Philip Sheldrake

The Friday Roundup: The ASA’s misstep

// September 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Advertising, Communities/Social Networks, Digital Media Marketing, Public Relations

Some things aren't quite as simple as first they seem. And when this is the case, it's good practice to consult widely. And on this count, the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has failed.

On 1st September, the ASA announced: "Landmark agreement extends ASA's digital remit". The scope of its Committee of Advertising Practice, the body responsible for the CAP Code governing UK advertising, will extend to "apply in full to marketing communications online, including the rules relating to misleading advertising, social responsibility and the protection of children. The remit will apply to all sectors and all businesses and organisations regardless of size."

Now who could possibly argue with that?

Indeed, the Digital Marketing Association simply repeated the news on its website. Hugh Burkitt, Chief Executive of the Marketing Society, conveyed his full support in a letter to the FT. No word yet (or that I can find) from the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

So what's the problem?

Well, being a founding member of the CIPR's Social Media panel, I'm going to be a little biased, but it appears to me that no-one else has grasped exactly what's going on here. Indeed, the CIPR is the only dissenting voice I know of so far. Despite having received reassurances back in May that the CIPR would be consulted, the ASA's announcement this week did not get run by the CIPR.

And what contribution would the CIPR make? Well, I can only speak for myself here, for the moment, and it goes something like this.

I couldn't agree more that deceptive, dishonest, opaque or misleading marketing communications should be frowned upon. We should do everything we can to help organisations of all types, governmental, for-profit and non-profit, to become transparent and open. To engage in honest and forthright communications with all stakeholders. To seek to influence, sure, but also to seek to be influenced. To be porous to the world, to sensitise everyone in the organisation to the zeitgeist, to humanise the corporates and, in a turn of phrase I picked up from Brian Solis, to socialise them.

This has been a hard slog to date. The 20th Century climate of control has been difficult to shrug off, despite the widespread adoption of social media signalling quite clearly that the world has changed. Information technology has revolutionised the marketplace, and in the words of the Cluetrain Manifesto, the market is now a conversation.

The marketing team is no longer solely responsible for or in control of marketing. The PR team is no longer solely responsible for or in control of PR. Both will set out the strategies to best achieve the business objectives, but execution demands they harness the support of the entire organisation, the oft-called ecosystem of channel, partners and suppliers, and the wider publics.

This process is cathartic. A new daylight illuminates the issues and, some might say, disinfects some of the odious practices that went undetected in previous times. Hey, some companies actually apologise when they mess up nowadays!

When you think about it, deception and dishonesty actually take some doing. They demand control. They demand isolation. Precisely the characteristics of the influence supply chain (and again, I use 'influence' to mean influence flows in all directions) that are rendered impossible upon socialising the organisation.

But the announcement this week by the ASA potentially halts this disinfection in its tracks. Perhaps they thought it was working too slowly, but perhaps, without talking to the CIPR, they weren't cognizant of it in the first place. Rather, their intended role, from 1st March 2011, may only serve to make organisations more nervous about ceding control to the wider organisation, more anxious about opening up and empowering everyone to take part in the conversation.

Lord Smith, the former Labour culture secretary who is chairman of the ASA, claims: "This significant extension of the ASA's remit has the protection of children and consumers at its heart." It may well have it at its heart Lord Smith, but some things aren't quite as simple as first they seem, and your plans may have precisely the opposite effect.

Let's talk.

2D or not 2D? That is not the question.

by si crowhurst of We Love Mobile

I got involved in a debate around 1D and 2D (or QR) Mobile Codes some time back on a Guardian blog (I know, my life is pretty new media rock and roll these days). Anyway, 1D codes are your standard flavour barcode, found on a can of beans and pretty much all FMCG goods, as well as CDs, books etc. 2D or QR codes are those square blocky codes, found on the cover of Wired Magazine and all over Japan. Quite a lot of fuss was made over 2D codes some time back, as they looked like a great way to short-cut to content. More...

What Small Companies Can Teach the Big Guys About Marketing

by Trevor Young PR Warrior of Parkyoung

The race is on for the hearts and minds of your customers...are you even on the starting blocks?

Okay, blatant plug time...

