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In the brave new world of social media we are told that content is king and if the content is good enough it will find an audience.  We don’t often use this blog to talk about projects that Staniforth is involved in but this Nissan campaign is an exception - incidentally the creative work here was delivered by another agency.

Advertising is changing and this is a great example of how and why.   What we have here is an innovative three dimensional installation (I won’t spoil the ending of the clip by saying any more).  We also have a really engaging short film that takes the installation out to a whole new audience, it also tells a story with a twist (quite literally) in the tail .   Car manufacturers are not always known for breaking the mould, but this is a great example of how to do things differently.  Fasten your seatbelts.  

As a recent convert to the iPhone and the wonderful world of the “app” (Planet Rock, anyone?), it’s good to know that the future of app development is being bolstered by a Manchester-based course for young people known as The App School.

Creative consultants, The White Room, are running the free course - backed by the city council, Cornerhouse (Manchester’s centre for visual arts and cinema) and Manchester Metropolitan University - for 18-24 year olds interested in designing new iPhone applications.

And with the mobile app market forecast to reach $6.8bn this year, there’s a potential money making machine for the creative person with the right ideas.

But techno-phobes need not be discouraged. This is about people with potentially commercial ideas and not necessarily those who dismantle computer hard drives for fun.

According to Phil Birchenall, project director at the White Room: “What we need is plenty of enthusiasm and ideas, that’s all.”

I eagerly await the “help your kid with his maths homework app”, and soon.

In a live press conference broadcast through YouTube, Google today announced the launch of Google Buzz a social networking application built onto Google Mail.   Todd Jackson, Gmail Project Manager explained how it uses Gmail contacts to create a ready made friend list but then allows users to pull in contacts from other social networks.    

It borrows a lot of the ideas born out of twitter but adds a new level of sophistication.  For example the recommendation engine will over time filter ‘good buzz’ from ‘bad buzz’ - if you like an intelligent retweet system.

Google Buzz has some stunning features that set it apart from other social platforms, particular when it comes to smartphones.  It uses GPS to locate where you are and integrates with a new version of Google mobile maps.  Posts from mobiles including pictures will be automatically geo-tagged (or located to place) which will allow you to broadcast and recieve the buzz around shops, restaurants or visitor attractions, nearby.

Perhaps the biggest new feature is the inclusion of voice to text.  This means that you can speak directly into your mobile phone and it will appear automatically as a text in your Buzz profile.   In one fell swoop Google is taking on Friendfeed, Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook and, oh yes, the iPhone.  The mobile features of Buzz will be available on the Google Nexus One and other Android handsets but not (at least for now) on Apple’s market leading smartphone.  When will Buzz be available?  It launches now.

The Manchester Evening News and its associated titles have been acquired by Trinity Mirror for £45 million in a deal announced today.  It spells the end of the long association between the Guardian (once The Manchester Guardian) and the MEN.

Sly Bailey, Chief Executive of Trinity Mirror , commented: “GMG Regional Media is a perfect strategic fit for our Group. This acquisition, which includes the Manchester Evening News with its proud and rich journalistic heritage, together with the weekly titles and associated websites extends our reach across print and online and is a further step towards our strategic goal of creating a multi-media business of real scale.”   The deal doesn’t include the TV station Channel M. 

If you drill down into the detail of the deal, £37.4 million is to realease the papers from a long term printing contract - but it is still a lot of money to pay for a regional title when the sector is under so much pressure.   The deal may be good news for the title because it moves from a group that does not really believe in the future of regional print to one that is committed to it.   For that reason it probably ensures a longer future for the MEN but whether Trinity can stem the flow of advertising and readers away from regional newspapers in the long term is quite a different question.
 
 

It’s the first working day of a new decade and there is a lot to do but I thought it was worth pausing for a few moments to reflect on just how much the media and public relations have changed in the last ten years.  

When the sun pulled up on the new millenium we didn’t give much thought to creating video content to support PR campaigns, it was just too expensive in most cases.  Oh, and there was no Youtube, it didn’t launch until 2005.  Podcasts were still a thing of the future; the term “podcasting” wouldn’t be coined for another four years.  It was first used by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian in a February 2004 article.    The debate on the ethics of editing Wikipedia articles hadn’t begun because, well there was no Wikipedia until 2001.   Even Google had only been around for 18 months when the ‘noughties’ began.

More recently we have seen the beginning of the end for many newspapers but new and exciting channels are emerging.  The Guardian iPhone app launched last month may be the clearest indication yet as to the way forward for newspaper brands.  The impending launch of the Apple tablet (iPad or iSlate, take your pick) may be the saviour of the newspaper albeit in a modern guise.

