Publicity

Any communications medium of any value can suffer from the annoyance of spam, not just email. If you value your reputation, don’t consider spamming in any form.

Seth Godin explains why spam is unacceptable – and unproductive.

… the future of marketing is based on permission. It’s based on sending messages to people who want to get them, who choose to get them, who would miss you if you didn’t send them. It’s not easy and it’s not cheap to earn permission, but so what? This is my attention, not yours, and if you want to use it for a while, please earn the privilege.

BBC News and Sport are beginning to enable you to embed their videos on to your own site.

Below is an example of an embedded video. It’s hosted by the BBC, who also take care of the streaming too. (The story happens to be about cybercrime, I’ve included it purely as an illustration of the technology - the range of embeddable videos is still small while the scheme is being rolled out.)

Technically it’s always been possible to embed BBC videos elsewhere (in a cheeky fashion – you just grab the code).

But this change of policy is a good move – by actively encouraging and helping people to embed the videos and discuss them it will increase the BBC’s presence around the web, including on blogs like this one.

In order to embed a video, you go to the original story page. Let’s take the example I embedded above. If you click share, you’ll be presented with the following code which you then copy and paste into your website/blog. (You don’t have to understand every tag in order to use it.)

<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”512″ height=”400″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” /><param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”always” /><param name=”FlashVars” value=”config_settings_showUpdatedInFooter=true&amp;playlist=http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/emp/7930000/7938900/7938949.xml&amp;config=http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/config/default.xml?1.3.105_2.10.7938_7967_20090310160409&amp;config_settings_language=default&amp;config_settings_showFooter=true&amp;config_plugin_fmtjLiveStats_pageType=eav6″ /><param name=”src” value=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/2.10.7938_7967/player.swf” /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”512″ height=”400″ src=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/2.10.7938_7967/player.swf” flashvars=”config_settings_showUpdatedInFooter=true&amp;playlist=http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/emp/7930000/7938900/7938949.xml&amp;config=http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/emp/config/default.xml?1.3.105_2.10.7938_7967_20090310160409&amp;config_settings_language=default&amp;config_settings_showFooter=true&amp;config_plugin_fmtjLiveStats_pageType=eav6″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”></embed></object>

Of course, other video streaming sites have allowed and encouraged this for years. Seasoned bloggers and webheads may quip that “BBC embedding 2009 = YouTube embedding 2005″. But to be fair to BBC, they have had “a huge number of tricky little issues to sort out and most of these have been complex business issues around rights, terms and conditions, etc.” (quote).

This also illustrates a good principle. Making a success of the web means not only having a good destination site but also having a good web presence.

It’s now considered somewhat precious to want to “own” visitors and insist they come to your website first. You will spread awareness of yourself and and actually drive future visits to your site by giving stuff to other sites.

In practice, you may not have your own video player like the BBC. But if you’ve uploaded video on sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Blip.tv or Viddler, then make sure embedding is enabled. It will multiply the potential audience by several factors of ten AND probably bring more people to your site anyway.

I cannot think of a single good reason not to allow embedding on a video. Universal Records, the largest record label in the world, appear to have disabled embedding on their official YouTube videos. If you can explain this decision, feel free to comment below or contact me.

Even if your primary focus is not video, the more general principle is engagement with other sites. I feel another blog post emerging, mmm. I’ll explore it more next week.

(As it happens, YouTube have been in the news this week regarding a separate issue – their disagreement with PRS, who represent song publishers and composers. Robert Andrews at paidContent summarises the complexities of such deals, while Rhodri Marsden at the Independent gives an insightful view from a songwriter’s perspective.)

There’s lots of blog bustle about this Ryanair story. (In summary, a blogger wrote about a minor glitch he’d experienced in Ryanair’s online ticket booking system. Ryanair employees responded in his blog comments calling him an “idiot and a liar” and berating his choice of the WordPress blogging platform. Ryanair compound the fury by releasing an official statement saying “It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy in corresponding with idiot bloggers…”).

Customer service now happens on a stage… Customers are networked. I’ve visited these themes before, with Chrysler and Ford. Read the seminal and prophetic book Cluetrain Manifesto for more of this wonderful stuff.

