It doesn’t take a genius to tell you how brilliant mobile phones are in this day and age. And so I guess that’s why I’m here writing this blog. The developments in smart phone technology over the last four years alone have been outstanding; we have seen four distinct iterations of, and are rapidly approaching a fifth of, arguably, one of the most important devices of the last decade: the iPhone. It currently accounts for 27% of all smart phones used across the world. The iPhone was very much the pioneer in developing what a phone could do; today a phone that functions essentially as a miniaturised netbook is nothing out of the ordinary and is in fact quite commonplace.

The ever-increasing speed of mobile internet has also been a dominant factor in a number of developments, it’s now not a big deal to download music or access online content on the go. Speaking from experience, I’ve found that on the M25 I get internet speed which is comparable to my university broadband connection! (I’m not sure if that’s a compliment to mobile internet or an insult to my ISP, however…) One important factor to keep in note when discussing mobile phones is that the browser apps are advanced enough to essentially be full-fledged replicas of desktop browsers. This means that any kind of online corporate communication can be received on the go and by presumably, a much wider range of users.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of smartphones to consider is the development of the app.

Apps have become prevalent thanks to distribution channels such as the Apple and Android app stores; the Apple store having over 10 billion downloads in total, with the average user having at least 60 apps on their iPhone. There are hundreds of thousands of apps across these distribution channels, featuring uses such as calorie counters, guitar amplifiers and currency convertors. Apps designed for promotional purposes are becoming much more common, too. If there is an upcoming release of a blockbuster film or anticipated product of event then there will most likely be an accompanying app. What’s interesting is that these apps are becoming more and more creative in how they promote their product. If we are, for argument’s sake, to think of these apps as some kind of microsite then traditionally an app for a film would contain some trailers and promotional stills, perhaps a competition of some kind. Much in keeping with the movie, the Inception app instead offers to augment your reality and “experience your life as a dream.” Another film tie-in is the app, Angry Birds Rio, which offers a version of the popular game set in the world of the animated film. (On a separate PR-related note, the app has recently received some user backlash in the form of 1-star reviews because of in-app advertisements which interrupt gameplay. Something to keep in mind!)  The potential creative offerings for PR and communications in this domain are infinite – there are very few limitations in regards to what can be achieved with an app, evidenced by the thousands of ingenious examples on offer.

QR codes were originally created in 1994 in Japan but have only seen widespread popularity in the West in the last few years, most likely linked to the rise of smartphones and relevant decoding software becoming portable. QR codes appear to be an extremely versatile source of transmitting information, they can be any size, from a label on the back of a box to as big as the one pictured above. Additionally, they can provide access to a range of content, from simple web links, to downloading audio or even calling a phone number. One of the main strengths of the QR code seems to be the fact that is can be used as a sort of ‘information supplement’ when used in an area that lacks space, such as a business card.

One of the most interesting uses found for QR codes is on a gravestone to provide additional information about the deceased!

But does the rise of QR codes signal a shift in communications and PR? In my opinion, one of the most pressing issues is the appearance of the QR code. I personally think that they are inherently eye-catching when placed anywhere but are still all very similar; will this raise issues when and if they overtake traditional advertising? No amount of dressing up of the code can change the fact that it has to contain a number of elements and so all codes appear nearly the same when quickly looked at, as most ads and forms of visual communication are. I guess what I’m trying to say is that in time I don’t see QR codes becoming centre-stage in the PR and marketing industry – I believe that they will continue to perform their role as ‘information supplements’, a role which they seem perfectly suited for. PR will still have its place in drawing attention to the QR code which can then redirect the consumer.

In conclusion, smartphones are an area which continues to show increasing creativity and ingenuity in regard to communications tactics. QR codes and Augmented Reality (See my blog on the topic here) are methods of expanding the physical domain to contain more information and appear perfectly suited for public relations, which, along with advertising and marketing, is an industry increasingly centred around how much memorable information can be jammed down a consumer’s throat in as little time as possible. Building advertisements and information into pre-existing physical objects seems to be a great way to catch the eye and achieve just this.

