PR’s Fake News: Finding Meaningful Metrics
How many people were actually at Donald Trump’s inauguration? Official estimates say a maximum of 900,000 were in attendance, 100,000 fewer than Obama’s second inauguration and close to a million fewer than his first. Certain publications were happy to pitch much lower than that and soon a stream of images flooded social media showing vast swathes of empty spaces earning journalists the reputation of being “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” according to the incoming President.
In fact, so great is the challenge of fake news that President Trump used his first full day in office to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd. But whatever your opinions are of the man his incoming ceremony showed that the time for playing guesstimations is up, and media and PR professionals need to start listening up.
The PR industry has long wrestled with metrics and has at times become consumed by them. Having to prove the value of brand awareness and the actionable response of positive press coverage is no easy task, and in trying we have almost created our industry’s version of ‘fake news’ in statistics that try to convey a meaningful message, but often end up saying very little at all. Without getting all President Trump on the industry, we really need to look at our numbers.
Let’s start with AVEs. I mean, it’s 2017 and we are still constantly asked to supply these godforsaken metrics. These are the sort of figures provided back in the days when PR account executives would sit with a ruler and a bundle of newspapers and measure the size and space of a piece of coverage to generate an “equivalent advertising value” for that space. Today, people use it because the figures returned are often much higher than any PR budget and so they make PR people look good, but it’s fake news.
Even the more sophisticated measurements are struggling to keep up. Take SimilarWeb. They collect multiple amounts of data and apply an evolving algorithm with a scalable estimator to come up with a ‘best guess’ number of how many people view a piece of coverage. It takes into account the popularity of the publication, average click through rates and where the coverage sits on the homepage, but it still returns ludicrously over-beefed numbers that rarely correlate with the number of shares and other actionable responses. In fact, the PR numbers often converge with the top piece of news content from that day, even though anyone with an ounce of rationale would see the disparity.
The problem we are really trying to confront in the PR world is that we’re trying to assign arbitrary numbers (where bigger=better) to disparate campaigns which are all out to achieve disparate objectives. I have been sent countless invites to seminars discussing how best to calculate a measure of success for the PR industry, and on each occasion, I decline on the basis that surely a one-size-fits-all approach is part of the problem.
At 72Point we take each project by its individual merit. If it’s big numbers you are looking for then that’s what we can deliver – we landed on an average of 14 sites per story in December with an average of over half a million eyes per story. If it’s generating a social buzz, then we’re well set up for that too – our stories achieved an average of 5,546 social shares in the same month. And if it’s generating a bit of Google juice with follow-links and keyword optimised content then let us know, because we are one of few companies in the industry that have eschewed fake metrics for real results, because that is what ultimately counts for our clients.
2017 must be the year the professionals take back control
There’s a proverb in Romani culture that goes “a dog with two masters will die from hunger”, implying that you shouldn’t divide your loyalty because each master will assume the other has taken care of you. The philosophy of moral determinism – also notably satirized by Jean Buridan and, erm Amy Farrah Fowler from the Big Bang Theory – is particularly poignant as the PR industry reaches a crucial crossroads in 2017, where it must decide how to properly balance its commercial considerations with a responsibility to media publications and its consumers.
Last year as part of our annual white paper we noted the merger of several digital disciplines coming together under an umbrella leveraged by the creation and distribution of content. Our take on the year ahead was that traditional PR disciplines are no longer confined to the PR industry, with SEO practitioners dabbling in content to satisfy Google’s demands and marketers making the shift in response to consumer disdain for display placements.
What we didn’t initially foresee was how the input of marketing and SEO industries would impact the sort of content being produced. Marketers, for example, are slaves to the brand and very much tied to its messaging. SEO professionals are ultimately looking for tangible search results. But we PR professionals have to satisfy two masters, and as the industry starts to swell we must capitalise on the opportunity to take back control.
As an agency, 72Point is in a unique position in that we’re sat between PR agencies and the media. Our parent group, the UK’s largest independent news agency, is a shout away at any point and are there to lend us their insight into what is working at any given time, which is advice we dispense to all our clients as well as at Creative Therapy Sessions, which we rolled out across the country this year. We don’t embargo, we don’t distribute our news content in press release format, we don’t include brand mentions in the opening paragraph and we stick to the best stories, and that’s why we landed 100 per cent of our projects in back-to-back months in the close of 2016; We make it as easy for the media to lift our content as possible.
