Corporate Engagement

Bank PR ‘outed’ via Social Media interview

PR Disasters:

"National Australia Bank has distanced itself from a PR consultancy (p’raps Cox & Inall), which attempted to spam post commercial messages on several leading Aussie sports blogs. Local SEO practitioner Jim Stewart tele-interviewed NAB PR Felicity Glennie Holmes who asserted that ‘this activity was poorly executed by our PR agency’. Jim Stewart primarily challenged Felicity on corporate spamming & the ethics of placing covert NAB ads disguised as blog posts. Felicity kinda defended her employers decision. Interesting note to PR practitioners; be wary of responding to a blog query. As you would with a journo query, ask if they plan to broadcast your communication and if you’re uncomfortable with their response, decide if you wanna participate (or not). For eg: Jim Stewart conducts his interview with Felicity, filming himself for vodcast, and putting her on speakerphone - his body language, facial expressions and other non-verbal silently ’spin’ his take on her responses. Judging by Jim’s raised eyebrows in his vodcast of the telecon, he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing from FGH. I’ve called Cox Inall to see if they were involved and if so, to hear their side of the story. Someone called ‘Killingly’ is supposed to contact me; after almost 18hrs, am still awaiting any call or email. Agency head Tim Powell left a voice mail for me around 9am and is happy to speak to me later today…stay tuned."

I'm looking forward to Powell's account.

Bruce Belsham (ABC) and David Higgins (News.com.au)

A good session from the mainstream media's p.o.v. Covering a lot of issues including the sourcing of new  content, moderation of content (Aust doesn't have robust freedom of speech protections). Bruce said a lot of people read the comments more than the original content. Accuracy: Bruce says radio does unfolding stories with lots of immediacy and people accept that its done on the fly, online is a bit like radio. Both said that their sites got huge spikes of traffic during the last election, it is clear that ordinary people want to hear the views, reactions and ideas of other ordinary people. ABC will do more stuff online targeted at regions. Their is money for commercial organistions in doing what local papers do or used to do.

The future? Higgins - 2 big challenges for online media are marketing and revenue in competitive environments where you can't just stick up ad rates each quarter. Haven't done much SEO yet. Revenue is hard will be a lot of commercial pressure down the track which will raise ethical issues etc.

Belsham -agrees, most online media sites around the world are subsidised. Not a problem for public broadcasters but for commercial media organiations does it make sense to continue with loss making operations. There are questions about sustainability. Each additional viewer on TV doesn't cost anything but not true of Internet - who pays for broadband etc. Content distribution online particularly video and audio is expensive.

Citizen journalism won't takeover. Not a lot of value in adding that too sites but it is easier for people to get their stories up, but not many stories will get broken in the blogosphere but bloggers get a lot of the traffic by adding commentary on the story and getting access to the ad revenue.

Belsham - generating news takes time and money. David's vision of journalism withering online is a frightening one.

Papworth - journalists don't actually create the news they just do what bloggers do and take what people do and say and filter it back to people. Belsham says yes but professional journalist have the analytical skills, time and experience to cross-reference check etc. Clearly, says Bruce, there is room for both professional and citizen journalists. Higgins says part of continuing role for professionals is trust, range of views in one story etc. Always going to be need for places where you can get trusted reportage.

Rob Shilkin, Google, Corp Affairs, Aust and NZ

Dealt with the question of how to convince CEOs and senior management to take this stuff seriously. Recommends three books: wikinomics, the long tail and the wisdom of crowds (google being the key example, of course).

Spending most time on the long time - fragmentation of the media. Niche interests + niche audiences = niche news + niche sites.

The idea of one media release hits all outlets no longer applies. Bloggers don't want releases. But every single release should be able to find a niche and from there it can snowball. People will use search to find niche items making them highly attractive to advertisers. Don't need big blockbuster stories. Should write stories that appeal to passion of niche interests.

BUT it is impossible to control what is being said about you. One thing you must do is have a presence so you can blog quickly and reach people with an interest in what you do.

Politicians are leading the way. Rudd's youtube was about the medium being the message added to his brand of younger more contemporary. BUT voters can talk back, leading to broader conversations across the net.

Australian federal election. All parties set up youtube channels. Also used myspace and facebook. Interesting consequence was the immediacy of the response. ALP used youtube to respond to Lib ad and then Libs used youtube to respond to that response.

Obama a good example of snowball effect. Exponential growth of online views of his videos. Now showing black-eyed peas video. Wonderful stuff - I love Obama! Obama getting a lot of small donations by using the Internet.

Now talking about the Jetblue example. Using youtube to counter bad media coverage. Also talking about Google Privacy channel. Tourism Northern Territory channel where people can share their stories about trips to the top end.

Tip: don't be afraid of dialogue. participate. Every organisation should have a blog and a video camera.