Hi. I am James Crawford, a PR man. Media relations is my specialism, but public relations is changing and the internet is at the heart of it.
I'm a Manchester dweller and lover of the media. I have too much music, support Manchester United and adore all things French.
I currently work for a Citypress, Manchester's biggest and best PR consultancy, but all the thoughts on here are my own and nothing to do with my employers.
Is Steve Jobs trying to protect Apple’s public relations image by deflecting negative PR attention towards himself?
As public relations crises go, Apple’s iPhone 4 launch is up there in second place behind BP’s oil leak.
The product launch has been besieged by negative press and PR coverage regarding the product’s aerial and connection.
Recently, many bloggers have focused on an email from Steve Jobs, in which he emailed a customer and allegedly said that the phone worked perfectly well and claimed customers are holding the handsets incorrectly.
Steve Jobs has a track record of replying to people personally by email, as illustrated by this Steve Jobs’ blog. As you can see, often his emails are short and terse.
Now, the latest public relations issue is revolving around whether these emails were real or fake.
This made me ask myself the question: is this email exchange an intentional PR tactic-come-stunt by Apple? It sounds like a crazy PR strategy to cook up a stink for your brand in this way. Or does it?
Are people now talking about the incredible failings of Apple’s New Product Development team, or is the focus on the crazy public relations style of Steve Jobs? Or, put more accurately, is Steve Jobs deflecting some of the negative attention away from the brand?
Engadget, Erictric, Gawker, 9 to 5 Mac, Mobility Site, Electronista, Gizmodo, everythingiCafe and Techcrunch have all published the email story. What is more, Steve Jobs’ email is the number two story on Techmeme and a top ten story on aggregator Popurls.com.
There are other famous examples of this tactic working to great effect. Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, is also expert at this type of crisis management.
When his team is in trouble, he will pick a crazy fight with a referee, another club manager etc, just to take the heat off the team. Just read a few of these perfectly executed PR and press sound bites if you don’t believe me.
It wouldn’t surprise me if this was what Tony Hayward at BP was trying to do in the US (but badly). Most CEOs have shares in the business, and the last thing they want to see is their investment being hit.
If push comes to shove, a CEO can get another job fairly easily. Of greater importance to them is the value of the business and the return to their shareholders.
It is very easy to measure PR sentiment and other public relations objectives, like public opinion and a move like this can be carefully stage managed.
A large corporate like Apple can control their PR communications in many ways and a brave CEO won’t mind taking a bullet for the corporation, as long as it’s not a terminal blow.
It seems only yesterday since I was writing about news curation tools….
In fact it was yesterday when I wrote this post, but thanks to a helpful comment on the blog I have now found Newscred, a curation tool which allows users to build fairly bespoke news pages to read and share with the world.
My Newscred page is available here. The content selected can be tailored towards geographical areas and while the search parameters are a little strange, it would be picky to say that this isn’t a great new addition to the curation repertoire.
I work in public relations and until recently used a Blackberry, however for the PR professional, there is no better device than the iPhone for bringing together Web 2.0 technology. Here is my list of killer apps. I’m hoping by writing this that others will recommend apps that I’ve missed. Please suggest others by way of comments.
WordPress – I’m writing this post via the WordPress app from my bed while my three week old baby sleeps on top of me. You can write, tag, upload photos and approve comments. It’s pretty damn fine actually.
Google Analytics – this is on here by default as I actually hate Google Analytics, but I can’t find a better tool for measuring traffic while out and about.
Delicious, Instapaper and Evernote – Delicious for archiving and retriving useful stuff and Instapaper for filing stuff to read later. Evernote allows you to archive anything and tag it so it can be found later. Useful!
Sky+ – for recording Man Utd. Obviously. Or perhaps client coverage.
Guardian, Telegraph, Sky News, The MEN, Thomson Reuters, Digg, Reddit – for keeping up to date.
Foursquare – I disagreed on Twitter with Robert Scoble on the potential for Foursquare. I just don’t see it as a B2B tool. However it is not to say that I don’t find it useful, especially the tips section which helps me gain insights about local restaurants etc.
Dropbox – storage in the cloud. You can keep anything here. This app is so useful that I might pay and upgrade so I have 100gb storage.
Stickybits – one day someone will use this app for the purposes of brandalism and you PR people will be glad that you know about it. At the moment though Stickybits is a not much more than untapped potential and a social media curiousity. Fun though!
Polarize and Quadcam – so you are blogging on the go and want a photo for your post. An iPhone photo can be pretty poor quality but you can spruce them up no end with these little beauties.
Ustream – I have 3gs envy. With
The 3gs device and Ustream you can broadcast directly from your iPhone.
Tweetie 2 – again, pretty much the definitive Twitter app. There are lots of blogs on this app, so I’ll move on.
Facebook, Google, Flickr, Youtube etc – again standard but essential stuff.
PUBLIC RELATIONS AND SOCIAL MEDIA – There is a new social media tool called Stickybits, which I think could be big and has implications for both B2C and B2B PR and marketing – along with anyone who likes messing around with the interweb.
The premise is that you can attach videos, music, text, PDFs, Zips or anything to a given barcode. The idea sounds a bit bizarre at first until you consider when, how and by whom it can be used. Stickybits is currently receiving lots of hype on the blogs and also in the mainstream media with the LA Times among others writing about the service.
B2B PR and Marketing
Imagine you are an office products manufacturer and you want people to be able to access your product manual, a message from your Managing Director, good reviews about your product, feedback from other consumers or, well, pretty much anything. All this content can be attached to a barcode. No longer does a consumer need to turn to the internet and make a search about your brand. Instead this can all be shared via your barcode.
