Author: jeremyprobert

Googly I

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Corporate Religion, corporate reputation, External Communications, media relations, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

 Been a while, blog snorkellers mine, been a while.

Frankly, this blog has turned into my foamy-mouthed rantings about the eville that is social media and, d’you know what, it’s becoming difficult to find anything new to write.

Why? Because I’m not a geeky techy, I’m a communicator. I do not hang around in the kitchen of the internet’s big social media party, discussing the tiny changes that social media keep making to themselves, nor the wholly spurious increases in fans and clicks, nor the fact that 52.673% of businesses run by hippies believe that social media will, eventually, replace God.

And unless you choose to rummage through this morass of soiled underwear, you have to accept the truth that nothing has actually changed in the year or so that I’ve been gracing the web with my musings. The evangelists are still evangelising, the fools are still fooling around, the inappropriateness is still inappropriate, the naysayers are still naysaying – but nothing has actually changed.

Social media are still what they are – and the communications and marketing community are still trying to work out how to leverage them. Anyway, today I come across this – which is a post from the Digital Brand Expressions Blog (thank you) musing on the possibility that Google may be planning to have another foray into the social media space with something that may, or may not, be called ‘Google Me’. Obviously, I think they’ve missed a trick here – ‘Googly I’ would be so much better, or Google U, which could then become Googlez Vous in French and Et Tu Google for the small Swiss community that still insists on speaking Latin.

Anyway (again), just a couple of thoughts on the back of this article:

1) It’s probably too late for choice. You’re either on Facebook, or you’re not. And if you are – well, you are (obviously) and if you’re not, I think it’s unlikely that you’ll suddenly throw your privacy away and embrace the sharing of drunken photographs simply because that nice Mr Google has provided a new medium for you to use.

2) If Facebook was going to launch a search engine, it would have done it by now. Let’s face it, a share of Google’s $23bn annual profit (revenue? not sure) is not to be sneered at. I can only think that either they can’t, or that they’ve decided it’s not worth the effort. And, simply because Facebook doesn’t make any money currently, I’m forced to believe that they haven’t the capability to create an algorithm that would approximate Google’s. (If indeed algorithm is the right expression for the magic mushroom of code that allows Google to hallucinate all the stuff that people want to view.)

So. I’d hazard that Google won’t be able to invade Facebook’s space and vice-versa. So, once again, nothing has changed.

See you in another couple of months – supposing anything actually moves on.

Kirk out.

Talking Sense About Social Media

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, corporate reputation, External Communications, media relations, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

Today, lovely blog snorkellers mine, I’m going to get all volte face on your asses.

Today, I would like to say that I am prepared to accept that social media can be a force for good – in a commercial communications, sales and marketing context. I am prepared to go as far as to say that interacting with them might even add measurable value to the bottom line of a company, brand or organisation. In short, I am ready to say that such a company, brand or organisation should have a social media strategy in place to capitalise on the opportunities that social media present.

The one thing that I am waiting for, in order to make my conversion complete, is some proof that all of this is – in fact – correct. Suffice it to say that in the course of a recent conversation, I was given hope that at least one organisation is actually measuring and evaluating the ROI of its social media strategy. If this is the case, and the results speak for themselves, then I will be a convert. I look forward to sharing more with you.

In the meantime – if anyone already has concrete examples of tangible ROI delivered by social media activity, then I would be genuinely fascinated to hear them.

In the meantime (2), I would like to draw your attention to this. It is a collection of ‘insights from a lively morning panel discussion’ entitled ‘Social Media For Corporates – essential channel or unecessary distraction’, which was held by CorpComms magazine and was a Precise.exchange.

Please, lazy, lazy blog snorkellers, do clickery on the link, and read the comments of Peter Morgan, Director of Communications, Rolls Royce. A case of genuine insght, cutting through the quagmire with the laser scalpel of clarity, or one of old dogs not being able to get their heads around new tricks? I leave it to you to decide.

(Personally, I agree with him wholeheartedly.)

Embrace Social Media Or Die! (Part The Third)

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Oooh! Oooooh! Oooooh! (Imagine small child at back of classroom waving hand in air.)

And another thing. Yesterday, I passed comment on the flimsy gibberings of Erik Qualman, social media snake-oil salesman to the shiny-object obsessed masses, the man behind socialnomics.net, and the author of this piece – statistics about social media that supposedly build a case for its here-to-stayness and its centrality to all that is good and clean.

