Ode to Twitter
There’s a lot of talk about the impending death of Twitter; “it’s got no money”, “there are too many spam accounts”; “there’s too much content”; there’s this, there’s that….
All of these things are of course true.
Yes, Twitter is running out of money, that’s no secret but I’m not going to get into that now because, well frankly, money…snore!
Yes, there are too many spam accounts on Twitter. Whether it’s eggs that don’t tweet, naked ladies posting pictures of their flesh, accounts that live to follow people only to unfollow them weeks later and or the trolls, Twitter can at times be an unpleasant, ingenuine place to be and it has damaged the user experience. But they are working on this. Their latest announcement of their advanced muting options, which now allow you to mute offensive words, phrases and emoji in your notifications and mentions so although it won’t stop the existence of bad Twitter users, it will make their impact less noticeable.
Yes, there is too much content. Sometimes going on Twitter can be like wading through the medieval streets of London in flip flops. Treading in other people’s crap left right and centre.
But let me tell you something….I personally don’t care. I love Twitter.
I love that it’s everybody’s dumping ground. Isn’t that why we fell in love with it in the first place?! Because we could dump our thoughts there. Don’t get me wrong, there is sharing and there is over sharing but I’ll tell you this that excessive dumping has given me something that I just don’t get from other social networks: a good laugh. In a world that sometimes makes you want to run for the hills, Twitter can be a source of unlimited joy.
Take the shambles that was Euro 2016. English football fans were left devastated, if unsurprised, about England’s early exit and, although they won’t admit it, by Wales’ disappointing defeat in the Semi-finals. But devastation quickly dissipated when a moth landed on Ronaldo’s face and within minutes endless numbers of ‘Ronaldo’s Moth’ Twitter accounts appeared.
Then there’s Brexit. Millions of people awoke one morning to realise half of the population had potentially thrown their country into turmoil. But it was ok because of the abundance of ‘Twitter bants’ we had to get us through it. Buzzfeed had an absolute field day with them offering us 36 of the best to make us ‘laugh despite everything’. Other lists of Brexit based hilarity can be found on the Poke, IBTimes and Yahoo and, well pretty much all over the internet.
Live scenes from the Channel tunnel. pic.twitter.com/l04wXKpjaq
— John Myers (@johnmyersteam) June 24, 2016
Whoever created this, I salute you. pic.twitter.com/zsyMSd0GIL
— Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) October 10, 2016
The same goes for the mind blower that was the US election. When logic and reason had gone out the window, Twitter helped us laugh before we cried. It is also true that Twitter was partly responsible for the ludicrous outcome but it was tweets about Donald Trump that made us rational folk realise quite how ridiculous the man, and the result, is. Carefully edited videos, such as the one to the left, cut through the bile to show a beautiful outcome more positive than the reality. Not only that but the good people of the UK took to Twitter to bring the world back down to reality and help the world see what was really important during this confusing time….the changing shape of Toblerones.
Then there’re the GIFs. Yes, ok, so we can now get those on Facebook but we can also write big, long meaningful statuses on Facebook to convey how we feel. Twitter requires you to think about it. How can you convey how you really, feel with brevity? GIFs. How can you quickly engage someone scrolling through at lightening speed? GIFs. How can you make Ruth really happy? GIFs.
I also love Twitter for its sense of conversation. The world is a lonely place and with everyone supposedly becoming antisocial mobile phone/human hybrids, the truth is we’re actually being very social. It’s just not #IRL social. Everyone is having a chat, online.
The best examples of this are when we look at the link between Twitter and television. Twitter, more than any other social media platform, brings people together during the big (and little) TV occasions creating imagined online communities to fill the void of actual human interaction. Bake Off is perhaps the most obvious example of this.
Bake off is (or should I say was, boo hoo) appointment to view television meaning that, by definition, people are choosing to be inside watching TV and not ‘out’ socialising. But, in reality, the world was watching Bake Off together…tweeting along bake by bake. Innuendo by innuendo.
The correlation between hot TV and Twitter is so
You could hear a rolling pin drop around the country on Wednesday night at this moment. #GBBO #ExtraSlice pic.twitter.com/Bs0MV7060c
— British Bake Off (@BritishBakeOff) October 28, 2016
strong that Twitter is launching their live tv partnership with Apple TV which allows you to watch the live video (say American football) and have a curation of relevant Twitter feed next to it on the screen so that you can engage in conversation whilst you engage with the video.