Publications will adapt at pace
Despite much change in the mainstream media market the forecasters are all starting to paint the same story; print revenue is in decline, digital revenue is yet to be fully realised. This year the pace of change is set to shift a gear, with editorial teams likely to shrink and commercial departments expand in scale and remit, often with conflicting implications for the PR industry. Soon, many media publications will be viewed more as partners than a separate entity.
Meaningful measurements
The PR industry is suffering from a serious numbers addiction. It uses estimated coverage views that bare little relevance to the social interactions and absurd projections based on simplistic mathematical sums. At some point, we’ll get found out and there will be a shift to more meaningful measurements which will result in targeted distribution on relevant publications and, crucially, better quality, shareable content.
Google will shift its indicators
In the same way brands will demand more human interactions over meaningless numbers, Google is about to shift from “exogenous”’ to “endogenous” signals to incorporate more genuine quality signals. The end may be in sight for link-building practices, which are currently a key indicator of trust, but a rather shallow one. Google’s algorithms in the future are more likely to incorporate the time people spend on the page and the way they interact with content.
From visual to interactive
Publishers want people to stick, brands want people to share, and both parties want content that works across channels. That’s why 2017 will be the year of the interactive. Quizes, graphic puzzles, even the old “spot the ball” type competitions will have their day in the sun again as we fight to keep consumers engaged.
5 Ways to secure backlinks from media publications
Securing ‘follow’ links on media publications is the latest KPI for the PR industry to grapple with.
As if we didn’t already have enough on our plate, right? But don’t despair, link building is a perfectly legitimate process that has been tainted by bad practice, and if you can do it properly, you can justify a whole lot more PR spend.
Media publications have a naturally high domain authority and have therefore become the target of SEO teams looking to piggyback on their search ranking. For Google, news outlets are a dream source of information because, like Wikipedia, they provide fact-checked answers to relevant questions. As the Google bots move from “exogenous”’ to “endogenous” signals, online publications will become even more relevant.
So how can a brand rub shoulders with digital media titles and get some tasty Google juice on the back of it to boost their search engine visibility? Through PR, of course. We’ve drawn up a list of five ways to secure backlinks from media publications to help you adjust to the murky world of SEO KPIs:
1. Citations
Writing brand citations as a domain address can prompt journalists to link it up.
Although a full http:// or even www. can be off-putting, most publications won’t see anything too explicit in a dot com or .co.uk.
Or so Jack Peat of 72point.com believes.
2. Link Targets
To encourage publishers to link out, you need to give them a tangible link target. Rather than simply linking to a brand’s website, we advise that you link to a page on the brand’s website that offers further information or other incentives to link away. This could be a landing page with further information on the story, a white paper with full research results, a graphic, a campaign microsite, a quiz or interactive.
3. Number of Links
We recommend including no more than one link to a brand’s website per piece. If you fill the press release with links it automatically looks spammy and will ultimately lessen the chance of the content being used at all.
4. High-Quality Content
High-quality consumer journalism is of paramount importance. For digital titles, the use of multimedia is equally important and will increase the chances of backlinks been included. Take visual puzzles, for example. Our ‘Where’s Wayney’ puzzle got Ladbrokes a follow link from The Sun amongst others. Infographics are another great example. Our infographic for Intrepid Travel made the MailOnline complete with a follow link.
5. Educate
Finally, it’s important to educate clients on link building best practice and also reassure them that landing links is not the be all and end all. As Google moves to endogenous signals a simple citation will deliver significant Google juice, so rest assured, your content is still hard at work on the search engines!
Does 'pure PR' still exist?
After almost 50 years of operating as the Public Relations Consultants Association, the PRCA has launched an industry-wide consultation into whether it should change its name. They will consider whether to drop the ‘C’, which is deemed too inclusive for an organisation that has members from across the entire breadth of the industry, and also ‘PR’, which is considered to be a redundant term in a sector of wide and varied specialities. Go the ‘A’ Team!
The public consultation raises the question over whether “Pure PR” still exists. According to The 'A Team', public relations is the intersection between people and a brand, and is primarily concerned with “reputation” and “gaining trust and understanding” between an organisation and its various publics - whether that's employees, customers, investors, the local community - or all of those stakeholder groups. PR professionals use a variety of techniques to achieve this, and differ from marketers because they secure ‘earned’ media rather than ‘paid’.
But there are very few PR professionals left operating so rigidly. "As the dividing lines between practices have blurred over the years, many within our industry no longer term themselves as offering pure PR,” the PRCA statement read, “the industry has changed in nature”.