Anyways, cutting a story short, something was niggling at me. I re-read my post. I remembered why it is that I’m not a social media fan. It’s not because I deny its existence (as I was once accused of doing), nor that I have anything against it per se. No – it’s simply because I’m a career communicator, and I believe that all marketing, communications and sales activity should have a measurable ROI and a demonstrable impact on the bottom line – which social media (in the context of sales, marketing and communication) does not.

So I re-examined Mr Qualman’s list with this in mind. His list of 42 points (go and check it out for yourself, you lazy blog snorkeller). I wanted to see how many of his 42 statistics, claims and exhortations actually had a bearing on the use of social media for commercial ends.

And the answer is 12. Yes, 12 out of 42 – and even those do not have a direct impact on the formulation of a commercially-focused, measurable social media strategy, aimed at delivering bottom-line impact. The other thirty are, variously, meaningless statistics, empty statements and trite irrelevancies.

How did I come across this horsesh*t in the first place? Because a contact of mine, who is slightly more forgiving of the whole social media mojambo, circulated it. Implying that quite a few people are circulating it and more than a few are using it to justify the time, resource and budget that they have convinced their employers/clients to put behind this whole box of smoke and mirrors.

I don’t have to tell you – right-thinking snorkeller that you are – how toxic this is.

Embrace Social Media Or Die! (Part Deux)

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

Oui, oui, my hydrophobic British chums (and dear, dear blog snorkellers of whatever persuasion, religion, creed, nationality or proclivity you may have assumed on rising, this fine matin) here we go again with the increasingly rabid and just-on-the-left-bank-of-sane meanderings of one Erik Qualman, evangelist of this parish and the Dr Evil-alike behind socialnomics.net.

You will know, because of your avidity in the following of this blog, that I have already dealt with the thoughts of Qualman (have a look here) but, to maintain a flimsy gauze of pretence, I will tell you about it again, as though I were addressing the needs of a new visitor.

Mr Qualman puts forward an entire raft of statistics which, on the face of them, appear to tell us that not only is social media here to stay, but that it is becoming fundamental to the core of our very lives. They go on to imply that by ignoring social media from a commercial perspective, then your business will no longer be around in five years, and from a personal perspective, you might as well rub yourself with a fish, don a hessian all-in-one and wander the highways and byways, ringing a bell and wailing ‘unclean, unclean’, for all the future you’ve got as a valid member of society. And I had a thing or two to say about that.

Now Mr Qualman has updated his statistics. Again, on the face of it, can’t argue. Facebook (by population) is the third largest country in the world? Check. Social media has overtaken porn as the number one use of the internet? Check. One out of every eight couples married in the US in 2009 met via social media? Er. OK. If you say so.

I’m sure it’s all true. “Some universities have stopped distributing email accounts…….instead they are distributing ipads” – so, if I’m understanding this correctly, enrol in University, get an ipad. Certainly beats the £5 I got for opening a bank account. And it’s a very attractive offer for those people who a) can’t afford an ipad of their own and b) couldn’t get one anyway because they’re in such short supply. In fact now we know why they’re in short supply – because all the universities had bought the entire stock to give to their students instead of email accounts.

Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined ) (now there’s a nasty thought) – or Allen Detcher – have more Twitter followers that the population of Ireland. No – that IS the population of Ireland, having a laugh. Some of the population of Ireland are finding it so amusing that they’ve been following Elshten Kuneres more than once. Wags that they are.

The point is – and still remains – that I cannot be the only one (or even one of a few only ones) who don’t really want ‘the news finding us’ (rather than us looking for the news, when we want it) or ‘products and services finding us via social media’ (rather than that quaint old-fashioned thang called shopping around when we’re good and ready, thankyou).

I’m sure social media is growing in leaps and bounds – statistically. I just don’t believe there’s any  longevity, loyalty, depth or substance to it. It’s millions of little voices, yapping into a void. It’s certainly not a valid marketing, communications or sales tool.

PR’s Groundhog Day

Posted on by in advertising, Communications Strategy, Marketing, media relations, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

Here’s a piece from PR Week. (What do you mean you don’t read it, blog snorkellers mine? Go out and buy a copy immediately. This week’s cover price is – for the sake of argument – a highly reasonable £32.57.)

It’s about integration – and lest anyone be unclear – that’s the integration of communications disciplines through the creation of what used to be called ‘one-stop shops’.  PR Week see fit to grace the front page of their organ with this story, so they obviously regard it as ‘news’.