But rather than take the bait, I think this is completely in keeping with Ryanair’s PR policy and possibly everything they’ve done before this point.

This may well fall into the so-bad-it’s-good category. Undoubtedly, it’s a cheap shot response – in keeping with the airline’s established reputation for cheapness.

(As a staunch advocate of WordPress, I’m sure they can only be kidding…)

After the blog post, Travolution covered this and later Guardian, Telegraph, The Times and other news outlets. What’s the value of all that exposure – in exchange for some blog comments and a quick statement?

While I’m on it, did you know Ryanair don’t hire outside agencies for their advertising?

The Times had a feature about Ryanair’s advertising in December 2004, containing this gem from Paul Fitzsimmons, their then head of communications:

“We have a Wal-Mart approach to business: stack ’em high and sell in bulk,” said Fitzsimmons. “We are driven by price and we don’t need a bunch of ponytails in some ad agency to tell us how to build our brand.”

Then later:

Fitzsimmons admits the Ryanair ads are designed to spark controversy on the basis that “any negative perception of an ad is a publicity opportunity”.

So why should their online PR be any different? Talk about an integrated communications policy! It’s risky, for sure. For fans of the Cluetrain Manifesto, it certainly corresponds to the “authentic human voice”. But I can imagine it backfiring if their amiable tomfoolery does not translate across countries. For instance, now that CNN have covered it, will USA and other international readers appreciate the jokes?

I subscribe to quite a lot of blogs.

But I don’t subscribe to many company blogs.

By “company blog” I mean a blog which is an adjunct to a company’s ordinary business. I just haven’t found many that are worth following. In order to get my attention, the blog needs a human voice and needs to tell me something useful, relevant or interesting.

Usually, companies either don’t do it or they do it wrongly. I know you want me to buy your goods and services. But to keep me coming back to your website you need to give me more than a pitch.

One exception to this is the blog of Carsonified, a software development company based in Bath, UK, who specialise in web-based applications and related conferences. Please bear with me, even if that’s not your area of interest.

To be sure, they have plenty of work to be getting on with besides writing blog posts. But something about the industry insights of co-founder Ryan Carson in particular has kept me coming back, plus his eagerness to blog honestly about their company activities.

Building and launching a successful web app is a fraught and turbulent business, which adds to the fascination for me. It reminds me of artist development in the music industry, especially music managers I’ve met – not least in the fact there is an abundance of people making a play and only a few who will win. Even by their own definitions of success.

As if to undermine part of what I’ve just said (!), Ryan Carson sometimes gets it wrong, as he admits in this new video, Blogging Tips for Downturn 2.0 (don’t let the title put you off).

After laying off three employees in December 2008, Carson (with their permission) decided to blog about it. That wasn’t the problem. Yes, layoffs are embarrassing but the news will travel anyway. So you may as well set the tone. And you’ll probably do the former employees a favour by highlighting their availability.

His mistake, in his view, was to combine the news with some advice about how to be a “good” employee. In effect, he combined two blog posts into one which gave out an impression that he was admonishing them, which wasn’t his intention. You can still read the original post about the redundancies.

Those who don’t blog may ask: was all this worth the effort for Carson? Well, I for one am reading his blog and checking out his products and have also mentioned the company to a few people as a result, including you now. So make up your own mind.

[ UPDATE 10/02/09: The Times have now published an opinion piece on this story. Keep watching. ]

In brief: while cases of measles in children are increasing, presenter Jeni Barnett on LBC radio takes a very vocal stance against MMR immunisation. Blogger and doctor Ben Goldacre opposes, on the grounds of bad science while posting a recording from the show to make his point. Almost immediately, LBC issues Goldacre with a legal takedown notice citing copyright infringement.

Or in other words, LBC begins a virtual perfect storm in blogs and the mainstream media.

You can read more about it on Techdirt, Ars Technica and other places.

Look at the average number of comments on Jeni Barnett’s personal blog (currently 2 or 3ish per post) against the comments for the two posts about MMR (at the time of writing, 82 comments for Bad Scientists and 134 comments for MMR and Me).

