Embargoes

Today on twitter and Facebook Australian tech journalists and the social PR and Marketing community were all enjoying this animated cartoon that looks at the ongoing Embargo debate from an uninterested journalist's point of view - was too funny not share (especially on a Friday)...

There's no such thing as a social media expert

Sometimes other people say exactly what you've been thinking but haven't had the wherewithal, time or eloquence to say yourself. This morning when I opened my Google Reader and saw this post from one of my favourite commentators/bloggers/marketers Kate Carruthers I had an "Oh you're sooooo right moment" when I read even just the headline Why I'm probably not a social media expert and neither are you. Why not? Well because it's a bit early in the spectrum to be an "expert" or a "guru" or a "wunderkind" in the field of social media.

A few of my favourite tidbits of Kate's post are:

• Anyone who claims to be an expert in social media is probably talking through their hat.
• Social media has been with us for only a few years. Expertise is not developed overnight.
• Deep knowledge is founded on a basis of research and experience. Lessons learned, especially from failure and pushing of known boundaries, are key to development of expertise.
• Social media is just media and communications on a new platform. I’m not quite sure if that fact privileges social media in some special way?
• Perhaps rather than being social media experts we are social media learners? If indeed social media is a real thing we should even consider in and of itself (but that is a topic for another day)?

This is pretty much my philosophy on social media summed up brilliantly only my lack of skills means I express it more like; "Just get in there and experiment, listen to people, have conversations online and take anyone who calls themselve a social media guru with a big grain of salt because they're barely ahead of you who might like to start today."

Thanks Kate!

Backing up your claims!

The world's largest annual consumer technology exhibition, The Consumer Electronic Show (CES), was held in Las Vegas last week between the 7-10th January.

More than 2,500 technology companies introduced new products to kick off the next decade of technology innovation by unveiling technology trends ranging from 3D TV, mobile DTV, and connected TV to green technologies, tablets and apps.

Among than 20,000+ products on display was Sonim's "unbreakable" smartphone. The only problem was reporter Dan Simmons from the BBC's technology show Click managed to break it in a matter of minutes during a demonstration at the show.



You can watch the clip here and have a giggle.

As a member for the PR community I really felt for the product marketing team and I thought this incidence was a great reminder that in all areas of Marketing Communications you really need to be able to put your money where your mouth is!

The difference between PR, advertising, design etc

With thanks to @issue where I saw it, and to Marty Neumeier who drew this little visualisation in the first place - this is a FANTASTIC way to describe the different ways different marketing professionals go about wooing consumers. Some people are just so clever! Plus it's funny because it's true :)

10 levels of intimacy in today’s communication

via tiphereth

December Birthdays

Well you would think that with all the Christmas parties at this time of year the @KineticsPR team would have had enough to celebrate...

Thankfully for the gang this is not the case. Yesterday we celebrated three birthdays in one – JodyLennon’s, @KatRoss’s and mine (@KdeR). In true Kinetics style we secretly passed around birthday cards to be signed whilst turning a blind eye to our own and then feasted on raspberry and white chocolate cheesecake. Could December get any better???

And so the end of 2009 is nigh...

There's just over a week until Christmas to go and the end of 2009 is nigh. December is being its usual crazy self and acting like a strange combination of winding down to the break and frantic mania trying to get everything crossed off the to-do list before the end of year. I imagine it's this strange juxtaposition for many businesses and it is certainly the case for a PR agency like Kinetics. You end up juggle the looming 'Christmas closedown/slowdown' deadlines of all the major publications against client's expectations of getting news out the door and achieving targets for the year. Throw in the mix Christmas parties, 2010 strategic plans, contract renewals, staggered annual leave calendars (both clients' and our own), family interruptions (there's always some this time of year), early invoicing and reporting requirements and you've got a recipe for organised chaos. This year has been no exception. For example at the moment I'm sitting in the office all alone as one colleague is on personal leave, one finding lunch, one on a last minute client Christmas present mission, the other hand delivering presents, one picking up relatives from the airport, one at the last board meeting for the year and some others at a final client meeting. Tis the season eh!

In any case, I thought I'd take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! We especially want to thank our clients for their support this year and looks forward to an even better 2010 ahead working together! And to the team, I want to thank you all for your hard work and effort in what has definitely been at times a trying year, you're brilliant and deserve a break this Christmas. Travel safe and have a happy time!

NB: The office will be closed from 1pm on Thursday 24th December to Monday 4th January but if you need us call the office number and it will divert to Kenny's mobile.

