« November 2008 | Main | January 2009 »
At a time when Omnicom is rumoured to be about to cut 3,500 communications jobs, nearly 5% of its global staff, PR Week is still running a headline story on its UK online edition “Recession? What recession?”
Omnicom has apparently been hit by account losses and the downturn of the US car industry which used to represent some of its biggest clients.
Apple says shows were “no longer relevant”, even though they have been a dazzling showcase for the company’s latest wow products.
Fans of Macworld will be disappointed at the news, not only because of the many new products which have been launched at the event, but because of the equally stunning personal presentation each year by Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. One year, answering concerns at his slimmer look, he appeared in front of a giant screen that displayed the words "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated".
An Ofcom briefing last week chillingly spelled out the future for traditional newspapers with the fact that a growing percentage of advertising revenue is being lost to online.
This week the chill set in when the Tribute Newspaper Group in the US (which owns the renowned Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times) filed for protection from bankruptcy.
We know that newspapers are already struggling because of the twin effects of falling circulation and declining adspend. Clearly newspaper groups are going to be hit harder still by the global recession.
I like to think that famous newspaper titles, and the influence and importance of newspapers, both in reporting news and being the voice of the people, can survive. However the future could be the adoption of a digital strategy which migrates newspapers as we know them, with their heavy production costs, from paper to web based titles only.
But it is not only the recession which is driving change. Consumer behaviour, led by a revolution in digital technology has changed from the halcyon days of the Daily Mirror in the UK once selling more than 5 million copies a day. Now digital communications has resized daily life. The emergence of a single digital handheld device, effectively a pocket sized computer, means that people can have all the news – when they want it.
For communications professionals – wherever they operate geographically – the Tribune news is an important reminder of the need for multi-channel PR programmes, with digital likely to emerge as the new “substitute newspaper” in people’s lives.
Don’t believe it? Take a look at the BBC’s clever and powerful “do you remember where you were when….” TV campaign, evoking images of the Kennedy assassination, the collapse of the Berlin Wall, etc. It reminds people that all the news from the BBC news website (or newspaper websites for that matter), can be delivered right to the handheld device in their pocket.
Good to see how an organisation uses research to listen to its customers and take action. In this case the result is retail bravery, led by Wal-Mart in bringing back the time honoured greeting “Merry Christmas” to customers in all its stores. The greeting “Happy Holidays” may have appeased the multi-cultural PC world we live in but it just does not ring true. Wal-Mart is honest enough to say that it “learned” from protests including a boycott of its stores by some religious groups last year. I love the quote from Wal-Mart’s spokesperson: “We're not afraid to use the term 'Merry Christmas.' We'll use it early, and we'll use it often." Wal-Mart stores will play Christmas carols throughout the holiday period and about 60 percent more merchandise will be labelled as "Christmas" rather than "holiday" items.
We've known for a while that today’s PR professionals can become media management experts by surrounding themselves with the right tracking tools. I used to think RSS was amazing – like being back on a daily newspaper news desk. However I love this news map from the BBC because it shows on a continuously updated basis, the top stories in any region of the world. The screen grab happens to show the UK earlier this afternoon.
What it does is give you a picture of what people are rating to be the most important stories on the BBC website. It is just that - a picture but a useful one at that and what's important is that it puts the communications professional and therefore his clients, "in the know" about the most popular stories of the day. What is interesting is to click on different geographies to find how many of the same stories are emerging worldwide.
Meanwhile, this is free and has the credibility of the BBC behind it.
The original Stanford University Mouse design - so named because it had a squiggle like the tail of a mouse!
Ever paused for minute as you attack the keyboard to wonder what your mouse says about you? (well it is a very different type of survey, for sure!). Are you a traditionalist, who favours a plug in model, or do you like the flashier wireless models. Or, maybe you don't think about it at all, as I suspect, because it's "just there". It's a commodity.
