White Noise Festival and Social Networking in PR

I went to the first day of an event I'm rather fond of yesterday. This weekend's the weekend of White Noise Festival at The Firebug, a weekend of local post-rock bands/musicians/sound experimenty types, and copious amounts of beer. Blissful.

While I'd found out about it last year through word of mouth, the majority of the friends that accompanied me had heard about it through, Facebook. Well, originally posters, but they pointed to a Facebook group and event.

The Faceboook group gives some information about the festival:

Basic Info

Name:
White Noise Festivals - Leicester
Category:
Music - Live Music
Description:
The White Noise Festivals (White Noise Christmas and White Noise Summer) are twice-yearly events aimed at raising awareness of the best bits of the Leicester Music Scene and raising money for local charities.
Privacy type:
Open: All content is public.
Contact Details
Email:
Office:
Firebug Bar
Location:
Millstone Lane
Leicester, United Kingdom
Recent news

News:
White Noise Christmas is confirmed for the 4th, 5th and 6th of December at Firebug, Leicester.

There will be no day tickets this year - only Weekend passes priced £5. You will still be able to buy in advance or pay on the door on any day.

There is also a wall in which members of the group can discuss all things festival, exchange information and get updates from the organiser of the event. The usual Facebook stuff then; wall, photo gallery, video gallery, bit of information and links to invite others to join.

Such community participation in an event is indeed a very useful thing for public relations. Brian Solis talks about it a fair bit in his Essential Guide to Social Media, discussing the importance of two way dialogue between organisations and their intended audience. In fact, perhaps the word audience is not correct, since the organisation must also listen. I can't think of a better word than audience right now, so I'll stick with it, but it's a worthwhile point.

A two way dialogue engages audiences with the organisation, helping feedback on their campaigns. This can certainly help the evaluatory part of a campaign, in that feedback is instant and accessible. In the case of the White Noise Festival, which is admittedly a more basic message to convey, people can let the organisers know what bands they liked, what they didn't, suggestions for improvements, etc. Perhaps a better example is the Liberal Democrat Facebook page where both positive and negative feedback can be given. For one rather blunt example on the Lib Dem wall: Brian Smith: "this party has lost it join the english democrats".

All in all then, Facebook, despite all its triviality (e.g. Poke), is a fine example of how social networks can be put to use in conveying a message to an "audience", and using feedback from that audience to evaluate it. This is something that arguably benefits both sides of PR, both organisations and the "audience", since the audience are now more able than ever to be listened to, and public relations guys and gals can improve themselves based on feedback. Viva S.M.A.R.T.! Viva Web 2.0.

PR killed the Journalism Star

Is old school journalism dead? Killed by wire agencies and press releases? Roy Greenslade wrote on the subject in his blog, and how Twitter is used to get these press releases across.

Developments in the new media have led to a greater presence of press releases in the news, and diluted news outlets whose worthiness ranges from exceptional to far below mediocre.

The first of these is the virtually non-existent barrier to entry. To be a producer in the new media after all, all you need is a blog account and to make a few connections to get your message out. Most agree that this is indeed a healthy thing for democracy since it allows greater participation, contributing to the rise of citizen journalism.

This low bar of entry also makes it easier for organisations to get their message out in the form of press releases.

The issue however lies not with the number of news outlets and re-producers, rather the limited sources that are called upon, i.e. recycled news from wire agencies such as Reuters and press releases. Such recycled news contributed heavily to the new media and raises the question as to whether or not traditional journalism, in the sense of journalism that relies on primary sources, is in decline.

Of course, the existence of press agencies secures traditional journalism, else re-producers would have nowhere to get their stories from, but can journalism and PR work hand in hand online?

As far as I can tell, it depends on the type of PR in question. In the case of PR for the public benefit, for instance public health notifications (see my entry about swine flu), PR and journalism have the same agenda, that being to make the public aware of information that will benefit them. There are other cases where this may well conflict. Such cases will often be associated with the term "crisis management"; or, in real people speak, trying to convince the world that everything's fine when it isn't to cover an organisation's back, or block out truths that are of detriment to their objectives. "Selfish PR", if you will.

This darker side of PR is perhaps exemplified by a quote from Frank Mankiewicz, vice chairman of Hill & Knowlton PR:

The big corporations, our clients, are scared shitless of the environmental movement… The corporations are wrong about that. I think the companies will have to give in only at insignificant levels. Because the companies are too strong, they're the establishment. The environmentalists are going to have to be like the mob in the square of Rumania before they prevail.