I've recently relaunched my 'sideline' blog SWEAT EQUITY. Please feel free to check it out, I'd love to hear your thoughts :)

Essentially, the website is forming the basis of a book I'm researching and writing called SWEAT EQUITY: What Small Companies Can Teach the Big Guys About Marketing.

SWEAT EQUITY is a marketing manifesto for a hyper-connected world. More...

Preview of Google TV

by Michael Litman of Dare Digital

via ibo.posterous.com More...

TED Talk: The beauty of data visualization by David McCandless

by Michael Litman of Dare Digital

via lenkendall.posterous.com  I’ve met David a couple of times now and its incredible just how he visualises complex datasets in to beautiful visuals. Oh and buy his book, its brills. More...

What Makes an Influencer?

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

Influence is the subject of some of important conversations lately. Each time we surface questions, answers and new thinking that starts to reshape the landscape for how businesses view, define, and embrace influence.

The socialization has democratized content and equalized influence. As such, we are at the inception of an an era when everyday people are presented with an opportunity to earn authority, trust, and leadership based on their actions and words.

I’ve partnered with Vocus to take the conversation to you. More...

How To Find Your Thought Leadership Voice Online

by Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks

There is plenty of information online about using social media for thought leadership. The returns and values have been well-calculated and, in some cases, well-articulated. One great example is our friends over at Bloom Group, who are the thought leaders for thought leadership.

Few seasoned marketing professionals would argue that online thought leadership is a waste of time or money. Most would say it's an imperative. But while the "Must dos!" on this topic are whizzing past, the instructions on "How?" More...

Video: Bringing a Brand to Life in Social Media

by Brian Solis of PR 2.0

We’re approaching the last bits of this enlivening conversations where Chris Beck, founder of 26dottwo (@26dottwo) and I examined the state and future of social media.

In this installment we review the various aspects and formalities of bringing a brand alive, truly alive in social media. Everything begins with establishing the rules of engagement in order to define the boundaries, context, and objectives for conversations. Guidelines such as “don’t be stupid,” “use common sense,” More...

Are Smartphones Transforming Our Social Media Interactions?

by Anna Manasova of Pepsmedia Ltd

I’ve made it one of my goals recently to try and get a bit more involved with local events and the local community, meet new people and get contacts in the industries I’m interested in. Cambridge is a good place to do this as it hosts many events and meetups, catering to technology geeks, creative people, internationals and whatever else may take my fancy.

So I started going, and I’m really enjoying it so far, most recently at last week’s CamCreative MeetUp.

But surprisingly, there’s one thing that has made the biggest impact on my experience of the events so far: More...

Girls Fight Back… with video

by David Meerman Scott of David Meerman Scott

September is National Campus Safety Awareness Month. And this week millions of college students in North America will move into their dorms or apartments for the new academic year.

In this spirit, I'd like to talk about Erin Weed and her terrific program called Girls Fight Back.

GFB empowers girls and women from around the world through personal safety and self-defense techniques. The information is delivered via in person sessions on university campuses, at high schools and workplaces. More...

CIPR calls for clarity on ASA’s digital remit

by Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications

The CIPR has hit out at the ASA for not consulting the PR industry on its proposed regulation of brands in social networks. In a statement issued by the CIPR (disclosure: I’m a member of the CIPR panel) it said that it was given an undertaking in May that the views of the PR industry would be heard.

"We are disappointed this action has been taken without our involvement,” says Ann Mealor, Interim CEO at the CIPR. “We are writing to the ASA regarding our concerns and advocating the need for closer working relationships on this issue.” More...

Social Rebranding

by Scot McKee of Birddog Ltd.

I've been drinking coffee from a glass recently. The last time I did that was a few years ago and the experience wasn't altogether satisfactory. Unlike my previous experience in Marylebone, however, this time I was in Spain. In Spain, real men drink their coffee black. I'd tried ordering a white coffee ('con leche') but had been laughed out of the bar on the grounds of questionable sexual orientation. Real men definitively drink their coffee black in Spain. Black, and bastard strong. More...