There is a lot to contend with for the PR practitioner in the coming decade; media fragmentation, the continued rise of the user as publisher and the convergence of marketing disciplines to name a few of the challenges.  The ubiquity of iPhones, Google phones, tablets, slates or pads will mean that location based communication will become a powerful and empowering reality.

Oh and for those celebrating the end of the decade with the silliest moniker in history it looks like another daft description of a decade is in play as the ‘noughties’ make way for the ‘teenies’.  We only have ourselves to blame.

An interesting piece of research by broadband provider Talk Talk has revealed that due to high speed internet access, we’ve become a highly impatient nation with 70% of us “losing it” if we have to wait any longer than one minute for a page to load.

And this somewhat inflated level of impatience is also apparent in the offline world where in a restaurant, we’ll demand our meal after just eight minutes and 38 seconds, we’ll wait only 10 minutes and 43 seconds for a tradesman to show up and we’ll allow 10 minutes and 1 second for a friend before we burst with annoyance.

It’s clear that patience, once a Great British trait, is slowly wearing away as we embrace an era of high speed internet activity and that’s not just down to the advent of broadband. Twitter, for example, offers a unique feed of real-time conversation and sentiment with news being delivered faster than any other medium, providing us with an immediate global sense of events.

And gone are the days when journalists conducted a quick vox pop to gauge opinion, now they simply use the Twitter crowd as a source of immediate information and push out headlines and blogposts to Twitter via RSS and TwitterFeed.com.

A recent fault with Virgin Media which left many customers without TV and broadband, displayed not only consumer impatience (understandably) but infuriation at the fact that Virgin had not considered using Twitter to inform their customers of the problem, regardless of the fact that a number of people were tweeting about Virgin’s service issues which suggested a major outrage was brewing.

Clearly a massive oversight from Virgin and one which other service providers should take note of. Twitter is a critical vehicle for communicating information, instantly, and could quite easily have dampened the fire that was raging amongst its tweeting customers.

It’s clear we want speed. We thrive on being the first to know and unsurprisingly, it’s the 18-24 year olds who are least prepared to wait, which questions just how impatient future generations will be.

Public transport operators, call centre workers…. you have been warned.

A quiet revolution started this week in the small Yorkshire town of Whitby.

The Whitby Gazette became one of three newspapers from the Johnson Press stable to start charging for content. Readers of the Gazette as well as Northumberland Gazette and Southern Reporter now have to pay £5 for a three-month subscription - or 40p a week.

While it has been Rupert Murdoch and his News International titles that have caught the headlines about when they will charge for access, it is regional newspaper publisher Johnson that has taken the first bold step.

What is interesting is that this move covers local rather than the national and international content that Murdoch’s titles provides.

Johnson’s chief executive John Fry said that he felt that local newspapers offered a “unique” service for which readers may be prepared to pay.

According to HoldtheFrontpage it has seen an internal memo circulated by senior managers in one Johnson division that says “Customers are used to paying for content in-paper and we are simply transferring this thinking online.”

Is this all a bit of reverse psychology with the ultimate aim to drive people back to buying newspapers? Michael Woolf writing in Vanity Fair last month hinted that Murdoch’s aim in charging for content is to drive people back to buying newspapers. Certainly an interesting thought from a newspaperman through and through.

The issue of charging form content also surfaced at the recent Society of Editors’ conference where the editor of the Newquest title the Worcester News, Kevin Ward felt that local newspapers had: “more opportunity to charge for the web” than their national counterparts. He added:  ”What we produce is niche. Nobody else sits in our courts every day. Nobody else scrutinises our public bodies.

One thing that is for sure is that newspaper groups will be watching the latest move from Johnson Press with interest.

Associated Newspapers has announced that the London Lite – part of its free division which also includes Metro – has entered a period of review which could place 36 jobs at risk. 

The announcement follows the closure of rival evening free-sheet TheLondonPaper. The possible closure places the whole concept of the free newspapers in the balance as Steve Auckland, Managing Director of Associated Newspapers admitted concerns of ‘commercial viability’ – the same reason TheLondonPaper closed its doors. 

The London Lite, however, does not seem to have suffered any decline in popularity. It distributes 400,000 copies a day and appears to be widely liked – the mix of short, light news, gossip and sports, along with popular sections such as ‘Get if off our text’ have proved popular with commuters who want to switch off from a hard news agenda and unwind on the journey home from work. The short and snappy approach lends itself very well to those with a short journey as you can read most if it in about 20 minutes. 