The killer elements of the storm are:

• an already existing health controversy
• the welfare of children
• in LBC, a popular media outlet with many listeners
• a perception of LBC as “traditional” media
• the nature of blogs as a fast, cheap and direct medium for expressing opinion
• and likewise for online comments, although more so (see also: the recordings on YouTube)
• “bad science”
• a strong feeling of solidarity among bloggers
• and particularly against lawyers as relates to copyright and freedom of speech

Search Twitter for LBC and MMR and you’ll get more reaction (that doesn’t even cover all the possible terms which relate to this story). There’s also a Facebook group called Defend Ben Goldacre from LBC with, for what it’s worth, 1048 members at the moment.

There’s a weary inevitability in the tone being used to tell this tale. As my colleague Tom remarked to me earlier today, someone should (if not already) document these frequent and grisly incidents in a dedicated blog. It could be called Blogging Blazes or something of that nature.

If you’re looking for scientifically sound advice about MMR vaccines for children, then it’s easy to find. Let’s just say that Goldacre, a qualified doctor, would certainly advise you to research more widely than a talk radio show.

Was Goldacre’s use of the copyrighted recordings a legally fair dealing? Interesting question.

But the main question I’m asking in a PR context is, why is this being considered a “fail” for LBC Radio? Their objectives are controversy and ad revenue. They’ve got the controversy and the free blog promotion (including this post).

To date, none of LBC’s advertisers has backed out over this. (Although this could happen and I’ll be certain to post an addendum here if this changes.) Whether it’s intentional or not, this situation is playing out very well for them.

Goldacre will have no trouble finding legal advisers or funding if it goes to court. And whatever the result, LBC still get headlines.

Let’s just hope it leads to better discussion and more conscientious and informed parenting, shall we?

(I’m going to try to focus on edifying things for the rest of this month! We’re working with a photographer who is doing some great work with some very diverse people and I can’t wait to tell you about it.)

[ UPDATE 06/02/09: Comments have been enabled on Alastair Campbell's site, albeit in an unusual place. At the moment it's unclear whether they apply to the whole site or each individual post. Nevertheless, you can disregard some of my criticism below as Campbell is also responding personally. He explains that the original lack of comments was down to "first day teething troubles". ]

Alastair Campbell has somewhat belatedly launched his own text blog and video blog.

For someone so strongly linked with political communications in the UK, he’s a little late to the game. But I for one am a little intrigued about how he will choose to use it.

He’s also on Twitter now as @campbellclaret – presumably a reference to his chosen football team, Burnley.

First impressions? He talks about having discussions, but there is no comment facility on the blog. Why do high profile bloggers shy from this? People will talk about you, so you might as well encourage and “own” some of the discussion. A busy comments area brings people back, especially if there’s controversy. And Campbell is not unfamiliar with that.

He’d even retain the power to moderate comments, which is again something at which he’s had plenty of practice.

Otherwise they’ll use a system like Diigo to maintain annotations about your site elsewhere, as we saw with Whitehouse.gov recently.

Incidentally, call me picky but the convention is that the whole thing is referred to as a “blog” and one article is referred to as a “blog post”.

There’s also a video blog and the first entry (I mean post) is a very slickly-edited piece with some footage from the glory years with Tony Blair and the upbeat sounds of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” on the soundtrack (I wonder if they sought permission for this).

It’s entertaining.

I generally think people’s expectations of online video have lowered these days. Just shoot a quick and frank piece to camera from your living room – it’s cheap, it’s immediate and it feels more open and honest. With such high production values from the outset, I’ll be surprised if he can sustain this regularly.

Yesterday I wrote about Twitter name squatting and included a recent example where a rogue person had registered the name BBC on Twitter.

Earlier today Twitter Inc handed the account to the real BBC, after a BBC staff member complained to Twitter Inc. It’s been cleared of all previous tweets and all 7,684 followers.

It’s now impossible to follow the original links and see what happened. So here are some screenshots to illustrate my point about the importance of brand control. All were taken on 28th January 2009 just after 5PM.

The screenshot above shows an @ message sent to the BBC Twitter account.

The user @sputnik101 was surprised to see this reply from the BBC Twitter account. Like many people, including me, he was unaware that the BBC did not have control over the account. In that sense, like many others, he’d be duped into thinking he was following the real BBC. It’s generally expected that large corporations will protect their trademarks and copyrights to prevent this happening.

