pr-media-blog.co.uk

Channel 4 News at Noon have got a cracking story about various public sector organisations and their exposure to the Icelandic bank crash.

They’ve sent out a press release/advisory on their story, encouraging wires and online sources (like me) to reference, discuss and take the story on. Absolutely brilliant idea! Exactly the sort of thing that ‘channel media’ can do to adapt to a web 2.0 world. They are a news gatherer with a great reputation and access. Creating buzz around their core strengths is bang on.

But this being the blogosphere I thought I’d suggest ways they could make it even better. Where are the links to images, video, trackbacks?

And I subscribe to the C4 News Twitterfeed, no mention of the story or the opportunity for bloggers to use it on there?

Here’s what they sent out

 Channel 4 news at noon exclusive: The Metropolitan police authority has £30 million deposited in icelandic banks.
Metropolitan police authority has £30 million deposited in icelandic banks & calls “government to guarantee against potential losses” but claims “frontline policing will not be affected”

Credit Channel 4 News at noon with all material used

Channel 4 News at Noon has discovered that the Metropolitan Police Authority has £30 million deposited in risky Icelandic banks but claims that “Frontline policing services will not be affected”.

The programme has also discovered that the Sussex Police Authority has deposits of £6.8 million also invested in Icelandic banks, all this on top of Kent, Dorset and Cornwall county councils, as wall as Transport for London. Figures for these and more below.

The Metropolitan Police Authority has told Channel 4 News at Noon that it is “urging the government to guarantee local authorities and police authorities against any potential losses.”

In a statement to Channel 4 News at Noon the MPA confirmed their investment of “£30 million invested in an Icelandic bank” saying:

“Local authorities and police authorities are obliged to invest responsibly and deposit money in a wide range of banks and other financial institutions, after independent advice and within strict guidelines, to make sure that any risk is spread and there is no impact on the taxpayer.”

And: “The MPA is by statute constituted as a local authority and as part of the GLA family, the Association of Police Authorities (APA) and the Local Government Association (LGA) will be urging the government to guarantee local authorities and police authorities against any potential losses.”

Continues: “The MPA fully supports the LGA’s call to the government to extend to local authorities and police authorities, who have prudently managed council tax payers’ money, the same assurances as given to the public that money invested in accordance with the law, and the government’s own guidance, will be fully protected.” 

FIGURES:

METROPOLITAN POLICE AUTHORITY - £30 million

SUSSEX POLICE AUTHORITY - £6.8 million

TRANSPORT FOR LONDON - £40 million

KENT COUNTY COUNCIL - £50 MILLION

DORSET COUNTY COUNCIL - £28.1 million

CORNWALL COUNTY COUNCIL - £5 MILLION

CEREDIGION COUNTY COUNCIL - £5.5 MILLION

WAKEFIELD COUNCIL HAD £9 MILLION

BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: £5 MILLION

POWYS COUNTY COUNCIL - £4 MILLION

RHONDDA CYNON TAF COUNTY BOROUGH COUNCIL - £3 MILLION

Ends

For further information contact:

Press Desk 020 7 430 4220 / News Desk 020 7 430 4601

http://www.channel4.com/news/

CREDIT CHANNEL 4 NEWS AT NOON WITH ALL MATERIAL USED

09 October 2008

I find the use of video in social media absolutely fascinating at the moment. When to use it, how to make people aware its there, what is the quality threshold in different circumstances.

According to Freshnetworks

We find that different community members will want to engage and express themselves in different ways, and so allowing them to do this will maximise participation. It’s also a great way to build engagement between the brand and the community - letting them see inside an organisation; video can break down the barriers between brand and customer. It’s an effective way of conveying content as it often encourages more personal and more efficient presentation of ideas. Finally, video can be easily shared and so has a great viral effect.

The Tories have used video in an interesting way, learning from the US that seeing ‘behind the scenes’ can help break down barriers. OK, OK its still scripted but it ‘feels’ different. And a big part of persuading me to vote is about how I feel rather than sitting down and analysing the policies.

Christian Mahne, from my old employers Lansons, had some interesting comments on a recent corp comms initiative from Budweiser.