Intro to Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things at the CIPR Social Summer session

// August 27th, 2010 // 5 Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Digital Media Marketing, Digital Media Relations, Public Relations, Technology, Website/New Media

@dewilded summed up one of the key conclusions we reached at the CIPR this evening in his tweet:

Companies thought they were laid bare by Web 2.0, they'll feel positively naked w/out reputation mgt set for RDF & the semantic web #CIPRSM [link]

My role was to act as tour guide and polemicist; to introduce the Semantic Web and the Internet of Things in just 90 minutes; and to leave the session attendees with considerable food for thought.

My slidestack is embedded here FYI, but before I sign off I should thank David Phillips (@DavidGHPhillips / http://leverwealth.blogspot.com) for his most pertinent and enthusiastic contributions to the discussion. He's a man who knows his PR and semantics for sure.

And it appears I may have achieved my objective. As @jonnystark and @Mark_Wyatt put it:

@Sheldrake thanks for the talk. Sat with @dewilded and still talking about it. [link]

@Sheldrake Many thanks for the talk yesterday. Really engaged and informative. Discussion carried on late into the night with @dewilded [link]

[Note: the video links in the presentation don't appear to be working in Firefox at the moment, but they do if you cut and paste the URLs into a browser tab. Odd. Investigating.]

Hosting CIPR TV… live at five!

// August 25th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Digital Media Relations, Public Relations

The last time I was on TV it was the BBC's Working Lunch, March 2002. I was running Europe's first email money service at the time (before PayPal was available in these parts) and our servers were struggling quite a lot under the weight of our success on eBay UK. Facing up to a firm line of questioning, I was able to reassure Working Lunch viewers that any money they had stored with us was safe and sound.

Fast forward eight years and the definition of TV has changed somewhat. Indeed YouTube wasn't even launched until 2005, before going on to be the fastest growing website ever. By 2007, the capacity consumed by YouTube exceeded that of the entire Internet in 2000. In May this year, over 24 hours worth of video was uploaded to YouTube for every single minute of the month!

And now we have CIPR TV. Continue Reading

Friday Roundup: I’d like to quote you

// August 20th, 2010 // 15 Comments » // Advertising, Communities/Social Networks, Measurement & Analysis, Public Relations

I'd like to quote you.

Without doubt, the marketing and PR professions are in revolutionary flux right now. I reckon that if we didn't have these disciplines to date but just realised here and now that we actually wanted to influence what people think and do, and ensure we're influenced straight back, that we'd design things very much differently to the status quo we've inherited.

I'm delighted that Wiley has invited me to write a book on just this topic. It's going to focus on the much needed transformation of marketing and PR strategies, and the related disciplines in the influence mix, for the current and future digital age.

The book explains what’s happened, what’s happening and what’s coming up. It points to the changes of direction organisations and individual practitioners must pursue to remain relevant.

And in the spirit of a marketer honing a product’s positioning, I’ll tell you what this book is not. This book is not a social media ‘how to’. Rather, it's about your organisation, your profession and your career. As with all changes to the competitive landscape, the earliest adapters will secure competitive advantage for their organisation and personal careers, whilst the laggards will suffer competitive disadvantage. And quickly.

I'd like to quote you. Please do get in touch if you'd like to share your viewpoint and experiences... the book will only be improved by your contributions. Seriously, do it!

And if you're interested in the bit about what's coming up, I'm running a session this coming Thursday in London at the CIPR on the Web 3.0 and the Internet of Things if you'd like to join us.

Best regards, Philip and the MarCom Professional team. Continue Reading

Ethics in PR Measurement

// August 18th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // Measurement & Analysis, Technology, Website/New Media

I took part in the #measurepr Twitter chat today on ethics in measurement. These chats are organised by Shonali Burke and her blog post "Influence: From BS to Best Practice" set the scene nicely.

At the most fundamental level, we were asking whether some of the techniques being deployed for PR measurement are compatible with the aspiration of public relations professionals to be transparent and authentic, and, more precisely, whether they are compatible with codes of conduct as published by the likes of the CIPR, PRSA and CPRS.

