PR stunt of the day must go to Travelodge. The chain of hotels has announced that it will offer a free room on Christmas Eve to any married couple who can prove that their names are Mary and Joseph. http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hYjB_cTvLN7m5XqCW8IdKcy2Uj8Q
I have seen a number of articles already referencing the story and Nicky Campbell couldn’t get enough of it on Five Live this morning. Considering it was such a blatant PR stunt I’m surprised that the usually hard nosed cynic Campbell gave the story so much attention.
Personally the thought of waking up in a Travelodge on Christmas day makes me die a little inside.
It is also interesting that the story should break on the same day that Travelodge is fined £70,000 for health and safety breaches. http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2007/12/11/317810/travelodge-fined-over-health-and-safety-breaches.html
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Sunday, 9 December 2007
Public relations and the corporate blog... the beginning of the end for PR?
A few years ago I went to a very informal interview with new Director a small PR agency which was looking to specialise in online and digital PR. The new Director and I sat and chatted over coffee for an hour whilst he explained his vision for how PR could develop and support digital campaigns and enhance organisations' online reputation with user generated content and blogging.
The conversation was all very interesting but I ended up leaving the meeting with more questions than answers and generally unsure about exactly how PR fitted into this vision of the future. Whether this was my inability to grasp new concepts or the PR director's inability to 'sell' the concept to me... I wouldn't like to say.
Skip forward a few years... and we've moved very quickly and things have changed significantly. Whilst I'm not a fan of the term 'Web 2.0', it is an excellent catch-all phase for all the things we do on comptuters that just didn't happen 2 years. You Tube, Facebook, the blogging site that I'm using right now etc etc. And this has changed the way that people act, in a consumer environment the way we shop and the way we communicate. In a business environment the way that we plan our day, the ways we communicate with clients and colleagues.
In 1999 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' began to predict the shift that would emerge with the mass adoption of the internet. It made grand predictions of how markets would revert allowing organisations to interact directly with customers through the web, cutting out the need for what it viewed as unecessary PR, marketing and advertising. The biggest influencers would become the blogger, the consumers themselves and companies would have to adapt to accomodate the unfiltered version of the truth.
How far we have come to this vision is debatable.
However, there is no debating the fact that as PR's we must take note of the direction of this digital age.
To find out a little more about the where PR's sits in this 2.o spaghetti soup and how PR's feel about the role they can play, I've put together a short survey. If you have two minutes please do take part and I'll publish the findings and cogitate on the meaning of it all in the New Year.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=tzFhoPaVPcuyeBSS1aiynw_3d_3d
The conversation was all very interesting but I ended up leaving the meeting with more questions than answers and generally unsure about exactly how PR fitted into this vision of the future. Whether this was my inability to grasp new concepts or the PR director's inability to 'sell' the concept to me... I wouldn't like to say.
Skip forward a few years... and we've moved very quickly and things have changed significantly. Whilst I'm not a fan of the term 'Web 2.0', it is an excellent catch-all phase for all the things we do on comptuters that just didn't happen 2 years. You Tube, Facebook, the blogging site that I'm using right now etc etc. And this has changed the way that people act, in a consumer environment the way we shop and the way we communicate. In a business environment the way that we plan our day, the ways we communicate with clients and colleagues.
In 1999 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' began to predict the shift that would emerge with the mass adoption of the internet. It made grand predictions of how markets would revert allowing organisations to interact directly with customers through the web, cutting out the need for what it viewed as unecessary PR, marketing and advertising. The biggest influencers would become the blogger, the consumers themselves and companies would have to adapt to accomodate the unfiltered version of the truth.
How far we have come to this vision is debatable.
However, there is no debating the fact that as PR's we must take note of the direction of this digital age.
To find out a little more about the where PR's sits in this 2.o spaghetti soup and how PR's feel about the role they can play, I've put together a short survey. If you have two minutes please do take part and I'll publish the findings and cogitate on the meaning of it all in the New Year.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=tzFhoPaVPcuyeBSS1aiynw_3d_3d
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)