June 2nd, 2009
A few of us in the office are on Twitter and have been experimenting recently with a view to understanding how it can or should be incorporated into a broader communications strategy. I’ll confess to not having been an early adopter of it and was for a long time really quite skeptical as to its worth and point. The people I spoke to about it seemed to have wildly differing opinions, classing it as anything from mindless ramblings to an essential customer communications tool. For a long time I was firmly in the first camp. Read the rest of this entry »
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May 29th, 2009
Traditionally, companies developed crisis communication plans to ensure they were ready to act quickly in the event of an emergency. For example, if the company’s operations burnt down or there was an urgent need to recall a product the crisis plan provided clear guidance on how to respond to most likely scenarios.
Key to this plan was identifying stakeholders such as employees, customers, suppliers and the media and determining how they should be informed of an incident, by who and in what order. Having a plan meant companies were more likely to communicate effectively in a crisis by understanding the importance of timely, accurate information. Read the rest of this entry »
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May 27th, 2009
We have repeatedly been warned and we are ready and waiting for what has been dubbed the ‘death of print’, but if this prophecy was to come to fruition would the PR industry as a whole be adequately prepared for the drastic changes that would follow?
As a new graduate, I am fresh from the university pack. My mind is full of opinions from influential communication scholars, the formula for writing a perfect press release is heavily engrained and I have the correct etiquette for dealing with journalists down pat. However, after finding my feet in the real world of PR I have found that these learning’s are quite outdated.
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February 13th, 2009
For companies and the media, ten years of economic growth has seen a raft of good news stories about growth, profits, opportunities and expansion into new markets. The economic downturn has created a new challenge for the public relations profession – how to communicate bad news.
Danny Rogers, editor of PR Week last month bluntly divided economic cycles into good news (in an upturn) and bad news (in the downturn). He went onto say that good news typically comes in the form of promotional messages, and during upturns PR usually reports into a marketing division.
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December 22nd, 2008
We spend most of our time devising, writing, presenting and reviewing news and information for journalist consumption. It is the bread and butter of what we do - naturally, we think that we are pretty good at it.
One surefire way of finding out whether this is true is to ask the audience, which is exactly what a recent media training event enabled. The workshop gave rookie PRs the opportunity to find out what flicks the switch of the typical IT journalist – ’straight from the horses’ mouth.
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December 22nd, 2008
Some of the n2n team recently attended the annual “CNet Xmas Party” at Piano Bar in Kings Cross. It was great to catch up with the CNet team, business leaders and PR/marketing industry representatives. The n2n team had a great night - as is clearly evident in this photo. Read the rest of this entry »
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December 8th, 2008
Last week n2n attended a course from Speed Thinking; a new business concept that teaches companies methods of thinking and idea generation (definitely not one of those airy brainstorm training sessions that can never be applied to the real world).
In a recent blog post, founder Dr Ken Hudson noted that, in a broadband-based world, we may need to start thinking in a different way. But is faster thinking really the answer? Read the rest of this entry »
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December 2nd, 2008
I don’t know whether you have seen the story doing the rounds on PR and media sites this week.
The Council to Homeless Persons distributed a news release to a daily commuter publication, MX via an online news wire service. The commuter publication was one of many on a list of metropolitan news outlets that received the release. The news release, distributed on Thursday, was under embargo until the following Wednesday.
The email doing the rounds details how MX broke the embargo and ran a front page story based on the release on Friday afternoon.
There are a couple of things that I find particularly amusing about the email and the Council to Homeless Persons’ response:
1. They issued an embargoed release over a news wire service
2. The story was embargoed for more than a week
3. They complained that the embargo was broken even though it appears that nobody ever had the chance to agree to it in the first place
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December 2nd, 2008
We’ve been asked by one of our clients to sit on the evaluation panel as they select a new advertising agency and I’ve had the pleasure of listening to various different pitches. Sitting on the other side of table for a change has been great learning in terms of getting exposure to the way other agencies pitch, but it’s also been interesting for a number of other reasons.
Firstly, it’s fantastic that PR is considered so important and central to raising this client’s brand awareness. For too long PR has often been viewed as the poor relation to advertising and is forced to feed off the budgetary scraps that are left over once the ad guys have had their fill. Read the rest of this entry »
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September 26th, 2008
Last night n2n won a “PRIA Award for Excellence” for Business to Business communications for its campaign to promote Sun Microsystems green IT offerings. n2n was awarded the award against seven other finalists.
The judges said the campaign demonstrated “very thorough research”, had a “comprehensive strategy” and that it was “great to see a differentiated approach for different audiences.” The campaign, which spanned electronic communications (eg blogs, email, podcasts) events and media relations, exceeded the objectives. As a result, Sun was publicly recognised as a leader by industry influencers.
Sun’s staff and customer perceptions were positively influenced and a number of major deals were directly linked to the awareness generated by the campaign. Thanks to Sun Microsystems for their early commitment to green computing which gave us great material to work with.
Sun is a partner in the true sense of the word – they involve us as part of their team in everything from planning to celebrating success. And their willingness to support strategic campaigns makes it a privilege to be their partner.Well done to the n2n team who work with Sun Microsystems. It was their clever strategy, energy and flawless execution that secured the PR award.
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