In one of my tweets I suggested a more straight forward test, what one might describe as a layman's test for those of us uneducated in the matters of ethics:

RT @kseniacoffman: Q2: Where do you go for best practices? <-- Ask your mum, siblings, neighbours what's acceptable to them!? #measurepr

At Shonali's invitation, I contributed the three questions posed today... Continue Reading

Friday Roundup: Let’s get emotional… a milestone for PR and marketing

// August 6th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // Public Relations, Technology, Website/New Media

A very interesting thing happened at the end of July.

It affects every single practitioner in the public relations industry, indeed practitioners across all marketing disciplines.

And yet I haven't found one reference to it amongst the PR digerati yet, so I'm going to put that right. Now.

The subtleties of digital

At its core, this digital world is just a set of 1s and 0s that have been applied with increasing sophistication and power. It revolutionised the more numerical professions first, such as accounting and engineering in the seventies, before moving through manufacturing in the eighties and retail in the nineties.

In the noughties, "digital" arrived big style in the lives of marketing and PR professionals simply because it arrived big style in the lives of the stakeholders we look to communicate with, learn from and influence. Continue Reading

My browser history is my own, so back off with your unethical social media metrics

// August 2nd, 2010 // 13 Comments » // Measurement & Analysis, Public Relations, Technology, Website/New Media

Privacy is a personal thing. Some people want to be as "off grid" as they can get. And then there are those who actually bolt a camcorder to their heads and stream their life 24/7. Irrespective, I believe there are some things that everyone expects to be private by default; even Marc Zuckerberg! And one of these is your browser history... the log that lists every webpage you visit.

It's this list that enables modern browsers to suggest auto-completions for URLs as you enter them in the address bar. It's this list you might visit when you're trying to find that something or other you stumbled across the other day. It's this list that allows your browser to try to render unvisited links one way, underlined blue by default, and previously visited links another way, underlined purple by default (even though individual webpages and associated styling information may actually override these defaults).

My browser history is mine. My wife's browser history is hers. Your browser history is yours.

But whilst the Internet turned 40 last year, the World Wide Web is still a teenager, and that relative immaturity places irresistible temptations in the path of the less ethical. And being able to read your browser history is just one of those.

Has your browser history been "sniffed" recently

You wouldn't know. Continue Reading

The Web of data is a Web of influence

// July 29th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Communities/Social Networks, Public Relations, Technology, Website/New Media

I'm a fan of Web 3.0. Perhaps obsessed is a more accurate description.

Web 1.0 is the Web of documents. Web 2.0 is the social and user content Web. Web 3.0 is the point at which the Web itself understands that content and social interaction. Some call it the semantic Web, and some call it the Web of data, but regardless of naming conventions, it's going to mess up a hell of a lot of business models, and create some fascinating new business and public-benefit opportunities. And it'll transform reputation management too.

If you think 'atoms of influence' trickle far and wide courtesy of human expressions and understanding with social media acting as loyal conduit, just wait until machines understand these contributions too. Continue Reading

Friday Roundup – Twitter, the Human Seismograph

// July 23rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Public Relations

Ever considered Twitter in terms of it being a "Human Seismograph"?

Brian Solis won't mind me pointing out that he likes to invent memorable turns of phrase. It's a common trait amongst communicators working on any cutting edge because sometimes existing phraseology doesn't quite do justice to the point being made. So here we are, discussing human seismography.

And two posts this week portray the seismograpic needle waggling wildly.

Firstly, Brian's post "Oil Spill Report: BP and White House Sentiment Spills onto Twitter" reviews the sentiment towards BP as expressed on Twitter. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this detailed analysis is the deleterious knock-on impact the disaster has had on sentiment towards President Obama. Of course, correlations offer no evidence of cause-and-effect unless individual exclamations of feeling explicitly express such a connection, and this is something social web analytics can examine. Continue Reading

An interview with Seth Godin – PR not publicity

// July 22nd, 2010 // 5 Comments » // Communities/Social Networks, Public Relations

Seth Godin - www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4035933108/

Seth Godin is a perceptive individual. He spots things the rest of us are too busy to see, and then lets us know about them in an easily-digestible format. Sounds like a cracking formula for a best-selling author if you ask me... and of course he is.

With a dozen titles to his name, including Tribes, Meatball Sundae, perhaps most famously Permission Marketing, and most recently Linchpin, interviewing Seth was always going to be both entertaining and insightful.

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Continue Reading