Search Engine Optimisation is a concept which organisations are becoming increasingly aware of; it’s now apparent how important that the process is to driving awareness and sales and seen as being important enough to create a number of jobs! SEO is defined as:

 a subset of search engine marketing which seeks to improve the number and quality of visitors to a web site from “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.

But what actually is SEO? What it essentially boils down to is getting your client’s website as far up in a search engine’s results as possible, when relevant keywords are entered. This is achieved in a number of ways. One of the most common methods is to insert relevant keywords into the content of your site so that it gets picked up on by Google and other search engine’s ‘crawlers’, bots which scour websites for data which is plugged into algorithms which determine a site’s ranking on the search results. Essentially, if your website is www.monstertrucks.com, mention monster trucks a lot. Google provide a great free tool to help you determine the effectiveness of your keywords here.

Another method to increase ranking while also generating traffic seperately is through ‘linking’. Essentially, linking to other sites and getting them to link back to you from their sites is an extremely useful way of making your website more popular, especially if the other sites have a great deal more users. This method is also ‘the main factor major search engines use to rank web sites.’

A great example of how to use SEO is the ‘Compare the Market’ campaign in 2009. One of the main deciding factors behind using ‘Meerkat’ was the fact that it only had a cost-per-click of 5p, compared to the £5 of ‘market’. The cost-per-click is the amount that the host of the website has to pay the search engine each time a user clicks on their site. Therefore, Compare the Meerkat was very successful - both in terms of generating traffic and reducing the cost of the increased traffic load to their site.

My parents have always been there for me, ever since I was about 7 – David Beckham  

The above quote was a result of a Google search for ‘stupid quotes’. I was amazed by some of the celebrities and figures who had spouted utter nonsense when questioned without the aid of a PRO or spokesperson on standby. And now with Twitter, they have a space to say whatever they like and in keeping with the free society in which we live in, be insulted by whosoever chooses to.

Recent victims of the social networking site was West Ham footballer Carlton Cole, who was fined £20,000 by the Football Association after tweeting comments about the Ghana national team, and Liverpool player Ryan Babel, who was fined £10,000 for uploading doctored photos of a referee. One of the problems with giving celebrities direct access to their fans and the world without any preparatory briefing work is that they are as liable to make mistakes as the average joe. But unlike the average joe, thousands of people potentially take in and consider what they’ve said.

One of the main attractions of Twitter is that it gives anyone the opportunity to interact with their favourite celebrities who use the site. While most of the time this results in some great interaction and an obvious PR boost for the celebrity, sometimes things don’t go to plan. Take today for instance - Manchester United player Darren Gibson had been persuaded by his teammates to join the site, and deleted his account after 2 hours because of the volume of abuse he received concerning his (apparent lack of) quality as a footballer. Freedom to interact with the public works both ways and as seen here doesn’t always go as planned!

Giving celebrities the chance to ‘descend’ down and talk to the public on an equal level is a double-edged sword and can as seen above, cause as many PR headaches as it does boost an image. Fortunately for the PR industry, incidents like these also prove just how valuable we PR practitioners are in keeping celebrities out of trouble!

Title taken from a great NYT article here.

“The secret of war lies in the communications” - Napoleon Bonaparte

For thousands of years communication has been the backbone and one of the main deciding factors in any conflict. The side with the most efficient form of communication could convey orders more quickly, organise troop movements and ensure a greater level of intelligence concerning opposing forces. Nowhere is this more relevant in political or societal activism across the globe today. The significance of communication can be seen in the news every day, with some new government scandal or development in the Middle East protests being published.