This is quite different from the Evening Standard where one may struggle to read more than a couple of articles in 20 minutes. It is simply a different concept and although great if you have an hour to spare, it is hard to get through it in a short period of time. It is also far more opinionated, the stories are far more drawn-out and analytical and there is a stronger focus on hard news such as politics and finance. While I’m not criticising the paper itself, it simply appeals to a very different demographic than the London Lite. 

While those at the Evening Standard may indeed be rubbing their hands together at the thought of a monopoly on London evening newspapers, it is worth pointing out that if two evening free-sheets have already proved to not be financially viable, how will the Evening Standard fair?  

Perhaps more interestingly from a consumer perspective, how will it move forward? Will it adapt itself in order to satisfy those of a more ‘London Lite’ persuasion and risk alienating its main readership or, due to its monopoly, will it bank on Lite readers switching to its harder news agenda because there is really no alternative? 

I believe red-top newspapers such as The Sun or The Mirror could stand to benefit from this. The Sun in particular has recently dropped its price to a paltry 20p and those in search of a softer news agenda may be happy to actually pay for a newspaper again. That said, these are obviously morning papers which go to press earlier, so they are not as up-to-date in the evenings.  

The possible closure of the London Lite, as you can probably see, appears to pose more questions than answers. One thing is sure though: with TheLondonPaper gone and The London Lite looking like it will go the same way, opportunities for PR people with London-based stores are certainly going to become more limited.

Latest research shows that more than a quarter of people have cut back on buying magazines and newspapers in the economic downturn in favour of free online content.

However, the results also reveal that this does not mean people are more open to subscription services. Just 11% said they currently pay for online media and a further 11% said they may begin a subscription in the next 12 months.

But this begs the question of why? Why would a consumer buy access to news online when they can get it free elsewhere?

Surely a precedent has been set after receiving it free for years and it’s too late to change?

Rupert Murdoch, whose global empire has made a huge financial loss, declared recently that the “free-for-all in online news has ended” and has pledged to shake up the newspaper industry by introducing charges for access to all his news websites.

I don’t doubt Murdoch’s ability to pave new ways, but is this really the best way of increasing revenue?

With the amount of blogs and social networking sites out there, far fewer people rely on traditional media for their latest news fix. That isn’t to say a paid for model won’t work for specialist media, where there’s a niche audience, but mainstream news is readily available, whenever we want it.

But many believe it’s purely down to behavioural change. As David Elms, media partner at KPMG, the company behind the research, says: “Monetising online content is the holy grail of the media sector. The challenge is changing the mindset of a consumer population that is used to accessing free online content.”

Steve Brill, co-founder of Journalism Online, which promises to help news outlets charge for content, says: “People have been exchanging cash for newspapers and magazines for decades - they just need to get into the habit of doing so online.”

But Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of non-profit NPR, who believes in making pay optional, said: “To think that we are so smart that we can retrain the audience, that’s an awfully elitist, condescending, and frankly old perspective.”

Instead of charging for subscriptions, perhaps newspapers should look at what they’re offering and provide the best online content to attract lucrative advertisers?

There has been a lot written about The London Evening Standard recently (full history on followthemedia), so here’s a more light-hearted look at the pros and cons of the newspaper going free. Through Londoner’s eyes with PR glasses if you wish.

Pro

You can pick up both the Evening Standard and London Lite and play the game ‘spot the difference’ with the main news stories. Don’t look at the business page though – there are none!

Con

After a short three-week piece, two bright jackets are yet again vying for sidewalk inches and obstructing our journey home. 

Pro

They probably won’t be there for long. The word on the street is now that thelondonpaper is gone Lite will soon follow and the Evening Standard will rule London’s streets once again (although from another perspective that’s probably a con). 

Con

An unsightly mess of 600,000 more newspapers littering London’s streets, trains, buses and the tube. 

Pro

Watching a certain type of person staring at the ceiling on the tube as they will not read their evening paper now that it’s devalued and stuffed in your face every evening like a freesheet.  

Con

The spy who loves media now decides what we read. 

Pro

His team has had the great idea to feature anecdotes on the 2^nd page to celebrate the paper going free: “Public figures reveal the free things in life they love the most. Gordon Brown says, the NHS…” 

The Evening Standard is the first quality newspaper to go free, possibly suicide for an already ailing paper or perhaps a very smart move into a new territory which others will follow, and if they do, is this a pro or a con for the PR industry?