The Photons

Did we mention that Kinetics is part of the Photon Group? The Photon Group is Australia's largest marketing communications services company and the 12th largest marketing communications services company in the world!! It's made up of over 50 specialised companies in Australia (and the rest of the globe), with companies split up into five divisions:

Specialised Communications - public relations and public affairs consultancies, corporate communications and events management (which is Kinetics' group);
Marketing - provides outsourced sales execution and merchandising services to FMCG, telecommunications and other industries;
Internet & E-Commerce - high growth combination of digital services, innovative product sales and transaction based marketing;
Integrated Communications & Digital - world class advertising agencies, recognised for creative talent; and
Strategic Intelligence - independent communications advisory and consumer research.

Being part of the Photon Group is excellent as we can offer all of these services to our clients via a single contact (or one butt to kick). The other excellent thing about being part of the Photon Group is that they throw very good parties... Last week Kinetics attended the annual Photon conference which was at the Sydney Convention centre and hosted by comedian Wil Anderson, and then in the evening we were shipped off (quite literally) to Cockatoo Island where we were wined and dined, enjoyed the lovely DJ Ruby Rose and the incredible Australian act Empire of the Sun... not bad for a Christmas party really :)

A merry Kinetics Christmas

Our friends over at Media Connect wrote this great wrap-up of the Kinetics Christmas Party today:

Technology media celebrated a Mexican Fiesta Christmas party with Kinetics this week, also marking the agency's 13th anniversary.

According to CEO Jody Lennon, journalists from a variety of media outlets including technology, consumer, lifestyle and business attended the festivities, while longtime clients rubbed shoulders with those who signed up a few short weeks ago.

Meanwhile, the winner of the best costume price was Kinetics client Mathew Luu of Lexar, who wore "a very macho, silver-trimmed black sombrero that made him look like a bad hombre".

"Most journos present showed their support of the theme by consuming large quantities of Sol beer, frozen Margaritas and pina coladas... and we figure that’s what inspired Ty Pendlebury’s dance moves to the accompanying mariachi band!' said Lennon.

For more pics check out the @KineticsPR account on Twitter...

Thoughts on Google Sidewiki...with thanks to creo

Our fellow “Photon-ites” from across the ditch at creo communications wrote an excellent blog post  this week about a new widget from Google that might just have quite the impact on the PR industry: Sidewiki.

Creo said:

This month Google launched Sidewiki. It is effectively a 'micro-wiki' enabling users to comment and discuss any webpage, while browsing that page. The principal idea is noble...why, then, is it causing a stir in the communications business?

For the same reason that many companies, and the PR people that represent them, still struggle to grasp the basic concept of Social Media.

Surrendering control. Conversations between consumers about organisations and their reputations are taking place on any number of Social Media channels around the clock. The amount of influence PR professionals and their clients have over these conversations is limited. It's a case of power to the people.

The difference, and sticking point, this time though is that, unlike say Twitter or Facebook - where negative commentary is physically (and thus psychologically) separate from the brand being discussed - Google Sidewiki appears directly connected to, even floating on top of, a company's website.

There’s more detail to be had on the Creo site but they definitely make a valid point, and I’ll confess to being initially a little overwhelmed and terrified at the thought of that level of openness online between businesses and individuals. But on the other hand Sidewiki is really just a new way to have those conversations that are already going on, and perhaps a way for businesses to see more clearly and more quickly what the opinions out there are saying. And once again the principles of listening and getting involved will be key to success online. As Creo said, it is well worth watching, and I’ll add worth playing with too!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

I really don't know where this year went, I'm sure it was just two days ago that I attended a raft of Christmas parties and worked myself into a right frenzy in order to get a mountain of stuff done that had to be completed in 2008 before the whole of the Australian nation went on hiatus for January 2009. But apparently that was 12 months ago, and now we're shaping up to do it all again! So what's on your to do list between now and the summer holiday break? You know there's only five weeks left don't you? And that a fair chunk of that time will be taken up with social activities - both during work hours and outside them? But never fear, it will all get done! Somehow it always does. The adrenalin and excitement of the season will see you through.

What really kicks off the silly season for me is the Kinetics Christmas Party, it's always a November occasion and often close to first cab off the rank for the tech PR and media communities. Not so this year, but it's still close, with the date all set for five days from now in the evening of Tuesday 24th November. Come join us if you're free for our Mexican fiesta - we'll be the one's in the sombreros! Email me 'polly at kinetics dot com dot au' if you want more details. Hola!

Lest we forget

Image

A little theory we're working on...

