Meet the Professionals
Posted by johnweet in Public Relations on March 3, 2010
I was at a meet the professionals evening last night at Bournemouth university. It was just like speed dating (not that I would know of course). Picture if you will a group of PR Professionals sitting at various tables around a room. A whistle blows and a group of students descend on each professional. The professional has just ten minutes to explain the type of PR work that they do and then to answer as many questions as they can.
The students use the event to gain an insight into agency and in-house life as well as understanding what it is like to work in the industry. They also use it to make connections so that when they are looking for placements or their first jobs they have a stack of business cards as a starting point.
This is the third or fourth time I have done this and I always find them great fun. It is good to meet so many enthusiastic people just starting out on their careers. They were all, without exception, keen and eager for knowledge. As a professional in the industry I feel it is part of my duty to attend these events but you do generally see the same professionals there. A shame, if some of the others in the area attended they just might get to enjoy themselves too.
Why did I enter the PR profession
Posted by johnweet in Public Relations on January 16, 2010
I have been asked many times why I entered the PR profession after having spent so many years in Engineering. I was asked again this week when I was lecturing at Bournemouth University to a group of MA students. My rather Flippant answer was “mid life crisis, bought a motorbike and changed career”.
Me at aged 16
I thought about this later and started thinking about my career to date. At 16, after taking my exams, I was all set to go on to sixth form college and then on to Uni. Despite getting good exams results I decided that I wanted to leave full time education and earn money. I opted for an engineering apprenticeship and eventually progressed to being a “fitter turner”. A 5 year, part-time college course also gave me the mechanical Engineering theory to support my practical experience.
It was at the age of 21 that I moved into an office based Engineering role. The next ten years saw me change roles every two years, gaining experience and responsibility as I went. I moved through product engineering, quality engineering, service centre management, project management and then into sales. After some time in sales I moved into a customer support role, acting as a consultant to some of the major processing plants in the south of the UK. These included Exxon, BP, Dow, Elf, Mobil, National Power to name but a few. I also gained an MBA along the way.
This takes me up to my mid-life-crisis. I knew that I wanted to do something different but wasn’t sure what. My sales role had moved me away from the main hub’s of the business, moving wasn’t an option so continuing my career with my existing employer was out of the question. I managed to negotiate a leaving package without having anything else lined up to go to. It was at this point that I was approached by the marketing communications agency I work for now. Following a couple of interviews I found myself working in PR without really understanding what it was all about.
The transition was easy because our agencies main client is my ex employer. It was easy to write about products and technologies that I knew intimately. A CIPR diploma in Public Relations added to my knowledge and enabled me to understand more about the public relations role other than just writing press releases.
Now I get to the point of this long ramble. I did stumble in to PR – the same as I stumbled into every position I held. I didn’t have a career plan in mind when I left school, however if somebody had written out a plan for me all those years ago that followed the route I had taken it would have all made sense. I can see that each role I have had has built on the one I held previously and made me the person I am today.
I believe I am fairly unique in our industry, I can go talk to the engineers and understand what they are talking about, I can go talk to management and understand what their goals are, how they link to the overall business goals and what affect they have on the bottom line. I can then take that information and structure a press release or an article that is relevant to the readership. I can put together a campaign plan that truly addresses the needs of the business. I am comfortable and confident in what I do with our technology clients.
Other PR professionals may choose a different route to get to the end destination. Coming back to the PR students I was talking to this week, they are choosing to start their career in public relations, and who would blame them I think it is an excellent career choice. What they will have to remember though is that in order to be comfortable and confident with their clients they will need to invest considerable amounts of time and energy in understanding their clients businesses. After all, I spent 30 years understanding mine.
Something different
Posted by johnweet in Public Relations on January 6, 2010
My brother Chris has stammered for all of his life. There is no doubt that it affected his education and also his social life. There were times that his stammering was so bad that, as a brother, it was painful to watch.
He hasn’t “got over it”, that is something most stammerers never do, what he has done is to learn to control it.
He has been attending group therapy sessions for a while and he suggested that they stage a public speaking event. this would have the double benefit of giving members of the group the opportunity to face some of their fears by speaking in public. It would also give them the opportunity to explain to others what it is like to live with a stammer and how they should deal with people that stammer when talking to them. Chris was given the task of arranging the event.
I was asked to help out by writing and issuing a press release, which I was of course happy to do. I wrote two releases in the end. One aimed at people who may wish to speak at the event and another to attract attendees.
My normal subject matter is engineering and technology products and applications so it was great to get my teeth into something different.
I issued the release to about 20 relevant outlets. The day after sending it Chris received a call asking for an interview, which he duly gave. This interview resulted in almost a full page of coverage. I believe there was more print coverage too and also radio mentions. Had I had more lead time prior to the event I would also have reached out to a couple of bloggers and a UK stammering group on Face-book.