Time for a "hats off" to Logitech and the mighty mouse. Logitech has just produced the one billionth computer mouse! You only have to look at the picture above to realize the mouse has come a long way since the early model was developed by researchers at Stanford University and already tech experts are forecasting its demise. But I'm still intrigued? Will the mouse increasingly become a generational driven choice with the younger end of the market seduced by newer touch screen options with the traditionalists staying with the mouse? It will be interesting to see.
• …the global communications market is worth £876 billion? • …there were 88 million new mobile subscriptions added in China last year? • …the average American spent 15 hours online each week in 2007? • …the internet made up 19% of total adspend in the UK last year? • …people in Poland listen to nearly 5 hours of radio every day? • …in Ireland, each person sends an average of 154 texts per month? • …37% of Italian households do not have a fixed line
These facts came out at a breakfast briefing today organised by Bite Communications in a presentation by Steve Gettings and Sam Carter from Ofcom on its annual research on international communications. What it proved beyond doubt is the phenomenal speed and uptake of communications change and how different nationalities use, or rather embrace, different communications platforms.
Here are some nuggets from this remarkable piece of research where the speed of growth of mobile communications in particular is just staggering:
· There has been dramatic growth in mobile connections in developing countries. China added 88 million connections in the 12 months of the research study, followed by India with 84 million new connections.
· The Italians love their mobile phone with the highest take up in the 7 markets studied.
· Everyone loves texting but especially in Poland! The market is showing enormous growth, led by Poland with a fantastic 90% growth rate. People in the Republic of Ireland send the most texts – an average of 154 texts each month!
· The Americans love the web! The US spends most time on line: an average of 15.2 hours a week, compared to the UK (14 hours); France (13.2 hours), Italy (8.7 hours) and Spain (7.5 hours).
· The favourite web brand is Google in all markets surveyed except Japan where the no. 1 is Yahoo!
· For the first time, advertising no longer makes up the majority of global TV revenue…being overtaken as a revenue source by a combination of subscriptions and public funding.
· There are now clear signs that internet is taking a growing share of adspend in many countries, led at the moment by the UK, followed by Sweden and then the US
A slide presentation of the research findings is available at http://www.slideshare.net/comment.ofcom/international-communications-market-2008-presentation
With so much change, it sets me thinking – will 2009 be remembered as the Year of ROI? The year when the expectation was clearly established by the economic climate for agencies to prove their value. In other words, it will be the year when smart PR agencies demonstrate a multi channel approach, prove their understanding and the client’s need for a digital strategy and are able to prove the value of the work through measurement and evaluation? I think this could happen, which is why the winners will be PR companies which have a deep understanding of rapidly changing consumer communications behaviour.
It always fascinates me the amount of passion for change that is in the air when you get a small group of knowledgeable communications professionals talking about the future of PR in the “new media” landscape. Thanks to the CIPR and AMEC member company Metrica for sponsoring the latest discussion opportunity.
It served for me as one of those filtering processes where I saw clarity like this:
· PR owns the communications message so it would be logical it should also own the new channel of digital communications/new media/social media or whatever it is called.
· So why isn’t PR taking this leadership opportunity?
· It’s time that a group of skilled communicators worldwide came up with a descriptor that would enable us to banish the often confusing tags of new media/social media, online media that serve to muddy the real job at hand, which is to:
· Educate the client community of this exciting new challenge as a PR channel and opportunity and demonstrate to brand managers, in particular, what they do not realise is being said in online conversations about their brand.
· PR teams need to organise themselves to sell the benefits of online communications and how it forms a valuable part of a multi channel programme before the sales promotion and advertising agencies create a new business to replace the business they have already lost.
· Evaluation agencies should be the PR agency’s partner in the education process, able to demonstrate to clients that digital communications can be measured.
It’s worth saying that the point about the need for the client community to be convinced of the “new” future that is digital communications is a big one. Colin Farrington, the CIPR Director General, said he was constantly surprised at the lack of a digital element in award entries he had seen. Ditto from me. I have also just reviewed a PR RFP for a major multinational recently which although perhaps extreme as an example, again showed that many clients are still in the comfort zone of “traditional media”, even though newspaper circulations worldwide are in decline because there was nothing in the scope for online at all.
Recent Comments