They’re not the only ones to notice. As Fifth Ring’s Katherine Fair says, “it is getting difficult to pinpoint exactly how communications, marketing and public relations differ from each other”, which, according to Ogilvy’s Stuart Smith, means there is a rush to be “THE agency” that can “own the insight, the big creative idea, produce the content and optimise the channel: paid, owned, earned media”. The definition of PR as being focused on getting a good press “is close to being redundant”, Alastair Campbell says. PR is now about marrying several disciplines to achieve numerous objectives.
We have coined this ‘The Content Umbrella’. It’s a simple concept. It denotes the merger of previously detached industries, including, but not limited to PR, digital marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimisation and content marketing, and it is a shift that has been on the cards for some time.As Google demands better quality content, online media consumers get turned off by display and brands look to engage rather than convert an amalgamation of disciplines has occurred leveraged on the basic principles of creating and distributing content.
“Pure PR” is a relic of a time gone by. Today, PR professionals must marry several principles that fall under the content umbrella and in doing so re-shape the industry’s outlook. The re-naming of the PRCA is a symbolic move for the industry as a whole; PR is dead, long live PR.
SATS: Testing skills for school not for life
Today marks the start of SATS week for my son, his friends and thousands of other 11-year-olds across the UK. It’s an enormously pressured occasion for all of the children, but for my son, in particular, the tests will be particularly arduous as he is dyslexic.
Perhaps if my son wasn’t 2.5 years behind his peers already I might not worry so much about how he will make it through the week, but there are a number of other reasons why I disagree with the way schools and the government handle the Year 6 SATS.
What really bothers me is the fact my son has spent every night since September desperately trying to answer mock papers, crying when he gets the answers wrong because he can’t remember what phrases such as subordinating conjunction, synonym and adverbial mean. He’s not alone; my Facebook page went wild with parents complaining their children also couldn’t do the papers, and worse still they didn’t know how to help because the questions were utterly baffling.
Perhaps worse than that – because when he’s at home I can at least manage the tears and disappointment – is the fact his entire Year 6 curriculum has been based around the looming SATS. Day in and day out the school has been ‘preparing’ the children for these tests which, in the long run, do nothing to benefit the child and everything to benefit the school.
This means lessons aren’t fun, and rather than learning how to write creative pieces of text, they’re learning ridiculous phrases such as present progressive, relative pronoun and preposition.
And what I really, really, take insult to is that on my son’s first parent’s evening of the year we were effectively told (after a deep sigh from his teacher) that because he had no hope of passing the SATS due to his dyslexia, he was pretty much a failure. So, no SATS results means you’re no good. Never mind the fact my son is a technical whizz kid, has the inventing skills of Thomas Edison and the artistic skills of Pablo Picasso (alright that might be the proud parent talking, but you get my gist). No, because my son probably won’t pass his SATS this year, according to his teacher, and probably the government, he’s no good.
What really bugs me is that writing, learning and going to school should be FUN. And this year has not been fun. For any child, surely the most important thing is that by the time they leave school they are able to write a grammatically correct piece of text, understand when and where to use punctuation, and be able to decipher the meaning of a piece of writing? Is that not all the average adult does day to day?
Which got me thinking. I write for a living, and have done so for 17 years, so how would I do when faced with the Year 6 grammar test? I’ve been helping my son revise for the past six months, I don’t have dyslexia, and I’m pretty darn good at my job, so I should pass with flying colours – right?
Wrong!
I sourced a SATS test online and answered 10 minutes of questions similar to the following:
Q: Which sentence uses the past progressive?
- After Ali finished his homework, he went out to play
- Gemma was doing her science homework
- Jamie learnt his spellings every night
- Anna found her history homework difficult
Q: In this sentence, is the word after being used as a subordinate conjunction or as a preposition?
- I went to the cinema after I had eaten my dinner
Q: Which sentence is written in the active voice?
- The book was returned to the library yesterday
- The assembly was held in the hall
- The bad weather led to the cancellation
- The floods were caused by the heavy rain
I got 40%!
I then decided to put my colleagues to the test, surely one of us would fare better? We’re all of different ages, but between us have a collective 50 years of writing professionally – if anyone should be able to pass the SATS grammar tests, it should be us?
But no!
Only two members of the 72Point creative team (and I’m sure age is on their side) managed to get over 40%! I should find this shocking, but having seen the homework my son has endured every night this year, I don’t. I for one have never had to remember what a main clause, subordinate clause or antonym is when carrying out my day job, OR when conducting normal life admin.