Cutting courtesy of KM Media
The event itself was well attended and seemed to go very well (unfortunately due to other commitments i was unable to attend). Chris sent me a letter telling me about the event. Some of the experiences that stammerers have to contend with are dreadful. One guy was on the bus trying to ask for a ticket when the driver laughed at him. He was so embarrassed he had to get off. Another was once punched in the face just because he stammered.
My brother worked hard to stage this event and will be putting on more. I was just pleased that I could contribute in some small way to it’s success and also pleased to be able to extend myself by tackling an unfamliar subject.
Official government apologies
Posted by johnweet in Public Relations on November 16, 2009
I’ve just been watching Kevin Rudd the australian PM on the television, apologising for the uk kids that were shipped out there years ago with the promise of a better life.
I do wonder what these official apologies for crimes of previous governments are all about. They are after all totally meaningless, or am I in the minority for thinking that.
Does anybody ever take comfort from them, or are they just a PR stunt? If they are a PR stunt what are they trying to achieve, what message are they trying to give out.? The only message I take away from it is that the government will bow to pressure from any minority group.
They would do far better just standing up and saying they will not apologise for crimes they did not commit. It would certainly raise them in my estimation.
Twitter and why do people follow
Posted by johnweet in Social media on November 6, 2009
Whenever I get a twitter follow notification I always go and look at the persons profile to a) understand why they would want to follow me and b) to see if they are worth following. I got a notification telling me that Grant Shapps was following me.
“Grant who” I thought and clicked through to his profile
Grant Shapps is a politician and his constituency is round to the North of London whereas I am based right down on the South coast in Ringwood, 105 miles away. I cannot possibly believe that I have anything to say that Grant may find interesting and I do not think I have any interest in what he might want to say.
I do wonder whether he is just playing the numbers game rather than being really targeted and taking the time to look for people that it may be worthwhile connecting with.
Exxon Mobil ads, what is the point?
Posted by johnweet in Marketing communications on November 3, 2009
Working in the marketing communications industry I do tend to analyse marketing campaigns that I see a little more than other people may do, and probably more than I should, I must learn to switch off.
The latest campaign to catch my eye has been the ExxonMobil campaign. ExxonMobil have ads running on TV and also in print. The TV ads appear on mainstream channels and although maybe not prime time they are in good time slots. I have seen the print ad in “The Week”, a UK magazine that summarises the weeks news from around the globe.
Now these ads are well executed and as they relate to an industry I know a fair bit about I find them interesting. What I don’t understand is why are they advertising in this way?
For those of you reading this who are not from the UK you need to understand that the ExxonMobil name is not well known amongst UK consumers. Fuel retail for ExxonMobil is handled through a subsidiary called Esso (I was once told that this name came about during the war because Exxon sounded too Germanic). I don’t actually think ExxonMobil sell any goods to consumers in the UK under that name.
We have a huge petrochemical complex that we can see from our office window here in Southampton. The complex consists of an ExxonMobil chemical plant, an Esso refinery and a handful of other companies. Except for those people living on the doorstep of the plants, most people in the area call this complex the Esso refinery.
This brings me back to my point. Why are they bothering to advertise under the ExxonMobil name in the way that they are? If they want consumers to change their behaviour then it is not going to happen. The only product I know of that they sell direct to the consumer is fuel and most consumers would not equate ExxonMobil to Esso petrol.
If they are aiming the ads at purchasers of their synthetic rubbers, polythene, zeolite catalysts etc then why advertise in mainstream media. There aren’t that many suppliers of these products in the world and any purchaser worth his salt will know where to go to get them.
If they are aiming it at the financial markets then why use consumer media, why not the FT (which for all I know they may be in) or other suitable outlets.
There may be a grand master plan that will all come clear in the end but from where I’m sitting at the moment it looks very much like these ads have been conceived in the US and thrust upon the UK without anybody attempting to understand consumer perception of the brand or asking what they are trying to actually achieve.
Managing a clients reputation
Posted by johnweet in Public Relations on July 27, 2009
No blog posts for several weeks then two at once. I was visiting a client in Aberdeen last week as part of my day job. As you would expect with them being in Aberdeen, they are involved in the oil and gas industry.
This company are specialists in Oil and Gas measurement. Now I would not have expected there to be a similarity between the service that they offer their clients and the service that our agency offers but there is. One thing that I was told over and over is that they manage their clients reputation, just as we in the PR industry do.
The reputation of an oil and gas company can be damaged if the amount of oil or gas they report as being delivered to the pipeline differs (within a defined tolerance) from the amount the pipeline operator receives. A consistently different reading can mean that the pipeline operator bans them access to the pipe unless they sort it out. This, in effect, shuts them down. My client ensures this does not happen, protecting their reputation.