But – hold on, and correct me if I’m wrong, hasn’t this happened before (twice, as far as I can remember) – and then sort of un-happened, sort of dis-integrated, if you like? (And I do.)

Doesn’t it prove that the old adage ‘PR – it’s a young person’s game’ is fundamentally wrong? It’s not a young person’s game because young people can’t remember the hideous fuck-ups of the past and thus cannot learn from them.

Mind, as long as the clients are young as well, I suppose it doesn’t matter. They can all repeat the same errors together. Again and again and again. It’s like Groundhog Day, but it will never sort itself out and it’s somewhat less amusing without Bill Murray in it.

And the final bit of the ‘story’ just underlines what cack it actually is. “It’s not as simple as being in the same office” – no, you’re right, sunshine, it’s not – “there has to be a willingness…..to work together to understand…….” Yes, nail, head.

There has to be a mutual respect, an acceptance that the ‘idea’ can come from anywhere, and an innate ability to recognise what makes a good idea. These three things do not come from making the poor, hapless drones sit together and share the same canteen. Didn’t work in the late eighties, didn’t work in the early noughties, won’t work now.

Oh, and for the record, PR Week has been around for much, much longer than a lot of agencies and most account execs. Why, then, is PR Week slavishly reporting this, rather than working from its years of experience and pointing out that ‘integration’ is not new, not big and definitely not clever.

ZUBAR

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , .

(Which, of course, is an homage to the seminal late-eighties meisterwerk of cinematography, ‘Tango & Cash’ – and obviously you’ve spotted how clever I’ve been in adapting it to suit my own ends in introducing yet more musings on privacy and Facebook.)

For yes, dear blog snorkellers, we are all Zucked up – some many millions of us more than others. The nasty, odious geekwipe who decided in his own grubby mind that privacy was no longer a social norm, has taken note of the groundswell and has – apparently – done something about privacy on Facebook.

What he’s done, I have no idea. I don’t understand. I don’t have a clue whether what he’s done will work or not and whether it even addresses the issue. If it was me, I would stick with May 31 (Quit Facebook Day) and just have done with it. You see, the horrible Zucker has more to share, in regard to his philosophy around what people should and shouldn’t be, think or do.

Here is a post by Danah Boyd, a fellow (athough she’s clearly a lady) (this is a gag that my US snorkellers may not wholly ‘get’) at the Harvard Berkman Center (sic) for Internet and Society. Which impresses the living hell out of me. It’s worth a read, you lazy, lazy snorkellers and no, I am not going to paraphrase it for you. The bit I am going to reproduce here – and careful before you read it – it may make you feel queasy – is another quotation from the boy-demon, Zuckerberg. He said, last year:

“You have one identity… The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity?

I’d say that sticking with one is – at best – an example of an Aspergers-like inability to function properly in society and – at worst – an example of the lazy attitude exhibited by the Northern (English) nouveau-riche – “take me as you find me, that’s what I’m about, say what I mean, mean what I say, spade a spade” etc etc etc, as if it’s some kind of virtue. No, you nasty fuck, it’s just intolerant rudeness.

Problem is, the hard-of-thinking that populate Facebook are having their ability to adopt seperate identities – which we all do, to relate to people, to get on in life, to avoid getting arrested – taken away from them. It’s actually, now I come to think about it, a real threat to society as we know it. And I don’t think I’m being overly alarmist.

The last word goes to a Daily Mash article – read it in full here:

“I’ve got an idea for a website. It’s called How’s About We All Just Leave Each Other the Fuck Alone for Five Minutes.

 “Book.”

The Devolution Of Language Part 2

Posted on by in Communications Strategy and tagged , , .

Yes, yes – as I’ve already said, I know that devolution doesn’t mean de-evolution. So what? Let it go, blog snorkeller minor, let it go.

Today, for your delight and delectation, I have two words that should never have existed and yet – somehow – do.

  • ‘Electronification’ – the rendering digital of a previously analogue process
  • ‘Ideation’ – the taking and developing of an idea

Which has led me to ideate the concepts of ‘literacization’ and ‘verbification’, which both describe the taking of linguistic vandals and shutting them in a small room full of scorpions and centipedes with only a copy of the Oxford English dictionary (abridged) for protection. I’d have thought that, after an hour or so, they’d appreciate the real value of said reference aid.

May 31 – Quit Facebook Day

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , .

Does exactly what it says on the tin – no explanation necessary.

Here. A piece from mashable.com.

Also see my previous post – You’re Zucked!