Crossing over: The nexus between marketing, technology and business process.

Historically technology existed in back office silos and then it moved to also being a facilitator of company window dressing with the intro of website marketing and static pretty sites. But now we’ve reached the point where the best use of technology can be found at the nexus between business process and marketing.

I know you will have heard the saying that marketing is about “selling the sizzle, not the steak” but in fact now we need the sizzle plus the steak – cook, carved and served to the exact standards the customer requires every time. And to do this there absolutely must be synergy between the technology and people at the forefront of the business and the marketing activities and business processes and technology behind the scene to create customer engagement. 

What do you think?

Technology & the Healthcare Industry

One of the great things about working in the Technology space is the enormous scope of vertical industries that we get to work with as technology becomes so pervasive in almost every aspect of our lives.

Over the last few months conversation around the National Broadband Network has firmly turned the spotlight on e-health. Government stimulus spending is at an all time high and debates around privacy are becoming less heated as the world acclimatises to sharing personal information on the net with Web 2.0 applications and as developments in web security progress.

Recent progress in the health technology arena has seen so many amazing solutions and products come to the fore, products and solutions that will have real, lasting effects on Australians. As an avid technology fan with a past life in the healthcare industry, I have to say this particular set of products really excite me.

I mean sure, iPods are cool, but they mean diddly-squat when stacked up against the da Vinci robotics products, that allow surgeons to operate on patients from anywhere in the world and in the least invasive way possible. How about Cisco’s HealthPresence – TelePresence for the healthcare industry – which means in the future I could go to the shopping centre, pop into the HealthPresence pod and be seen by a Doctor for my checkup- regardless of my Doctor’s location. These pods are being trialed on the other side of the ditch at the moment and elsewhere.

Just last Friday a consortium was announced to manage Chronic Disease Care in Australia – the Chronic Disease Management Network (CDM-Net). According to Karen Dearne at The Australian’s article "CDMS basically uses the web and our intelligent software to automate a number of tasks, such as populating an electronic health record and generating a treatment plan using best-practice guidelines. The doctor shares this information with other team members, such as pharmacists, diabetes educators and podiatrists, and in turn they contribute their observations so there is ongoing collaboration and much more effective care for the individual patient.”

There are also many Australian (and international companies) doing great work into the digitising of our medical records and taking on the massive task of connecting all our disparate health data. Organisations such as NEHTA (National E-Health Transition Authority) are pushing the initiative along, saying; “Across Australia there is a groundswell of support for a better, more connected healthcare system. More than 80 percent of Australians are in favour of electronic health records and are increasingly aware of the safety and quality benefits that e-health can deliver.” Unfortunately it has not been the easiest task, and as Andrew McIntyere’s blog at Medical-Objects notes, “Health IT is hard because the problem that we are trying to solve is huge, changes rapidly and cannot be modelled completely at any one point in time. It also rightly needs to be done with a very high level of security and even low levels of fraud and security breaches are intolerable and cannot be assigned to an “acceptable level of fraud” - which is what happens in the banking industry.”

So yes, I am looking forward to seeing Apple’s next installment of the iPhone, but really, the above marks such an enormous contribution to our society, and one day, it might even save your life.

More on product reviews

Today the largest ever delivery of merchandise arrived at the Kinetics office. So big in fact the courier was courteous enough to call from the basement/car park of our building to enquire whether we had a storage unit down there that he could perhaps leave it in. Alas we do not any such a fabulous storage arrangement and therefore we are left with this for the end of the day: the leaning tower of Logitech Guitar Hero drum kit simulator-thingys! The photo below doesn't really do it justice as there were other piles like these around the place this afternoon, in very convenient locations like the walkway between desks! The "wall" should be gone in a day or two of course, sent out to eager journos (who hopefully have some space to play with them) but it's an interesting fact about being a PR company with consumer tech clients that your office is often a loading dock for all kinds of interesting gear in pristine condition, until it disappears into the lock up cupboard!

Cloud

Recently I heard Rodney Haywood, resident subject matter expert at Alphawest talk about the benefits of the next big thing in IT - cloud computing.

There are many, many, different explanations of Cloud Computing and Private Cloud up all over the world wide web. Try this from Wikipedia: Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the "cloud" that supports them.

VMware (virtualisation specialists) says about 'private cloud': Transform your IT infrastructure into a private cloud—a pool of virtualized resources within a datacenter, or internal cloud, federated on-demand to external clouds—delivering IT infrastructure as an easily accessible service.