Not all their customers see it like that because it depends on the level of that person in the organisation, however this is one of the messages we have been tasked with getting across.
It did occur to me that as this is about reputation maybe one of our target audiences should be the PR departments of their potential customers. How do you think this would work, one PR person talking to another? Is this a non-starter or a good idea? Is the link with reputation too tenuous for an in-house PR person to take notice?
When will PR professionals get up to speed on social media?
Posted by johnweet in Public Relations, Social media on July 25, 2009
I was on a domestic flight today and used the time to catch up on some reading. I was reading a CIPR profile magazine from earlier this year in which they were reporting on the CIPR marketing communications seminar. A show of hands revealed that less than 20 percent of the people there were up to speed digitally. I’m not surprised but I am also a little shocked.
I am shocked that more PR professionals are not getting up to speed. I admit that I am a little scared that I will get left behind in this revolution and that I won’t be able to offer a full range of services to my clients when they ask for it, or even worse that they won’t ask me they will just go somewhere else. If I am scared then why aren’t more people?
Here in the Wessex region of the UK the local CIPR group are trying to do our bit. We arranged a social media fast facts workshop this week. The event was based on Pecha Kucha where each presenter gets 20 slides to present his topic, but here was the challenge, each slide changed automatically after 20 seconds, whether you had finished or not. This really did make for a fast paced and fun event.
We had six speakers who were, in order of appearance:-
Tom Chapman of Headstream presenting a case study on Samsung football.
Heather Yaxley of Greenbanana presenting blogging.
Yours truly presenting twitter
Darren Lilleker of Bournemouth University presenting how politicians are using social media
Dan Kerins of the Southampton daily echo on how they are engaging with their publics through social media
and finally Luke Williams of social tech solutions on Evaluation, Metrics and ROI of social media.
The event was hosted by Five by Five digital in Southampton and was well attended by 33 people. But, with a total CIPR membership in our region of 300 this is still only 10 per cent. If the 20 percent figure from earlier on is correct and if we were to assume that all people who attended were new to the subject then that still leaves 70 percent of our membership who may not be engaged. I know the maths is simplistic and relies on assumptions but it is still a large number that are not engaged in social media. What are thy going to do if a client or boss asks them about it?
If they want to offer a full integrated campaign then they will soon have to show that they have at least considered social media. they may consider that some of this stuff is a flash in the pan and will have a limited life but what they do need to remember, as Luke Williams told our group on Wednesday is, that the tools may fade and die but the concept will remain. The public are used to instant communications and it is unlikely they will ever settle for anything less. PR professionals will need to get up to speed at some point or risk losing clients and / or a job. This may sound like scaremongering but I believe it to be a fact.
All slides from the event are available here
Just started getting spam comments on my blog…
Posted by johnweet in Social media on May 30, 2009
I’ve had a blog for a while now but have only just started getting spammed. Why is that? Does this mean that my blog is more visible now so should I be pleased? Or is there another reason for it? How do these people choose a blog to target? Is there any way I can block this from happening other than highlighting them as spam when I get them.
Social Media marketing can get you into a mess…..
Posted by johnweet in Public Relations, Social media on May 27, 2009
…. that PR has to dig you out of.
I was having a conversation with Heather Yaxley last night about companies using Social media. We were saying about how there are many companies out there who are purporting to be experts in Social media and who are offering to put together marketing plans that use these new tools for their clients. We were agreeing that for some companies this could prove to be very dangerous territory to enter.
Heather suggested that it is all too easy for marketeers to get their clients into a mess on social media and then they need PR professionals to dig themselves out of it.
Interesting then that I saw a tweet from Sam Shepherd at the Bournemouth daily Echo this morning pointing me to a URL on the Guardian web site about Neals Yard Remedies. Not strictly social media, but relevant to our discussions all the same. The whole point of the page was that people could ask questions of Neals Yard about their ethics and Neals Yard would then respond.
The result, hundreds of tricky questions and no response from Neals Yard, despite being chased by the page moderator who posted as follows:-
“have just had a chat with NYR.
Unfortunately, despite previous assurances that they would be participating in this blog post, I’ve now been told they ‘will not be taking part in the debate’.
So yes, as several people have pointed out, this has become something of ‘You Ask’, rather than a ‘You Ask, They Answer’. I’m still hoping NYR will reconsider.”
Some poor PR person has a lot of work on his hands to restore any sort of credibility to their name now. Neals Yard may just dismiss it and say “it’s only one web site it doesn’t matter” but the power of social media is that this story is now being tweeted and re tweeted and it will grow I am sure.