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Getting Ahead of Online Issues
Those who know me personally, and who follow me on Twitter (@JamesBigg), will be aware that one of my major passions is football – or soccer, as it’s known this side of the Atlantic. Having lived in the UK for 30 years, I was brought-up on a staple diet of Saturday afternoon football action, usually watching my local team Norwich City FC. In later life I would enjoy the privilege of working for them as part of their PR team before moving to Canada.
Anyway, this week, the club – who were promoted to the English Premier League last month after a truly incredible season – made widespread headlines away from the football field in the UK media when they banned one of their supporters from their Carrow Road stadium for racism.
No more Secrets? Social Media’s Itchy Trigger Finger
The days of the news embargo are numbered…
Traditional media took another big hit last week after social media led discussion and debate around two major events. Not only was the death of Osama Bin Laden tweeted ahead of the US President’s official statement to the globe (including by his own staffers!) but preliminary Canadian federal election results were released via social media ahead of approval by Elections Canada. Read more »
Be Heard Above The Noise – What’s Your Story?
A GOOD TIME TO BE A MINER
I had the chance in early March to attend the PDAC (Prospector & Developers Association of Canada) Conference in Toronto. With commodities prices soaring, the mining sector is seeing a renaissance and the giddy mood of the 28,000 miners at the event is reflective of these better times! Money is flowing, companies are able to get financing for their projects and along with it, and dollars are also being spent again on communications, usually one of the first things to fall off the table when times get tough. Read more »
An Army of Ambassadors
Occasionally, when we present a client with a robust communications plan, chock-a-block full of public engagement strategies, we get the “deer in the headlights look” and an exasperated “we can’t deliver on this plan, we don’t have the manpower!”. The irony of this is that every company we propose an aggressive approach to actually does have the resources to engage the public, in the form of a built-in-army of ambassadors, AKA your employee base. A group of committed, engaged, educated and loyal people, many of whom are proud of what they do and proud of you as their employer. Read more »
Conundrums That Can (And Will) Happen
We are professional. We are cutting edge. We are unsung and consistently original. We are prepared for anything in this great melting pot of communications. We are the blurred line, the peak of the graph. We are PR professionals.
However, that’s not to say we aren’t without fault(s), right?
Listed below are some of the blunders, follies, and less than pretty experiences you are sure to come across at some point in your early PR days. These are taken from firsthand experience.
…Or, more appropriately, red-faced experience.
My New Year New Media Resolutions
The New Year for many of us is a time of reflection, however brief, upon what is working in our lives and what might be worth changing. I’ve never been a huge believer of waiting till the beginning of a new year to change something, however, I am fond of confirming a path for the coming year, if not the next few months. With social media, the buzz about it and the sheer pace of change in the communications environment, here are my 2011 new media resolutions. Read more »
The Art of Numbers
A lot of people ask me what I do at Edelman, and sometimes I find it hard to explain unless they themselves work in the industry. Although I’m an Account Executive on the Digital team, my title doesn’t truly capture what I do. In fact, I’m something of a jack-of-all-trades. I do a little bit of community management, content development for Twitter, and online monitoring, not to mention my passion (and what truly confuses people): web analytics.
Read more »
Say Nothing Right Now, But Keep Your Options Open
I sometimes surprise my clients to by telling them not to step in to the social media arena – right now. It’s a tough message to deliver when companies see everyone else around them, including competitors, with a Facebook fan page or a Twitter feed or You Tube channel. And while at Edelman, we do advocate that every company can be a media company and create their own content, I caution clients to think critically about and answer the question why they think social media is right for them and why they want to get in now. Read more »
Short Term Pain for Long Term Gain
I recently had a new clean tech client approach Edelman with a request to issue a press release and get media coverage for a new initiative they were very proud of. While I agreed that the announcement was impressive and appreciated the opportunity to gain the new business, I struggled with declining the chance to work with them as a one-off assignment, primarily because there was not a commitment from the client at the time to rethink their approach and step back and do some pre-work to ensure success. I told the client that unless they were willing to do the pre-work required to ensure long-term success I could not help them with this task. Read more »
My night at the Websters
If I could re-write the ending of the second Sex and the City Movie, in which Middle Eastern women are portrayed as oppressed, I would write it using Adrienne Arsenault’s food poisoning experience in Iran. Arsenault, a CBC Foreign Correspondent, was on assignment when she found herself pulling over to the side of the road suffering from the effects of bad street food. Read more »
“Creepy!”
Creepy. Stalker. Ick. These are the responses I‘ve received when telling my friends and peers about Facebook’s new “Friendship Pages”. Let me explain why… Read more »
What I learned playing Angry Birds
I attended a black tie fundraiser for Canuck Place Children’s Hospice last night and I left the event thinking about games designed for play on social networks like Facebook.
As one of the guests at my table was a Facebook game designer, this might not come as a complete surprise. But as someone that didn’t know Facebook even had games, maybe just a little.
I was particularly interested because he told me women of a certain age are one of the key targets for game designers – and that certain age isn’t all that far from my own.
Continue reading on Pattism.com
Your book club just went global
As a closet writer myself, I was intrigued this week by a new “app” created by innovative San Francisco author, Stephen Elliott. The app is essentially, his book in its entirety. People who buy the app are then given access to a community of other readers of the book as well as the author himself, like virtual book club or a guest reading at a local café…only without the need to be in one place at one time. Read more »
Changing Landscape of Public Permission
I remember exactly when I had my first public consultation epiphany – March 25, 2008.
A BC independent power developer was holding a public open house for a project proposed to be built in an area well known for its fishing and recreation value – the project also required the removal of land from a provincial park. The project was working its way through the environmental assessment process when it became the de-facto poster child for everything that opponents stated was wrong with the independent power development industry. Read more »