To quote two teacher friends of mine, both of whom shall remain anonymous for obvious reasons:
“To think how good you are at English, just shows how completely pointless this is – plus it has only been in the curriculum for 2 years – I hate the fact I have to teach grammar just to enable children to pass this test”
“I got 50% and I’m a teacher! Good job I’m teaching Year 1 where we stop at nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prefixes and suffixes. It is so depressing seeing what the children are expected to know by the end of primary now.”
Even teachers are frustrated with the constraints of the current curriculum – my son’s school has been amazing since the day he joined but the teacher’s hands are tied and bound by the government’s obsession with testing children instead of teaching them the skills they’ll need for real life. There are so many other wonderful things which could and should be covered by the school curriculum – a bigger emphasis on science, technology, engineering, art and cooking for example.
So what does this prove? To me, it demonstrates that the Year 6 SATS tests are complete and utter nonsense which serve no purpose other than to strip young children of their childhood and ruin the last precious year of primary school.
And what will my boy take away from this experience? Well, I guess that’s very much down to our parenting, and how my husband and I handle the whole situation. We have encouraged our son to revise every night, not because we care how he does in the tests but to encourage hard work, dedication and good behaviour.
We have promised him we will NOT be looking at his results – because we firmly believe that all children should be celebrated for how hard they try and not what they achieve – and that as long as he can walk out of that exam room on Friday knowing he tried his best then we’ll be the proudest parents walking the planet.
I wish all the children sitting the SATS this week the very best of luck – each and every one is doing something this week that the majority of 72Point, and probably everyone else in our industry cannot do; however pointless this will be in the long run.
If you want to take the test, please visit http://www.sats2016.co.uk/think-youd-pass-your-sats-in-2016/
Content Umbrella: The coming together of PR, marketing, social media and SEO
SEO, PR, digital advertising, content marketing; they all seem to be doing the same thing nowadays.
As Google demands better quality content, online media consumers get turned off by display and brands look to engage rather than convert there has been an amalgamation of digital disciplines leveraged on the basic principles of creating and distributing content.
Which is why we’ve coined the term Content Umbrella.
The content umbrella represents a significant shift towards content across several industries. Our white paper, released this week, documents how the mobile and digital revolution has necessitated a mass re-think across the board and how the shift has implicated specific disciplines as well as the content industry as a whole.
To whet your appetite, here’s a wee snippet:
Display Blind: Advertising Adapts to Digital
Display advertising is at best a saturated market and at worst a marketing technique teetering on irrelevancy. As more people access content via mobile devices the marketing world has been faced with the dilemma of how to best communicate to audiences who are wise to the motive behind a display ad.
Consumers, on the one hand, do see value in content. Per-dollar content marketing produces roughly three times as many leads as display advertising according to Oracle research. Furthermore, the consumer becomes a brand champion by engaging with the content, creating a c2c ‘sharing’ relationship rather than a b2c ‘telling’ relationship. With more consumers accessing the internet via a smartphone over any other device, the tip towards content is only going to grow.
Social Media: Native Social vs Digital Display
Social media is also confronting how to communicate marketing messages to an increasingly mobile user base. On mobile’s smaller screens, the stream is the experience, which is why display has struggled to make an impression.
In-stream native ads, however, look, feel, and function seamlessly across mobile and PC, which is precisely what brands want. AdRoll analysis of Facebook’s ad exchange revealed that ads in the News Feed achieve 49-times higher click-through rates and a 54 per cent lower cost-per-click than traditional placements in the right-rail sidebar. As a result, spending on native social is set to rocket to $21 billion worldwide by 2018, and it is likely to continue to climb.
Slapped By A Panda: Google Demands Quality Content
Google’s Panda algorithm instigated a golden age for purveyors of quality content. After years of SEO ‘cheats’ – content farms, keyword advertising, link building et al – there has been a mass purge of low quality, spammy sites which have been replaced by sites that provide relevant content that is interactive and of good quality.
All organisations looking to rank well for key search terms need a strategy that is focussed on creating high quality, highly relevant content that is distributed well. With talk of Google switching backlinks to brand citations, the SEO industry will become increasingly cosy with content and publishers.
PR in the Media Mix
In marrying the brands needs with those of the publishers, PR is perhaps best placed to unify the umbrella of content. PR professionals understand how to create engaging content while at the same time making brand considerations such as marketing messages and SEO objectives.