All it takes these days, in our world of freely-transmitted information, is one person annoyed enough with what he sees and who believes strongly enough in the freedom of information to transfer hundreds of thousands of private US government files and obliterate an international reputation which was seen in recent years as ‘dodgy’ at best, and has taken great pains to rebuild itself in the eyes of the international community throughout the Obama administration. This information was then spread all over the internet via Twitter, Facebook and a number of other sites and methods.

Nobody can contest that Bradley Manning and to a slightly lesser extent, Julian Assange, have broken numerous laws. But who can really object when, amongst other injustices, journalists are being blown apart by trigger-happy gunners? What makes this terrible occurance even worse is the fact that this information would most likely never have come to light if it weren’t for the likes of Manning and Assange, committed to sharing this information with the public.

But bringing governments to account for their actions isn’t the only thing which social networking has helped to achieve over the last few months. Perhaps the most significant achievement of Facebook and especially, Twitter, is the role that the sites have played in the Middle East protests. Facebook played a tremendously important part in the uprising in Egypt, namely in helping to coordinate movements and protests. Twitter and Flickr have also been useful in transmitting updates to the rest of the world, as well as helping to locate and warn others of snipers in areas containing protestors. However this also proved to be a double-edged sword, with the police using similar methods to track down certain figures in the protests.

What does this mean for the realm of corporate communications? The chief concern is that if people can feel passionately enough about a political or societal issue to take action against it, then why can’t they take similar steps about a service or product that they are disatisfied with? There are a number of preexisting examples, some including the ‘Boycott BP’ and the subtly named ‘I HATE THE TOYOTA PRIUS’ Facebook pages. Twitter also provides a great venue for dissatisfied consumers to air their greivances - if enough do so with the same hashtag they can form a trend and continue to grow and grow in size and visibility.

I guess the main lesson that can be learned from social networking being used in some kind of activist fashion is that the best PR stance to take is that of proactivity - always be aware of potential issues that arise to stop them snowballing, resulting in the online equivalent of thousands of civil rights protestors banging on your front door.

Even Rock Stars are entitled to privacy. – Michael Novak

Online privacy is a topic which is encountering an increasingly heated debate in everyday life. More than ever, people are becoming more aware of their ‘visible online profile’ and aren’t afraid of voicing their opinion over the ease of accessing their information. Much of this debate has been centred around Facebook and the steps the site has taken in recent years

to make user’s information more freely accessible by default, as seen in this handy diagram below:

As you can see, these are some massive changes which have been put into place by Facebook. For some, these changes are a major source of concern and outrage. For others, it simply means a few more clicks to return to the status quo. But what effect does this have on those of us in the ‘making people do things and/or selling them stuff’ sector? The simple answer is that violating people’s privacy gives us many new avenues to perform our role.

Marketing has become increasingly more specific and clinical in its inception over time, with increasing identifaction and segmentation becoming the norm and becoming so thorough as to develop such definitions as ‘microtrends’. This movement towards more individual marketing, in this case on Facebook, has been helped tremendously by the data that Facebook collects from its users and then sells on. For example, my Facebook adverts are tailored around the fact that I am a PR student with media contact software, dating sites because I’m single and also a number of adverts for bands and artists that I’ve liked on my profile page. While it is nice to receive adverts which are somewhat more tailored to my interests, it does also make me think about how easy it would be to access my personal data online. I consider myself quite liberal in regards to how I view privacy online, I take the stance that if you’ve placed information onto a third-party site then you should have no issue with it potentially being seen by others. But Facebook’s “privacy war” does raise a number of questions:

But how much of our data is owned by organisations like Facebook? How much is sold freely? And how personal is the data that they collect? The main issue appears to be the fact that while you can block other users from certain aspects of your profile, you can’t stop Facebook itself accessing and selling the information contained within. While the marketing possibilities are exciting, the potential breach of user’s privacy is far from it.

“Remember, one of the biggest risks that AR has, is being branded as “novelty”, which means “cool for five minutes but ultimately a waste of time.” Robert Rice

The Google search engine, or BackRub, as it was once known, went live in 1996. Now, 15 years later, I can point my iPhone at practically anything I see and receive all of Google’s information about the object. Augmented Reality technology is here and it is literally changing the way we look at things.

