use it simply to plug their products it’s a huge turn-off. Firms can already sponsor search terms and too much commercialism will eventually ruin the magic.
Of course, hackers and spammers won’t care anyway and by then Jordan will be too busy counting her Snickers money – and we bet she wasn’t paid peanuts – to bother either.
Instead, the losers will be those small businesses who have invested time, money and effort on embracing and using Twitter correctly and profitably and who could be left without a voice when their followers log out of Twitter for good.
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A fun way to explain what PR – and other forms of marketing – actually is
23.01.2012
The post-Christmas season is when those funny stocking filler books find their way to the charity shop, but not before I spotted this in one of my brother-in-law’s presents – a little book called Laugh on the Loo (published by Ginger Fox Ltd 2011).
Definitely a joke with a serious – and very useful – message and an engaging way to describe what we do.
Definitions of marketing:
You see a gorgeous guy at a party. You go up to him and say “I’m fantastic in bed.”
That’s Direct Marketing.
You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and, pointing at you, says “He’s fantastic in bed.”
That’s Advertising.
You see a gorgeous guy at a party. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you ring him and say “I’m fantastic in bed.”
That’s telemarketing.
You’re at a party and you see a gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink. You open the door, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her a ride and then say “By the way, I’m fantastic in bed.”
That’s Public Relations.
You’re at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says “I hear you’re fantastic in bed.”
That’s Brand Recognition.
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BBC returns fire as polar bear scandal ice storm heats up
14.12.11
When the country’s media started laying into the cute polar bears on the BBC’s Frozen Planet, on the face of it, it seemed par for the course.
The UK papers, with all their various media company interests, are never shy at taking a pop at the BBC at the best of times and, backed by a couple of backbench MPs, this was too good an opportunity to miss.
In case you have been stranded on an ice floe for the last week or so, the furore concerned the £4m series’ sleight of hand which involved footage of a mother polar bear giving birth to her cubs, which was not shot in the chilly depths of a snow drift in Svalbard but in the comfort of a mocked-up den in a German zoo.
The BBC’s excuse was that to get genuine footage would have put the cubs’ lives or the cameraman’s life in danger but the papers’ stance was that viewers had been hoodwinked – and should have been explicitly told in the commentary.
The scandal forced the Daily Mirror on Monday to write: "The national broadcaster's quick on the draw when it comes to pointing fingers at others. Perhaps when it comes to their own editorial standards and ethics a little more action and a little less pontification would be handy."
It has also unearthed more examples of mocked-up animal shots, but that, really should have been that, until the BBC’s director general Mark Thompson hit back, accusing the papers of taking a shot against the corporation because of its coverage of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards.
Giving evidence to the culture, media and sport select committee hearing on Tuesday, he said: “I do rather wonder whether this is about polar bears or about Leveson and other matters.”
It is rare for the BBC to take things so personally so publicly. Like the Royal Family’s PR team, they have tended to answer such accusations with a straight bat, accepting that they are a perennial target and hoping everything will die down.
When they have had to take things further, they have taken it out on their own staff rather than come out fighting – witness the blood-letting after Sachsgate and the Blue Peter competitions scandal, which saw the end to all competitions on all BBC outlets, including local radio – and many other media outlets too.
What has changed the game is the Leveson Inquiry. The media uses stories to play political games, but newspapers’ power to influence is severely weakened by the daily revelations of their industry’s dark arts.
Even the current Twitter hashtag #proudtobeajournalist, which encourages hacks to stand up and be proud, shows that rank and file journalists are feeling embattled – and are keen to put distance between themselves and the red top sharks.
They, like everyone, know that it is a good time for everyone to bash the papers and Thompson is taking full advantage for once, knowing he has a receptive audience – although what the polar bears themselves make of it all is anyone’s guess.
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His dancing shoes gave the ignoble Savage a raised profile – but can he quickstep his way out of football?
06.12.2011
If footballer-turned-dancer Robbie Savage was a business, he would be Ryanair – not the biggest nor the best operator in his field, but someone who has managed to make a name for himself by winding everyone else up.
That seemed to be pretty much the game plan from the moment he was rejected by Manchester United while his illustrious peers in the youth team went onto win trophy after trophy.
If you can’t beat them, you can mistreat them, seemed to have been his motto, and he set about making himself as popular as carol singers in a turkey farm with opposition fans who saw him diving, fouling and niggling his way across the green swathes up and down the land.
He was something of a cut-price Cantona, but as he slipped noisily into his post-football media career it was no surprise to see him turn up on Strictly Come Dancing – an annual dose of TV viagra for many a celebrity’s drooping careers.
Of course, it would have been good to see the Robbie of old lunge across the dancefloor to fell Anton du Beke with a two-footed tackle or give Brucie a tap on the ankle to let him know he’s there.
But no. Because Robbie was there not to bare his teeth – although we saw plenty of them, beaming out like searchlights beneath his lustrous blond hair – but to bare his soul and show his sensitive side.
“People didn’t know who I was when I came to this show,” he lamented on finally being knocked out. “I wasn't a nice person on the football pitch and hopefully I've changed people's perceptions of me."
Maybe, and maybe not. Because while the experience has introduced the man Sav to viewers like my mum - who wouldn’t know him even if he popped up in the next chair at her local hair salon - you would imagine the number of hardened football-loving Savage-hating chaps tuning in every week to watch the dancing was on the low side.
And even then, if you take out those who only tuned in so they could admire Ola Jordan without attracting their wives’ attention, you will end up with only a few who’ll think that Sav isn’t such a bad chap after all. The rest will just remember him as the flash bloke who thrust his groin at Craig Revel-Horwood.
But it will be post-Strictly that the man whose own website even describes him as Mr Marmite – because you either love him or hate him, not because his talents are spread thinly – will find out what the experience will have done for his career.
Will his new-found teatime fame launch a new career into light entertainment? Or will it see him returning to the world of football punditry – where what you did on the grass and not on the dancefloor is still the only thing that counts.
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Leveson Inquiry exposes PR's dodgy dark side
01.12.11
Much has been written on the Leveson Inquiry, with wave after wave of shocking revelations concerning the depths some national papers have gone to in order to get a story.
Much of the outrage is well-deserved, but, as one-time journalists, many of the antics don’t surprise us. Although nowhere near as extreme, every reporter will at one time or another found themselves considering alternative ways to get a story and when you’re on a national paper in a dogfight for readers, the pressure is on to get the scoop. In the heat of battle, anything goes – and, it seems, anything did.
Yet what did jump out of us, considering how we make our money now, was the reference Daily Star freelancer Richard Peppiatt made to PRs’ role in national journalism.
“PR is a huge influence,” he told the inquiry. “There are more PRs than there are journalists. You get into your inbox every day dozens and dozens of press releases from companies all trying to get their brand in the paper, get mentioned.
“[They are] Incentivised, I had three or four holidays from PR companies in order to get their stories an extra push.”
The antics of the press is for the press to sort out, but we wonder what the movers and shakers of the PR industry will make of his words. While it’s not exactly chasing a celebrity alongside a rabid pack of paparazzi, unless the companies in question are doing PR for holiday firms, this practice is as dubious as slipping a few quid to a policeman for a tip-off.
Yes, maybe we’re naïve, but we tell our clients that while our media contacts are important, it’s the quality of the story we produce together that will earn them the coverage they deserve.
It’s a sad day for an industry that can sometimes struggle for credibility when that isn’t the case at all – and that the big boys with the big bucks will do anything to get the story. Much like some newspapers, in fact.
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