As a genuinely multimedia business that has been supplying content to national newspapers for 40 years, SWNS / 72Point are well placed to meet the demands of the digital industries falling under the content umbrella. Not only do we know how to create great content, we can give it the reach it deserves by distributing it through established channels.
Top tips for achieving video success
Videos entertain, inform and give people access to digestible news on the go. They are also one of the best ways to achieve exposure. In fact, including them in your PR strategy is a no brainer.
There is no greater example of how influential video can be than the rise of the ‘Youtube’ stars. Ordinary, everyday folk turned into celebrities and idols (although I use that term loosely, very loosely) simply as a result of posting a video online. Whether it’s someone giving hair styling tips, baking tutorials or just playing a computer game. The potential influence of video is plain to see.
Dan Patterson of ABC News Radio said that ‘Humans are incredibly visual and powerful, moving images help us find meaning… [And] video helps capture and contextualize the world around us’. It is not surprising therefore that we extended our portfolio of services to include video.
Among our favourite campaigns we have worked on were two social media campaigns for supermarket Asda. One was a video for their Facebook page featuring magician and star of ITV’s Tricked, Ben Hanlin. We filmed Ben at an Asda store in London performing magic tricks for customers, including pulling money from items such as bread, unopened crisp packets and sealed yoghurt pots. The video achieved nearly 1 million views on Asda’s Facebook page.
The other, entitled 'Pimp my BBQ', was a fun, quirky video that unsurprisingly showcased a costumed ‘pimped’ BBQ. The BBQ featured additions such as a selfie stick, iPad stand, neon lights to name but a few. This video had pick-up all across a wide range of sites and proved especially popular with the MailOnline and Lad Bible
We’re lucky to have the services of incredible cameramen, video producers and editors from SWNS behind us to help us make the most of our video content.
If you’re looking to produce a video there are a few things to bear in mind.
1. Audience and Content
Cisco has predicted that video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic by 2017, so to truly have a place in this market we need to know what our audience want.
Not only must the video content we create chime well with the survey stories we produce, but we must keep trying to be as inventive and creative as possible. This comes not only from our own creative process but also from watching the video market and staying relevant and in line with what viewers want.
Videos don’t have to be elaborate. Yes sometimes a brief may call for a big stunt or a big name to appear in it but it doesn’t always have to. Sometimes a simple vox pop style video can be just as effective. After all, the people on the street are the people you are trying to attract so why not make them the centre of attention. Look at your brief and decide who you are trying to reach, how you’re going to do it and what style is going to have the most impact.
Watch our video showreel below to see the variation of video styles we've used for our clients:
2. Platform and Length
Only two years ago videos would be produced that could last over 5 minutes for just one story. We have learnt rapidly that most people’s engagement and time spent on a video last no more than 60 seconds, which is why as a rule at 72Point we produce nothing longer than 1 minute. This allows us to keep costs lower for the client - and crucially - we stay relevant for our publishers and help them engage with their audiences.
Videos will become even shorter as the use of mobile devices to access content continues to rocket. Evidence of this can be seen in the popularity of Vine which is based around 6 second videos, and Instagram which only allows 15 seconds. People now spend more time viewing stories on their mobiles than desktops and with that comes a shift in content presentation. This means a mobile-first approach is crucial for 72Point and its clients in 2016. Once you know who your video is aimed at, what you’re trying to say and how you’re going to share it, then everything else should slot into place. But if not here are some of our top tips for video success:
- Make it clear in your headline what the video is about
- Videos must have rich SEO within the metadata
- Be creative in how you link videos to text stories
- Always always share your video on social media
- Keep them short and snappy
- Don't try to be too clever - it can come across as false
- Make the first 8 seconds as attention-grabbing as possible. That’s all our attention span will take to lose interest.
So much is changing in the world of content and video as it continues to play a huge role in the market place. If we can utilise video and embrace the technology that comes with it, and the interactivity it gives audiences, then we and our clients are set for a bright and fun future.
Visit our video page to find out more about our video offering.Written by our video team: Issy Potts and Jessica Macdonald.
Has Paid Media Found Its Mojo?
There are two types of branded content in this World; Paid and Earned.
Earned media refers to the process of garnering publicity through media, blogger and influencer relations. Out of necessity it has high quality content at its heart, and has somewhat short-sightedly become the de facto model used by PR professionals because of that. But contrary to belief, PR is not synonymous with earned media.