 AR is defined as ‘a natural way to explore 3D objects and data, bringing virtual objects into the real world where we live, rather than forcing us to learn how to navigate inside the computer.’ Source

We can see this development happening in mobile technology and have been able to for some time, a prominent example being the streamlining of User Interfaces over the course of the development of mobile technology, from the basic menu system of the Nokia 3310 to the sleek and intuitive touch screen controls of the iPhone.

One of the most interesting implications about the hypothetical widespread use of Google Goggles is the fact that it removes a number of pressures on digital PRPs but adds a number of concerns. By essentially changing the way that people use Google in that they ‘know’ what they are searching for, search rankings and optimisation become irrelevant. If ‘reality-based’ searches become the norm, the potential is there for a complete change in the nature of digital PR as message transmitters lose a great deal of control.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of AR is that Google Goggles is nowhere near the most impressive offering on display right now. Smart phones have the ability to download an app, Word Lens, which can translate text from one language to another on the fly. Tech-savvy tourists have never had an easier time!

Finally, and most importantly, is the relationship between AR and marketing communications. Layar is an application which allows the user to download any number of ‘layers’, which overlay what the phone’s camera sees and provides relevant information, depending on the layer. For example, a tourist could be in a forreign city and could download a layer which would direct them to all the local landmarks. In addition to this, there are layers which direct the user to local businesses, cafes and restaurants etc. The advertising implications of this are tremendous. An entirely new frontier of potential marketing locations has been opened up on top of where physical ads already exist. Are billboards still as prominent if there are 10 different advertisements on top of them when looking through a phone?

In short, smart phone applications have allowed us to do things we never thought possible and see the world completely differently. Now it’s just a little more blatant.

Rupert Murdoch’s latest iPad-exclusive offering, The Daily, appears as though it will become a huge hit with users. But how will the success of this new medium affect the working lives of PR executives?

“A great opportunity but a tough challenge.” - Avril Lee, Head of Consultancy, Ketchum Pleon

Wednesday saw the release of The Daily, NewsCorp’s latest publication. What seperates The Daily from the rest of the pack is the fact that it’s an iPad-exclusive. Whereas all of the other iPad-based newspapers are simply digital replicas of their paper versions, The Daily is, as it states on its website  ‘created every day of the year with all exclusive content for the iPad.’ Additionally, it also syncs with Facebook and Twitter, allowing users to comment on stories on their social network profile, as well as allowing them to post 30-second audio comments on articles. Currently, the Daily iPad app is ranked #18 on the iTunes store, above both the Facebook and Twitter applications. This bodes extremely well for the growth and popularity of a paid-for publication which is less than a week old.

However, this could in turn present a real challenge for the public relations. PRO’s will no longer simply be able to rely on press releases and conversations over lunch to get the press coverage they want. The Daily prides itself on being the first truly interactive newspaper, and places a great deal of emphasis on video and audio in its contents. Therefore, it appears as though PR executives aiming for column inches in The Daily will have to rely much more upon their client’s A/V assets.

Alternatively, this developent is in fact a possible opportunity for PR, a chance for the industry to show that it is not relegated to being out of touch and slow to adapt to new media, one of the main criticisms levelled at it.  Creating an iPad app which is 100 pages in size every day is a task which dwarfs the assembling of a traditional newspaper, making the need for PR-based content a clear priority. If clients and PR executives choose to embrace this new frontier of digital-based publishing then they can potentially be a huge part of a fast-growing medium, and reap the resulting benefits.

For more on this topic check out this blog on PR Week by Matt Cartmell: Clicky!

Hey guys, welcome to my blog! In here I’ll be discussing a number of topics concerning the digital world and it’s effects on the PR industry. If I have the time/can be bothered I’ll also be looking at other issues and things in the world which interest me!