I tried to see how long the BBC account had been in third party control. Above is the earliest tweet I found – from 9th October 2008.

As far as I could see the message to @sputnik101 was the only @ reply from the impostor posing as the BBC. But many other people sent @ messages to the account about many different topics. You can see just one page of search results above.

We don’t know if the rogue posing as the BBC sent any private direct messages to any of his or her thousands of followers, in the four months he or she had control over the account. It would have been possible.

Today the real BBC have control. So do head over and read what they’re posting from the new look, genuine @bbc. If you’re on Twitter you can follow them too.

This BBC story is an excellent example of the need to control your brand name on Twitter. If someone has your brand name, particularly if it’s a trademark, you should complain to Twitter Inc by sending a message to @crystal in user support.

If your name or brand name is still available, then register a Twitter account today to prevent somebody else taking it.

It’s also worth using usernamecheck.com to check the availability of your name on a variety of other popular sites.

At Native our purpose is to advise companies on good use of online and social media. This is advice we give to all our clients. As such, the BBC story is given here purely as an illustrative example. I’m not going to labour this point – there are many other examples of Twitter squatting but I won’t be attempting to catalogue them all.

I do believe that Twitter squatting could lead to examples of phishing and other nastiness if companies are lax about this. Unfortunately the onus is largely on them to monitor this. (If you’re concerned about this or you want more information, call us.)

In this example, on the surface it would appear that the rogue was attempting to provide a useful service – by pulling in the legitimate RSS feed from BBC News. But it would be easy to do this for other purposes – including phishing – to give an appearance of authenticity to an account. The legitimate feed could easily be combined with a feed from elsewhere (using an RSS aggregation service such as Yahoo Pipes).

[ UPDATE 29/01/09: Some of the links here no longer work because the real BBC have taken control of the rogue Twitter account. Read this post for screenshots and updated info. ]

There’s enough hype saying you need to use Twitter. Just as TV presenter Phillip Schofield and other celebrities are discovering, there are few barriers to investigation. If you’re curious then just sign up, post a couple of tweets, start following a few people and see what happens.

What I will say is, whether you care about Twitter or not, you must protect your name or your brand.

Domain name squatting has been happening for years. Twitter is starting to tip and a similar thing has been happening there. Lots of people are reserving other people’s names, whether for pranks, experimentation, promotion of other projects, revenge, financial gain or reasons known only to them.

For instance, in December it took several days before we were sure that the Twitter account for Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was being run by an impostor. The poor spelling and writing style had me suspicious – but he or she still managed to gather a couple of hundred followers and dispense some tweets of pithy wisdom. It was mostly good-natured, but the risk of damage to the Archbishop was still there. (The account has been taken over now and is dormant.)

Again, back in December, tech blogger Mike Butcher of Techcrunch UK admitted to stealing the account name of Andy Burnham, the UK Culture Secretary after a grievance involving Burnham’s opinions on net regulation. (I happen to agree that Burnham’s opinions were misguided, but I’m illustrating another point.) That one’s been suspended by Twitter Inc now. If Burnham had been quick to reserve his own name, it wouldn’t have happened.

(Incidentally, there are very few real politicians registered on Twitter, let alone actively using it. In Wales, we’ve seen the Plaid Cymru AM Bethan Jenkins and the Lib Dem candidate Alison Goldsworthy.)

This is not confined to individuals, it includes companies and brands as well. Lots of well known brands are taken by fakes.

Now most recently and amazingly, the name BBC on Twitter is being run by a third party, who have made no explicit indication that it’s unofficial. The fact they are pulling in a useful feed of current BBC news stories adds weight to the deception.

Look at my screenshot above. The account has 7,684 followers. This is very dangerous indeed for the BBC’s reputation.

Normally, only an eagle-eyed user would notice, with suspicion, that the only people they’re following back are Sky Sports, Manchester United football team and something called Funny Times. Or would click the profile link to discover the following disclaimer:

The news published on http://www.twitter.com/BBC is syndicated content taken directly from the BBC News website vie their public RSS feed found here. The account is not operated by the BBC but is offered for your convenience so that you may receive the latest news stories from the BBC website whilst using the Twitter Service.

Now though, someone called @sputnik101 discovered this when he complained to the BBC account about their broadcast policy on the DEC charity appeal for Gaza.