Public relations is defined by the Chartered Institute as the “discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour.” At no point is PR defined in terms of paid, owned or earned media. In fact, industry leaders are increasingly embracing the full PESO Model, but I’ll come on to that later. First, the paid media revolution.
Paid media is an effective means of creating brand awareness or new customer acquisition through traditional advertising, paid search, social marketing and, most recently, through content. Blogs, infographics, videos and news releases have all become wrapped up as part of the ‘paid’ arsenal as native threatens to displace display in the digital ad industry. Liberated from its conventional confines paid has found its mojo, and marketers are leading the pursuit.
The evolution has largely come about thanks to a change in media consumption habits. We know that media consumers can handle the deluge of content on the web, but what they don’t want is to consume content that is so heavily branded and full of advertising messages that it is clearly being pushed to them by an advertiser. Josh Black, CEO of GroupM Content Asia Pacific, says increasingly “the very best forms of content created by advertisers are truly becoming ‘content’ – pieces of work that consumers want to share with the friends, tweet about and like”.
“The expectations on quality are rising. The stories being told are well constructed, interesting and shot beautifully. The content these advertisers are creating and distributing are no longer pieces of ‘branded content’, they are just ‘content’. Audiences, consciously or otherwise, are not using or associating the word ‘branded’ with them.”
So does that make branded content obsolete, or just reimagined? I’d err to the latter, but what is for sure is that paid media has become a big player in the PR industry. And it doesn’t stop there. Shared and owned media are both increasingly prevalent and important media types. Combine all four, and you get the complete digital marketing strategy.
The PESO model (Paid, Earned, Social and Owned) is what the future looks like for PR professionals. Gini Dietrich, a leading voice for the PR industry and author of Spin Sucks, told Mashable that there “is a misguided perception in the PR industry that all we do is media relations. Get your boss or client on the front page of the New York Times and all of your troubles will vanish”. The current measurement of success is still stuck in the Dark Ages. We use impressions and advertising equivalences. But they will soon be irrelevant.
“If you aren’t using the PESO model for your communications work, and measuring the meaningful metrics that help an organization grow, you will not have a job in 10 years,” Dietrich says. The days when earned reigned supreme are gone. Future campaigns require an omni-approach.
Hippos, polar bears & paint: PR highlights of 2015
A good PR campaign or stunt can work wonders for a brand.
Get the timing, tone and creativity just right and not only will you see tons of national, regional, online and broadcast coverage but thanks to social media, it can also end up going viral, giving you more exposure than money could ever buy.
There is a fine line between a good stunt and a failure. They can be expensive to plan and carry out, with no guarantee of anyone talking or writing about it afterwards.
But here at 72Point, we’ve seen several stunts and campaigns this year which have not only had great results in terms of coverage, but were memorable and got us all talking.
Here are just a few of our favourites from 2015…
Polar bear
Campaign: Polar bear on the tube
Brand: Sky Atlantic/Fortitude
Agency: Taylor Herring and Sky’s in-house PR team
Last January, commuters in London were greeted with a life-sized polar bear on the tube, after it was ‘set loose’ by Sky Atlantic to promote its new crime drama Fortitude.
The huge bear, which was built by a team of Hollywood special effects experts and operated by two puppeteers from the West End production of War Horse, was seen around various places in the city including the underground and crossing the Millennium Bridge.
Fortitude was set in the Arctic, and what better symbol is there of the frozen landscape than a terrifying but beautiful polar bear?
Thanks to the amazing pictures of the bear riding the tube, walking over bridges and roaming the city’s parks, the campaign got widespread coverage but it was also great for social media. The first thing confused Londoners would have done is to Tweet, Instagram or Facebook about their unusual encounter with a polar bear that day.
It received 47 million impressions on Twitter – 30 million of which were from the UK, while the show launched with just over 700,000 viewers – the biggest audience to date for a UK originated drama on Sky Atlantic.
Fifty Shades
Campaign: Fifty Shades of Grey ‘Leaked Memo’
Brand: B&Q
Agency: Good Relations
At the start of the year, it was all about the highly anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey film, which was released in February.
B&Q ‘issued’ a memo to all staff telling them to get to know the storyline in case customers enquired about items inspired by the film, such as cable ties, rope and duct tape.
So many brands wanted to be associated with the famous movie, and all kinds of surveys, PR stories and stunts were planned to allow them to get on the Fifty Shades bandwagon.
But this was one of the best – the ‘leaked’ memo format was great and entirely believable, while still being very tongue-in-cheek, resulting in a huge amount of coverage including The Daily Telegraph, Sky News and BBC Radio Two.