This of course applies to the Journalism versus PR debate on a general level, not specifically online. The relevance of this quote though, is to demonstrate the communicative power of large corporations. In "old school" media, the only challenges to the booming voice of large corporations were those of investigative journalists working for larger news organisations, and pressure groups/protesters, who did not have so much of a platform to stand on.

Web 2.0 provides this platform, and so perhaps it could in fact play a key role in levelling the playing field between "Selfish PR" practitioners, whose goal is to make people aware of a certain message and journalists, whose goal is to make people aware of the truth.

Now that's how it's done.

G'day readers.

Today's entry actually started life as a comment on a rather pleasing entry of Ellis' about a lucky young go-getter from Hampshire by the name of Ben Southall landing himself a job that even Carlsberg would not be able to lay claim to; but alas, there was no way of commenting on it; so, naturally, I nabbed the idea. ;)

Tempting as it is to steal the idea as my own and wail "liar!" when accused of plagerism, I'm going to have a quick look at why the dream job isn't just a victory for Mr. Southall, but also his employer, Tourism Queensland.

Before I launch into all of that, I'll quickly sum up the story:

• 1: Tourism Queensland need to promote tourism for Hamilton Island, just off the Australian north east coast.
• 2: They set up a campaign to find an island caretaker with some awesome benefits, calling it the "Best job in the world". They are probably right.
• 3: Job applicants sent in a video to convince Tourism Queensland they are the ones for the job
• 4: The applicants are whittled down until the position is filled by just one person
• 5: The proud person who lays claim to having the best job in the world does lots of PR type things to help Tourism Queensland, meanwhile the initial process of finding the right person for the job has generated insane amounts of publicity itself.

The campaign certainly caused a stir, with the BBC doing an hour-long documentary on it, and being hailed by PR companies all over the place as one of the greatest campaigns ever. But what exactly made it so good?

One of the appealing things about the campaign is undoubtedly the emotional response to the prospect of being paid £74,000 a year for living in paradise in a kind of dangling a carrot in front of a donkey kind of fashion. Especially when you consider that this vacancy was first advertised in January '09, when the winter blues are pretty much at their peak in much of the north side o' the world.

Next, we have some pretty awesome user generated content stuff going on. If YouTube has taught the world anything, it's that people like stupid videos, and as such, getting folks to audition for the job through uploading videos of themselves is bound to attract people along the way, even if their interests do not lie with the job or the island.

So then, after all of that the winner is picked, Ben Southall becomes one lucky sonofagun and all eyes are upon him, prime for him to start his new job doing what? Ahh yes, being, essentially, a PR officer for the island, with one much more attentive audience than most would have had.

Not too shabby really.

Containing the other side of Swine Flu

The epidemic of swine flu is a double edged sword in terms of transmission. On one hand is the transmission of the virus from person to person, damaging those it comes into contact with. On the other, there is the viral reaction to this — panic.
It is here that PR can be used to help curb unnecessary panic, and it is why the government is currently searching for a PR agency to do exactly this.

Not that the government did much to help themselves in the first place, gushing out warnings with the intention of raising awareness, but the result being the media spreading it as fear. So now, the backpedalling must begin, and the government are asking PR agencies to help.

Of course it's difficult to be straight forward and matter of fact about a disease that actually does have the ability to cause harm, and even in some circumstances death. The public should be aware of the dangers of swine flu. So the balance it seems is somewhat delicate: Too much concern from authorities and people will be scared, too little and they won't take the necessary precautions.

Panic spread to authorities in parts of the world too. In April, it was reported that Egyptian authorities were unnecessarily confiscating and culling pigs as a precaution against swine flu, despite H1N1 being transmitted only by humans, and has not been found amongst pigs.

Maybe the name Swine Flu's a bit misleading then, since it's actually genetically a mix of pig, bird and human flu, and the H1N1 strain is not one that's actually been found in pigs. Because of this, the virus is increasingly being referred to as simply H1N1, or Influenza A.

The World Animal Health Foundation even said that "The virus has not been isolated in animals to date. Therefore it is not justified to name this disease swine influenza." What a difference a name makes.

So is the PR pandemic of Swi… Influenza A contained yet?

Well, just under 6 months since it was declared a pandemic, news stories of over-the-top knee jerk responses to the virus seem to have mostly dried up, as has the initial hysteria now that people have noticed that the streets aren't in fact littered with the poor under-prepared victims of H1N1 and, for the most part, recover well as they might with any other kind of flu. So perhaps the message finally got through to the world; but I suspect thge balance comes from first hand observation countering some over the top public relations.