When it comes to content, we as an industry need to move our clients away from soft pre-agreed lines of questioning towards more credible, editorially rigorous discussion. This is where Cantos slips a little. The impact of Brito’s clips is lessened because they don’t tell us much we didn’t already know or expect.

Content is nothing without distribution. Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton but takeovers like this are won in front of computers and TV screens. These days, whether you’re a player or a pundit, you go to the internet first for more information. In a world where perception is reality, Cantos won the battle for shareholder hearts and minds by presenting a multimedia onslaught of InBev’s point of view, unopposed. It did it through the microsite, its own website and syndication partners. A good campaign well executed.

Personal Branding on the Social Web

Why, I wondered does Neville Hobson hold his hand in front of his face in the picture on his blog…and on Twitter…and on…hang on a minute.

Is this a subtle form of personal branding?  Social networks; Facebook, Linked-In and microblogs like Twitter are growing fast and individuals are, if not clamouring for our attention, at least aware that there is a lot of noise out there.  If we are going to build an individual online presence it makes sense to follow some of the tradional rules of branding.  Consistency is one, which means using the same image across a range of networks.  Using a strong, stand out and easy to remember image is another.  Pr 2.0 gurus Todd Defren  and Brian Solis  both do this - Todd has a cartoon style image on his Twitter feed and Brian uses an arresting image with his specs in the foreground on his blog.  

Chris Brogan has just published an ebook on personal online branding so it’s a hot topic.  It’s an interesting read and looks at personal branding from a broad prespective.  What particularly fascinates me is the way in which people apply the iconographic rules that have histrically been used by brands totheir own images of themselves.  

This world has created some rules of its own.  Take a look at the picture above of some of the people I follow on Twitter.  These images are tiny, smaller than thumbnails, so making something work at this scale becomes part of the art.  Colin Byrne  CEO of Weber Shandwick and Deirdre Breakenridge author of the book PR 2.0 both use strong purple colours in their backgrounds to make them stand out.  Aleks Krotoski , presenter of The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast uses a close up of her fire red locks as her Twitter image (fifth row, left of middle).

I have no proof that any of these individuals have done anything other than post the first image they came across but whether by luck or good judgement they all stand out.  I have to confess I have toyed with the technique myself.  There is a deliberate use of colour in my profile pic and it seemed to me that if social networks use small images an extreme close up might be a good idea.  Charles Arthur Technology Editor of The Guardian didn’t agree.  He thinks I’m trying to hide a dodgy moustache. 

I often talk about how politicians can use new media to connect better to Party members. Here’s an enterprising Tory who has set up Tory Radio, an online radio station dedicated to doing just that. In the spirit of Tories online, here’s Iain Dale  interviewing him on Telegraph TV.

The eyes of the world’s media are trained on Denver, the scene of the Democrat National Convention (DNC), where Barack Obama aims to show everyone that he can hold the most powerful (elected) role on the planet. You would expect it to be a media circus but lets peak behind the curtains a bit.

This race has seen relations with the blogosphere professionalised in a way that holds many lessons for corporate and public bodies over here in the UK. Here’s an example. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is investing big in a media centre for bloggers at the DNC. Highlights;

 Google Inc. will help set up a two-story, 8,000 square-foot headquarters for hundreds of bloggers descending on the Democratic convention in Denver next week, and it will offer similar services at the Republican convention in September, as new media gain influence in politics.With its financial support for the “Big Tent” blogger facility at the Democratic convention, Google stands to gain exposure and goodwill from 500 or so bloggers who paid $100 for access to the facility, run by a coalition of bloggers. Google’s software and services will be featured, including a kiosk in the public area of the tent where anyone can post videos on YouTube. “Four years ago, YouTube hadn’t been founded yet. Now, it will have booths at each convention to help delegates and bloggers upload videos taken on the floor or at events around town.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for us. You don’t get all these people in one place but every four years,” says Robert Boorstin, director of corporate and policy communications in Google’s Washington office and a former Clinton administration official.

Not only will bloggers have Internet access, workspaces and couches for napping in the “Big Tent” headquarters, they will be provided food and beverages, Google-sponsored massages, smoothies and a candy buffet. On the final night of the convention, Google is co-sponsoring a bash with Vanity Fair magazine for convention-goers and journalists that has become one of the hottest party invites.