They even saw a second wave of coverage after admitting the memo was, in fact, fake.
It was a great quick-win, which was quick and easy to execute, providing great talk value and standing out at a time when so many other brands were trying do stories about the same thing.
Lego
Campaign: Lego-proof slippers
Brand: Lego
Agency: Brand Station
As a parent to an almost five-year-old, Lego-mad little boy, as soon as I saw this, I thought it was a brilliant idea – stunt or not.
Anyone who has a Lego fan in their house will know the unbearable pain that comes from stepping on a discarded brick, trying hard not to swear repeatedly because your darling child (who is most likely the one responsible for leaving said brick in the middle of the floor) is nearby.
The branded slippers come with an extra thick sole, meaning parents can walk around their house freely, safe in the knowledge that more of the little bricks will no longer be a threat to their feet.
Unfortunately for millions of parents, Lego and the French agency behind the slippers, Brand Station, only made 1,500 of the slippers, but the coverage and social media activity around the stunt was a great result for the brand.
Lights
Campaign Christmas: Lights Untangler
Brand: Tesco
Christmas is a tricky time of year for PR – everyone wants to get in on the action but there is only so much Christmas PR the media can take.
Tesco came out on top with their idea to hire the first Christmas light untangler in one of their Wrexham stores after research found those in the town were found to be most frustrated by the festive job.
They took something which causes all kinds of stress in UK households at the start of December and tied it into their famous ‘Every Little Helps’ slogan with ease.
As part of the job ad, responsibilities included ‘manning and managing the Christmas lights untangling stand’, ‘checking lights and bulbs for signs of breakage’ and of course ‘successfully untangling customers’ Christmas lights neatly, quickly and efficiently and in an orderly fashion’.
The ideal candidate had to be ‘passionate about Christmas, ‘able to untangle three metres of lights in under three minutes’ and ‘be persistent and patient’.
After the first wave of coverage from the initial job ad, Tesco also saw further hits once they revealed more than 100 people had applied for the position.
NHS
Campaign: Missing Type
Brand: NHS Blood and Transport
The Missing Type campaign, in June, was designed to raise awareness about the shortage of blood donations, and saw As, Bs and Os, removed from the brands logo to highlight the different blood groups.
It started with a host of brands such as Waterstones, Odeon and even Downing Street mysteriously removing letters from their signage.
A few days later, NHS Blood and Transport revealed they were behind the missing letters with a news story revealing that 40 per cent fewer donors had come forward in that year, compared to ten years ago.
But following the reveal, as well as the brands who had already joined in, other brands took part with the public also joining in by changing their Twitter handles to replace any As, Bs and Os with a blank space. We even took part ourselves. The success of the campaign is clear in the figures – more than 30,000 people registered as blood donors during 10-day campaign and it had more than 700 pieces of coverage, which even resulted in the public website having to be taken down as a result of the unprecedented demand.
Snickers
Campaign: You aren’t you when you’re hungry
Brand: Snickers
Following news of the Jeremy Clarkson ‘fracas’ in March, Snickers jumped at the chance of some brilliant reactive PR.
As details emerged of the incident, where the Top Gear presenter was said to have assaulted one of the show’s producers because he was refused a hot meal, Snickers sent a box of the bars to the (former) BBC presenter with a note using the brand’s slogan ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’.
The chocolate brand’s campaign and TV advert sees a Snickers bar given to someone who is acting diva-like due to hunger. After tucking into the chocolate treat, they return to their normal self.
The parallels with the Clarkson story were just too good to pass up and Snickers were quick to react – and tweet a picture of the box and note to their followers, which was retweeted thousands of times.
And finally, on the subject of Jeremy Clarkson, we also need to give an honourable mention to the Robox, a 3D printer created by the husband of our very own creative account director Emma Elsworthy, who created a Jeremy Clarkson version of Hungry Hippos, ‘Hungry Jeremy’.
They designed a 3D-printable version of Clarkson’s head, which can be used to replace the hippos’ heads in the classic game, which saw great coverage across print and online. It goes to show that a killer of an idea is still at the heart of a good PR campaign – you don’t need to be a big brand to generate a buzz.
PR Resolutions: The art of decent exposure in 2016
Over the last few years we have witnessed many traditional PR companies start to reinvent themselves as the digital revolution has transformed the way their own clients reach and engage with their audiences.
Here at 72Point, we very quickly realised a simple survey and news copy were no longer enough to keep media outlets happy, and so we also began to more firmly integrate visual content services with our existing USPs.