Tweeting for PR Students

I must admit, for a long time I couldn't see the point of Twitter. 140 character limits and a lack of any kind of formatting sounded more of a hindrance than an innovation. But alas, I caved into the pressures of the masses and got myself a Twitter account.

A quick leaf through my personal Twitter account will reveal a fairly large omission of substance; however Tweeting is perhaps more constructive when not entirely confined to the mediocrity of everyday life.

Twitter was named when creator Jack Dorsey found the word in the dictionary. It was defined as follows:

Twitter: A short burst of inconsequential information.

This humble name was chosen for a concept where its biggest strength is its simplicity. 140 characters prevents Tweeters from overly complex Tweets, letting them only put down a brief description of what they mean to communicate at that exact moment. It is for this reason many new media commentators have described it a stream of consciousness.

So, a service like Twitter is nimble, immediate and accessible. These three qualities are precious commodities in Public Relations to communicate to an organisation's message to its audience, and as such, Twitter is very much a part of the new media revolution, and is of great value to PR practitioners.

Word spreads fast on Twitter. Since reputation is a big part of PR — preserving the positive, curbing the negative, being Twitter savvy is a major bonus. The recent outrage at Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir for her article on Stephen Gately which she used as an excuse to criticise same sex relationships and marriages exemplifies this. Complaints quickly tweeted, almost virally, prompting a record amount of complaints to the press complaints commission.

It is for the aforementioned reasons that Twitter is of great value is of great value to those involved in PR, but it is its accessibility that is something that sets it apart from many other media forms. Anyone can tweet. From an almost inconceivable amount of sources — text message, mobile clients, etc. For the PR student, it is an immediate soap box on which to stand and shout.

P.s. For those of you that have more that 140 characters, you may just fancy Woofer instead. ;)

The Marketing of Paranormal Activity

On the 16th of October, Paranormal Activity was put to general release and is one of the more talked about new film releases at the moment.

The plot is one which sounds perhaps a little too familiar — haunting/possession by demon, strange and terrifying occurrences, being filmed from the characters' perspectives in a gonzo Blair Witch/Cloverfield sort of manner, and so on and so forth.

It is not however the plot that is behind the hype, rather the marketing campaign behind it.

This campaign then must have taken some painstakingly deep thinking through — how else could a $15,000 budget film rake in $7.9m?

Well, not quite painstaking, but more through a tried and tested two wave publicity stunt.

The first wave of this was to create the initial suspense for the film's release by following the X-factor Power To The People paradigm. Using the wondrous power of Web 2.0, by going to the film's website, visitors are invited via a large yellow button to "Demand it!" to be shown in cinemas near them.

Cynics amongst us may say that this is just distributor Paramount's way of filling people with a false sense of authority over where the film is distributed — and of course, they are right. They fooled us gullible bastards once more! Damnitt.

The second wave of attack consists of a pseudo-competition to get a Paranormal Activity party to come to your cinema. To do this, we are invited to get as many people together to sell out the 12:01 showing of the film on the 23rd of October. The first ten cinemas to do so will receive a Paranormal Activity party.

Here then, in a double blow from Paramount's PR team, hype is built up through people demanding — with a big yellow button — to see this film, and coercing their nearest and dearest to join them; and then to snag the rest, to get said nearest and dearest to buy tickets for the 12:01 showing of the film in an attempt to sell out the film. Meanwhile the marketing team at Paramount get a nice bit of time to themselves for a cuppa and a biscuit while they watch the fruits of their labour roll in.

Simples.

Sources

http://www.paranormalactivity-movie.com/

http://www.stopnato.org/was-paranormal-activitys-trek-into-theaters-a-viral-phenomenon-or-just-a-ruse-washington-post

http://screenrant.com/paranormal-activity-theatrical-trailer-ross-30920/

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=15416

http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/34064/paranormal-activity-throwing-ten-parties-celebrate-its-success

http://movie-critics.ew.com/2009/10/07/paranormal-activity-marketing-campaign/

Module Intro

Hello!

A welcome and apology to one and all that have discovered this blog. My name's Andy, I'm studying Journalism and Media at DMU, and as part of the media half of my course, I'm studying public relations and need a blog to accompany and document my odds and ends.

Comments are more than welcomed since this blog is part of my assessment for the module. More soon.

Andy