He then received a surprising and somewhat inappropriate reply. Here’s more on that story.

As you can see from the comments, somebody at the BBC has finally had the sense to complain to Twitter Inc to ask for the account to be suspended or handed over.

Here at Native, we like Twitter as a communication platform – and have got a lot of benefit from it in terms of contacts, information, useful links and smart conversation. Fortunately the culture of Twitter engenders authenticity and the confirmation of an account being fake, once known, can be spread very rapidly. But now that newer people are joining and taking time to learn how it works, the potential for deception is huge.

If you don’t fancy using it, make sure nobody uses it on your behalf.

If following this advice means registering for Twitter and – at least for now – leaving the account idle with a brief explanation, so be it. Here’s an example.

BBC have a 3-minute video on the joys of Twitter -  with well known user @stephenfry explaining how he sought advice on his household bat problem.

We are on Twitter as @carlmorris and @tombeardshaw.

[ UPDATE, 22/01/09: There's a link to the Chrysler website in the post below. It appears the car company took action and deleted their entire blogpost and comments on Thursday after some serious action on the recommendation site Digg. The image of the ad is still there. If you want to read the post and the comment pandemonium, Google have a barebones archive version in their cache. In my opinion, Chrysler would be better off owning this series of gaffes and explicitly dealing with the issue on their blog. As it goes, they've attempted to cover it up and censor the comments, thus being seen to fail once more. It kind of makes you feel sorry for them. ]

Here’s an intriguing article on Fast Company magazine about how Ford cars dealt with some negative publicity online last month.

While it mentions the rapid responses by their head of social media, Scott Monty, it may leave you wanting more details about the incident. So here’s the full story and Monty’s own account.

The key to this, in my opinion, is that Monty possessed additional information which he was able to share to calm down the bloggers and Twitter users.

In the meantime, many people emphasise the power of the web to engender good reputation for a product. But it’s just as powerful in the other direction. Elsewhere in the auto industry, Chrysler are suffering from the heat of almost a month of commenting fury. Why? Because after receiving a financial bail-out from the US government, Chrysler placed expensive national press adverts – to thank the public for “their” financial support.

This was viewed by many as a crass and wasteful move. The comments are largely variations on this theme:

Your resignation and the resignations of senior executives who have mismanaged the business would have been much more appropriate. Posted Dec 29, 2008, 8:03 PM by California Initiative

Oof! We also have:

My response to being forced to bail Chrysler out was to immediately purchase a FORD Focus and I will NEVER buy any car that Chrysler has anything to do with.  This ad you ran “thanking” us was an example of you wasting OUR money. Posted Dec 30, 2008, 11:44 AM by redwood tree

I don’t pretend to know very much about the auto industry. Even so, being based in Cardiff, Wales, I probably wouldn’t have picked up the Chrysler story – if it weren’t for the blogging frenzy that ensued and brought it to my attention. A quick look at Google Blog Search reveals hordes of US taxpayers expressing this. Here’s one. Here’s another. And another. Yet another. That’s just the front page of results. Here’s Fox News for good measure. Chrysler never dealt with any of the individual comments. Eventually they did attempt to respond with a very brief post in their own defence.

There’s a good chance your brand or business will not be facing publicity issues of this magnitude. But these are useful reminders of the importance of monitoring what people are saying about you online. People won’t necessarily choose to make any of these comments directly to you. Nor will they necessarily come to “your space”.

Often it will be people saying complimentary things, which is a great way to improve your day. But at some point, you may need to respond appropriately to something negative, or indeed a full blown crisis. Preferably immediately.

Your own blog can be a good place to respond. (You don’t have a blog? It’s extremely handy to have an active blog ready for these situations.)

I must confess to being a collector of these kinds of stories.

Another one of my grisly favourites concerns Target, a retailer, and dates from January 2008. When a blogger complained about an image in an advert, Target’s PR people refused to answer properly. Instead they cited a policy that they don’t talk to “nontraditional media”, in this case a blogger (read: influential customer). Whether or not you agree with the nature of the original customer complaint doesn’t matter. This was a snubbing which backfired – even if Target did ignore the blogs, it ended up in the New York Times anyway.