Google will offer similar amenities for bloggers and new-media reporters who attend the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., company officials say. It will demo a variety of new political tools next week, including a search function on YouTube that will offer almost real-time keyword searches of convention speech videos.

The fascinating bit is that McCain’s team actually have set up base just a few blocks from the convention centre to counter the messaging! What does that involve? Well, you hire a big venue, invite all your mainstream media chums (don’t really have to invite - they’ll come automatically once you tell them where you’re gonna be), give bloggers free hotel rooms, and make sure you’ve got big trucks with satellite dishes on them.

Also bring along a few protestors who have some beef with Obama (either they’re “pro-Hillary” or “pro-life” or something or other), and then bring a few far left anarchist protestors as well (just to spice things up). Then go around the city and shake hands and kiss babies, making you look like the man on the street, and the black guy is made to look like an elitist rock-star.

They’ve set up this site as a focus for the ‘counter-messaging’ (great American-type term that will inevitably surface here!).

They’ve posted the reaction from Fox News’ Brit Hume on the home page:

“What’s interesting about this to me is I have never seen the campaign that is idle, if you will, during the other candidate’s nominating convention have as much of an impact before, and I think it owes something to the phenomenon of these what we call ads, and I guess in some broad sense they are. But what they really are, are Internet videos that are being published to the Internet and they spread around in this day and age very quickly and are probably as good as paid ads and I guess there’s some paid advertising going on. But, this is, wouldn’t you say Carl, from your experience, that this has been remarkable the extent to which the McCain camp has succeeded in intervening, so to speak, in this convention?”

At the moment, the blog I most look forward to checking out when I get in in a morning is the excellent Todd Defren. This post builds on two themes close to my heart; profiling individuals, which I love, in terms of championing causes, profile opps in the nationals, op-eds; and use of content in social media.

At Staniforth Towers we are having a really interesting debate about content standards for different media. We know that video that can be used by bloggers won’t need to be ITV quality and every image won’t need to be David Bailey but its knowing what is expected by publishers and what is still expected by clients. We’re pushing boundaries all the time and its the right debate to have.

There’s an argument to say that the quality standard is also dictated by the situation you are in and the demands of deadline. Todd uses the example of exploiting a speaker opp with a busy CEO….

• Interview the CEO in the car on the way to the event, with your Flipcam.

• Hustle the CEO into a quiet conference room for an impromptu podcast.

• Document hallway chatter and interview the conference attendees before/after the CEO’s keynote speech (“What are you hoping to hear today?  Did the speech meet expectations?”).

• Film or livestream and/or liveblog/tweet the speech itself… while monitoring and responding to other tweets by fellow conference attendees.

• Share this content all along the way, and monitor responses; interacting directly with users; answering questions, etc.

Would your CEO be happy to have an interview syndicated that is done via your mobile phone? Would love more views on this issue…..

Cuil, pronounced ’cool’, was launched yesterday as a new challenger to Google.  The credentials were good, big money backing and a number of ex-Google staffers on the team.  Despite, or perhaps because of the barrage of publicity, the launch has been widely regarded as a flop.  Why? Because the volume of coverage generated such a volume of traffic that the site couldn’t cope.  It ran slowly and some of the search results were surprising.   

I tried an acid test.  I searched for ‘Cuil’ in Google.  A news story on the launch appeared at number 1 and the site itself was at number two.  I then searched for ‘Cuil’ in Cuil; no such luck.  Towns and villages in Sligo, French cuisine, Lochaber, scenic sights in Scotland and even some Gaelic results but no search engine came up and it was definitely lacking in ‘Cuil’.   

Have a look at another search engine called Scour.  It launched very recently with far less of a fanfare but it’s interesting because it aggregates searches from other engines; Google, Yahoo and MSN.  It is also the first social media search engine because it allows users to rate searches which should improve its functionality over time.  Now search for  ’Scour’ in Cuil and it comes in at number one!  What’s more is Scour actually pays registered users for every search they carry out.  Now my money’s on that.