B2C PR and Marketing
Again, much like B2B, user generated content can be attached to your brand. This could be brand ambassadors or fans of your product waxing lyrical. Or, more likely, this could be activists making complaints about your products and services, or campaigning against you. Imagine if a complaint was the first thing that a customer finds when researching your brand? Not ideal!
Importantly, the first person who scans your product has veto over what else can be uploaded against your product. Imagine if this person is someone with a vendetta against your products. Simply put, someone else would have control of your brand’s presence.
Here is an example that I created for a Beer called Red Angus, so you can see the kind of content that can be attached to a bar code. (Excuse the use of my son in the video, any excuse to show off Armand. The content is somewhat daft too, but a guy has to have fun when blogging hey?)
As well as attaching content to existing code, you can print your own barcodes and stick them on anything. Here is an example barcode which can then be printed off and attached to anything. Their bar codes look like this:
There are some interesting examples of what to do with Stickybits here on their wiki.
Of course, it is still early days for Stickybits, but it is backed by people with proven track records in social media. There is also a limit to the popularity of Stickybits because use of it is largely limited to iPhone and Android phones. The app is currently available on iPhone and Android here.
This public relations video discusses the Toyota crisis, how Microsoft handled their corporate reputation when Bill Gates took his role part time, and corporate reputation in general. It’s a long video and I’ve only watched the first half hour, but the content is first class.
PUBLIC RELATIONS – Here are some links which tickled my whistle this week. Let me know if you find any of these useful.
My blog is now listed on the PR All Top. All Top is Guy Kawasaki’s project, which aggregates the internet. I’m chuffed!
Twitter voicemail tool.
An interesting tool, but still a little irrelevant if you are the only person to use it. (Plus, I’ve not tested it yet)
More WordPress Plugins
I use all these apart from the last navigation plugin, which I will be test driving later this week.
How Small Business is using Social Media
I don’t normally link to Mashable as the likelihood is that if you are reading this post then you probably read Mashable religiously. However, statistics on small business are as rare, which is bizarre seeing that 90 per cent of companies are SMEs, so I thought I would point this post out.
PUBLIC RELATIONS – Today Nigel Farage is being hauled up in front of the EU after last week he harangued EU President Herman van Rompuy (see clip). He doesn’t care what happens to him as he’s not standing for the European Parliament again. He is instead being put forward by UKIP in the general election and this was the sort of PR that money can’t buy. For a single issue party such as UKIP this has been a superb stunt which will appeal to their core audience.
Slideshare launches its branded Youtube channel
Good old Slideshare! It has always been a great resource and now with its branded Youtube channel it has become an even more important service which I can offer to clients. Check out their news here
Friday Guest Blog: Are blogs the beating heart of a social media strategy? This was an interesting post on blogging from Paul Fabretti which appeared on the Manchester Chamber of Commerce website.
The comments were the most fascinating part for me; Nigel Sarbutts’ comments in particular. Are blogs less trust worthy than direct mail???!!! Forrester is a reputable source, but for me it doesn’t really stack up. Yes, you might trust a direct mailer or an offer you receive through the post, perhaps because of the legislation around DM. You know that direct marketing professionals have to play by a certain set of rules.
The thing the data ignores is that direct mail is a simple channel of communication, lacking nuance.
DM is not really an authoritative source is it? You don’t care what they have to say, or wait for a new direct mailer to read do you? Blogs are interesting because they are often opinion based. It is up to the reader to decide if they trust the source. The data from Nigel is important though. As obviously many still have reservations about the credibility of blogs. Top debate there from the Manchester PR circuit!
And finally – I loved this PR disaster
Very funny. What not to do when your boss is on TV behind you. Follow the link here
(gratuitous opportunity to show Moscow penalty miss)
The John Terry super injunction story is more proof that celebrities or organisations should turn to PR professionals and not lawyers when dealing with a media crisis. Only public relations professionals have the tools to ensure that a story such as this one can be kept under control.
A super injunction can work, sure. However there is no plan B.
Once the injunction is made public, what was a negative story is amplified tenfold. The whole affair seems more sordid. He is now on the front of five national newspapers. This is a massive fail, nearly on the same proportions of his penalty miss in Moscow (Viva John Terry – bit of Man Utd gloating there…).
Of course PR isn’t 100 per cent fool proof, far from it, but media relations would have been a better strategy, rather than litigation. John’s PR consultant could have negotiated and traded other content, tried to kill the story and prove it to be incorrect, or managed the story, so the coverage was minimised.
Most people wouldn’t be that surprised about John Terry behaving this way, so really taken on its own the story of a footballer trying to impregnate someone is fish and chip paper. We’ve already seen him urinating in bars, fighting and taking cash in hand payments from journalists for tours of the Chelsea training ground. So really this story is not that newsworthy. John has made it newsworthy, thanks to his legal advice.
Fifteen years ago this month, Manchester United’s Eric Cantona was sent off at Selhurst Park and proceeded to kung fu kick a Wimbledon fan who abused him.
Arguably this is one of the biggest sporting news stories of the 1990s.
This story was huge! I can’t believe that it happened and equally I can’t comprehend that it took place fifteen years ago! It seems like yesterday.
Oh to have been a Press Officer for Manchester United. I’d love to get their take on the story.
Hi. I am James Crawford, a PR man. Media relations is my specialism, but public relations is changing and the internet is at the heart of it.
I'm a Manchester dweller and lover of the media. I have too much music, support Manchester United and adore all things French.
I currently work for a Citypress, Manchester's biggest and best PR consultancy, but all the thoughts on here are my own and nothing to do with my employers.
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