The heart of 72Point is, and always will be, national news content. The backbone of our business is South West News Service, the UK’s largest independent press agency, which has been delivering hard-hitting news on a daily basis since 1978. This means we have top-class ideas, page-ready news copy, access to the UK’s best news experts, and a channel to the powers in the press at our fingertips.
Now is the time to consider revising the way you present your content to news editors who want page ready copy without the fluff and nonsense of the traditional press release.
In recognition of the changing media landscape, which brings with it the absolute necessity for additional content such as videos, pictures and infographics, we actively encourage our clients to pursue ALL avenues when putting together a PR campaign.
This is why, although we generally dislike the idea of making New Year’s resolutions, we do have 10 tips / resolutions for getting the most out of 2016:
1. Think visually – with every story you send out, make sure you have painted a picture of what you want to say. The majority of humans are visual learners, so are likely to absorb more through watching a video, reading an infographic or looking at a picture than by any other means. Think about how you are going to deliver your news to your audience, and how they are most likely to consume it.
2. If budget will allow, make a video – the demand for online video is at all-time high, and there is nothing out there to suggest the rapid growth we witnessed in 2015 won’t continue into 2016. The potential reach of a video is endless, and almost everyone in the UK has access to some sort of device needed to watch videos. A quick 90 second film, which is to the point and not over branded, is a powerful tool which can be shared millions of times across websites and on the likes of YouTube and Facebook.
3. Always illustrate a story with a picture – we know the national news desks and online sites all have stock shots, and can randomly select any old picture to go with a story they want to publish. So why bother to send your own picture? By tailoring an image so that it clearly spells out the content of the news copy, you have more editorial control and therefore increase your chance of securing relevant coverage.
If designed with the need to re-purpose in mind, infographics can be ‘sliced up’ into smaller bite size graphics making them perfect for pulling out key stats and headlines, and sharing multiple times with your own followers across a number of social channels.
4. Help consumers absorb the stats with an easy-to-read infographic – we all know there is more demand for visual content than ever before, and people are more likely to absorb statistics which are embedded in a pretty graphic than a body of writing. By producing an infographic alongside your copy you are making your story even more visible. An infographic can also be re-used time and time again across multiple channels. It may start as a means to getting media coverage, but can also be posted on your own site, used in your own marketing collateral.
5. Look to the future with digital sell in – print will always have its place in the media landscape, but to maximise coverage and help boost a brand’s online presence a full digital sell in is a must for all campaigns in 2016. Earlier this year the Mail Online surpassed 200 million monthly browsers making it the most visited English-language newspaper website in the world, and many other publishers are looking to replicate the model to attract new audiences. Not only does this spell value for PR campaigns in terms of reach, it also delivers ROI on search engine optimisation goals and creates a ‘social’ buzz.
6. Don’t underestimate the powers of social media – many clients are understandably focussed on getting coverage in the national newspapers and websites, or subject specific websites, and don’t actually consider the power of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn etc.
People love to share visual content of any sort, and some of the biggest news stories are those which have been shared by millions of people across social media.
We produced a video featuring Ben Hanlin for a client’s national media campaign. The branded video featured on The Mirror and Yahoo among others, but most impressively it was viewed more than a million times on the client’s Facebook page.
7.Think about dropping the press release – when you open the national newspapers, do you see bullet points at the beginning of a news story? Can you see a company logo in the top right corner? Are there footnotes for us to read later? If not, you might want to consider revising the way you present your content to news editors who want page ready copy without the fluff and nonsense of the traditional press release.
8. Have a brainstorm / think outside the box / attend a thought shower – whatever you want to call it, but generate good ideas and a story that your audience can relate to, and will find themselves talking about and sharing with others. We all know news is on a loop, and there are some topics that are covered time and time again, but if you can find that gem of an idea which the whole office ends up talking about, you know you’re onto a winner.
9. Do your research – a news story which is based on consumer or market research is more likely to be read by journalists than one without. Research led stories have an extra edge – the statistics give it a quantifiable news hook and help validate the point of the story. As well as being a great tool for coverage, market research enables businesses to differentiate themselves from others and illustrate their ability to identify with their audience.
10. Choose a company who can do all of the above under one roof – alright, this ‘resolution’ might be an excuse to plug 72Point, but if you are determined to make a media success of 2016, and can’t be bothered to hire several different companies to do the work for you, you might want to consider doing all of the above with the help of our very lovely team.