Cloud computing can be one of the more challenging concepts to wrap your head around (for all of us non-IT people) although when you take it back to its more basic level - applications like gmail, that live on the web - not on your server, the concept of private cloud is just like renting your IT infrastructure or applications like you would your internet. Haywood explained that the hype surrounding cloud is very quickly turning into a reality for three key business reasons: faster, cheaper, better.

In Australia Alphawest have partnered with Cisco and VMware (and their telco owner Optus) to provide a unique cloud offering for customers. Here's some links to some extra information if you're interested:
Cisco's ANZ Data Centre lead Dylan Morison talking about his recent CIO roundtable discussing around cloud

Alphawest's partnership with VMware for the vCloud beta announcement

Where next for Twitter?

Twitter has become this year's the biggest online phenomenon being talked about offline, which is a strange intersection in itself. So I've seen the talk about Twitter on Sunrise and The Today Show, I've read the Sydney Morning Herald articles, I've seen the 'how to' pieces in business management publications and heck I've even had to interupt (and correct) a close-to-elderly relative mid-lecture to other elderly relatives explaining Twitter.

So I've thought for some time now the end must be near. Much as Twitter is close to my and the teams' hearts it's very fast becoming "like so 2008". Not that we'll be leaving it anytime before 2015, we're in PR after all and we need all the communication channels we can get!

But this week an unprecedented offline commentary on Twitter occurred and I'm pretty sure it's finally 'jumped the shark'. Yesterday's Australian Financial Review ran on its front page the story Why Tweets Have Got Bosses All A-Twitter, which was followed up by a full-page piece on page 60! Oh dear, when Australia's leading business and financial publication has jumped onto the topic you know you've gone mainstream. Better yet when your boss wants to ban it you know you've really made it. I especially liked this quote "Twitter is emerging as the communications tool of choice for a growing number of twentysomethings and hipster web surfers..." Yeah that's it!

So what do you think? Is Twitter on the way up or on the way out?

Twitter for business

A couple of months ago I was asked to provide some comment for a training session on Twitter's value for business. This presentation was given in Melbourne this week - I am famous (from slide 59) :)

Can Twitter do Business?

View more presentations from Anthony Caruana.

MasterChef lessons for the PR world

MasterChef season one has finally come to a close. And what a successful one it was - more than 3.7 million viewers tuned in to see Julie crowned Australia's first ever MasterChef - making it the most watched TV non-sporting event since ratings began. According to an article on SMH "Including sports telecasts, it still comes in third place, beaten only by the Hewitt v Safin Australian Open match in 2005 (4.04 million) and the 2003 Rugby World Cup final (4.01 million)."

So after countless tries by the TV networks in varying reality TV formats and genres, why was MasterChef so incredibly successful?

To hazard a guess I would identify passion as the primary ingredient. The shows contestants (and definitely the shows judges) displayed enormous amounts of passion for their chosen genre, and the contestants in particular were often made to articulate and re-articulate their passion for cooking and food throughout.

What does any of this have to do with PR? Much like a TV show, PR’s aim is to engage with an audience, and if successful a very large audience. The importance of being passionate about your subject is often overlooked. Journalists (or any audience for that matter) become excited, involved and really engaged with people who are passionate about what they do, they are swept up in others enthusiasm – if the enthusiasm is credible. Having a deep understanding and most importantly passion for the industry that you work in cannot be undersold in the PR world – whether it be an organisations spokesperson, or the PR person who works on your behalf.

A case of role reversal

A large part of our jobs as PR professionals is securing media interviews for our clients and briefing the spokespeople on how to best handle these interview situations. Well this week the tables were turned when I was asked to be a media spokesperson for a charity fundraiser I am participating in this month, Dry July www.dryjuly.com

All of a sudden I was the one in the spotlight, having a journalist fire questions at me down the phone line - and I thought the abstinence from alcohol for a whole month was going to be the tough bit.

Okay, so perhaps it wasn’t the AFR, The Australian or even The Daily Telegraph, but it was the Central Coast Express Advocate – the newspaper from where I grew up and lived for 22 years of my life. So sort of a big deal!

No longer a cool and calm PR but a nervous interviewee, I was lucky to have my colleague and co-founder of the charity on hand to give me a thorough brief on the publication and journalist, run through a Q&A document and give me a good pep talk.

So I will now have a much greater sympathy towards those execs that have no choice but to make media interviews part of their job but I must say I think I was smack bang 'on message'...

"Hopefully it will benefit our wallets and our waistline as well as
raising money for a good cause,"Ms Wright said.