A small step, I would say, in the right direction.

The Zucked-Up Society We Live In

Posted on by in Social Media and tagged , , , .

This from the Evening Standard yesterday, entitled ‘Just What Is Privacy in the Era of Google and Facebook?’, and discussing the gradual erosion of personal privacy, brought about by society’s obsession with empty, unearned (and certainly not merited) fame and the seemingly unstoppable fixation on all things social media. As I think I’ve said before, it is eeee-ville.

The thrust of Mr Greenslade’s piece is not new. I’ve posted about it before, and as I am in no way an original thinker, this means that better and weightier pundits than I have had a go as well.

In brief, our society’s need for validation, expressed through the lust for Warhol’s 15 minutes, the desire to be Cheryl Cole or Alex Reid, the need to be orange and blond and falling out of Krapz nitespot in Basildon, clutching a footballer or a glamour model, in a drunken state of undress, to be papped and red-topped – this, combined with the arrival of social media and true (if unregulated) freedom of expression, has given people the motivation and opportunity to reveal far more about themselves, to far more people, than they ever have done before.

And, as we all know, it comes back to bite you on your fake-baked bum. The girl who got fired from her job for complaining about it on Facebook, the NHS staffers who played the ‘lying down’ game at work and posted the pictures, the Dixons shop assistants who set up an anti-customer page and wondered why they got caned.

But the Standard article reminded me of something far more sinister than the antics of the idiocracy and the cretinarchy. It ran the quotation attributed to your friend and mine (dear blog snorkellers), the unwholesome – and somehow unsavoury – Mark Zuckerberg, who said  that he no longer believed privacy to be a ‘social norm’.

This is the man who is in charge of (apparently) a virtual nation that, were it a real country, would be the world’s third-largest. If it were real, he would be a dictator – he already is, in point of fact. And he is telling you, oh foolish of facebook, that he no longer believes privacy to be a norm. What he’s actually telling you is that you no longer have a right to privacy. (Google seems to believe this as well – if you aren’t aware of the Google story (because of some unfortunate circumstance like being stuck down a mineshaft for the past three weeks), then might I suggest you Google it?) (Irony, d’you see?)

Actually, many of you may not have a right to privacy. You gave it away when you posted your holiday snaps on a photo-sharing site. But the point is, you made that choice.

Now you and I are having the choice taken away. Some pasty geek is telling us that privacy is no longer the norm and 400 million people are having to accept that point of view.

Or you could, I suppose, take radical action. And close your Facebook account. Go on.

You’re Zucked!

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Evaluation, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Proof, were it needed, that Facebook is eeeee-ville.

Well, OK, it’s not actually proof, per se, and it’s not actually Facebook, per se, it’s more a bunch of opinions about the loathsome whelp who started it all, Mark Zuckerberg. Who, incidentally,  sounds like a genuinely unpleasant nerd with few ethics and a touch of the pulling-the-legs-off-flies Asperger’s about him. 

(But that’s just my tuppence worth and I am happy to state – for the record – that it is in no way based on fact or personal experience and is merely a conclusion drawn from available material and thus only probably bang on the money.)

Anyway, if, lazy, slothful, comatose blog snorkellers mine, you were (for once) to follow the link that I’ve posted, you’d find yourself inside the head of one Jason Calacanis, who definitely has a downer on the Zuckerbergster. And, if half the things he’s saying are half true, then perhaps he’s right. (Although he does go on at quite some length, implying that he may have an axe of a personal nature to grind.) 

I was taken with the term ‘You’re Zucked’ which appears to describe the state of having had your ideas stolen by someone, or having been screwed over by a business partner. Apparently, his behaviour has been so bad that those in the know are now calling for a boycott of ‘book, and have decreed that ‘book is seriously uncool.

(Mind, if ‘book really has 400 million users and is the third largest country in the world by population, I think it may take a little time for this uncoolness to filter down. I also cannot help but thinking – what did you expect? His Zuckness is an entrepreneur and a businessman and you don’t get anywhere by being nice and holding the door open for people. But maybe that’s me.)

My worry is that if ‘book goes down – what hideous creature will rise in its place? See – I don’t believe the social media hippies and I don’t believe in the inherent goodness and niceness of all and sundry. There’s always someone who wants to make money and screw everyone else – and if it’s not the Zuckerburger, then who (or what) is waiting in the wings?

Maybe we should be careful what we wish for. (Or, as I’m speaking for myself, what I wish for.)

Quiet in here, isn’t it?