The other reason I love Twitter is one of its biggest selling points; it’s THE place to go for breaking news. 2016 has been an awful year as far as news is concerned and Twitter has broken most of it to me. Whether it was yet another beloved celebrity who’d passed away or another horrific terror attack or shooting, I find myself going to Twitter rather than news sites for both verification and updates. 1n 2015, a survey conducted by Twitter and the American Press Institute found that 86% of Twitter users say that they use it for news, and the vast majority (74%) do so daily. In fact, the news angle is so prevalent that they have re-categorised themselves in the App Store; they are now listed under news rather than social media. The same cannot be said of Facebook, who are currently battling against their ‘fake news’ problem.
Twitter also has other positives over Facebook. The biggest, for me, being that the app itself and that fact that, well to be blunt, it isn’t Facebook. The Facebook app is enough to make Bruce Banner bust the seams of his clothes and smash up the nearest town. Twitter doesn’t force things on you in the same way. I mean does anybody actually want the Facebook market place to be in prime pressing position on the app? I don’t. I also don’t want to have to go round and round the houses to be able to access the most recent content in my feed. I don’t want to see stuff from last week that I don’t care about at the top of my wall. I didn’t care about it then; I don’t care about it now. Twitter, despite also having algorithms, lets me see what’s happening now. Yes, that might mean that it’s harder for content to stand out or that content might be missed but at least it’s accessible at my fingertips. If Twitter is ‘full of low-quality content’, Facebook is drowning in it.
But I suppose the key pull for me is that it’s based around two very important things: language and creativity. There is absolutely nothing more satisfying to me than getting appreciation for your use and manipulation of language. Conveying your point and personality in just 140 characters. Making someone laugh in 140 characters. Making someone think about something in 140 characters. That’s a skill and the way to make Twitter last is to harness the people who are best at doing that. Creativity, either through language or visual content is harnessed through Twitter. The spam accounts that I mentioned at the start of this, which feels like years ago (…sorry, ironically for a Twitter user, I’m a rambler) they don’t do any of that. And that is what is wrong with Twitter. Twitter isn’t dying. It’s being eaten from the inside by people with a lack of creativity and a poor command of language.
So, what am I really trying to say? Good question. Well, in case I hadn’t mentioned it, I love Twitter. Yes, it’s got its faults but are they problems that are unique to that particular platform?! I personally don’t think so. I think social media would be poorer if the blue bird flew the nest. There is no doubt that it needs to evolve, everything does, but at its very heart is something special and glorious. Whether it’s conversations being had or conversations being sparked from a tweet, conversation is at the heart of Twitter. And really, in the end, isn’t that the main definition of ‘social’.
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/
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.
Banksy blunder - The benefit of hindsight
It’s not quite as bad as being the man who failed to sign the Beatles but sometimes, as I crawl to work through Bristol traffic on a dismal Monday morning, it feels that way.
In the late 90s, I began to notice funny and subversive graffiti emerging around the city. A rat here, a clown there, a thought-provoking stencilled slogan amid a scrabble of tags.
One particularly striking image appeared overnight on the side of a pub next to our old office on Hotwells Road opposite the SS Great Britain. It was of a screaming clown with Kiss-style eye make-up, toting two pistols. For some unaccountable reason it cheered me up every time I saw it.
While talking one day with a pal who owned a skateboard store off Park Street, I learned that the artist responsible was known as Banksy. I filed the information away and continued to enjoy his work as it cropped up throughout Bristol, experiencing a kind of old school ‘I Spy’ thrill every time I found one.
Fast forward to 2000, and the announcement that Banksy was making the move towards the more traditional medium of canvas, and marking this with an exhibition at the Severnshed restaurant. I went along. Although many of the paintings bore red ‘sold’ stickers (prices were in the high hundreds, rather than today’s astronomical figures) the event itself, it seemed to me, was sparsely attended.
I met and chatted with Banksy’s then manager Robert Birse, in the course of which I was invited to visit the man’s studio, which I jumped at.
If memory serves, the near-derelict space was tucked away in Bedminster. I’d persuaded my news editor that there was something very interesting going on here, although the Banksy phenomenon was still a long way off.
During the course of the visit, I enthused as was shown various canvasses, including one particularly strong image – an elephant with a missile strapped to its back, against a vivid pink background.
“The frame on that one is slightly off,” said Robert. “If you hold it up you’ll see it’s a bit skew-iff.”
It was. It meant it wouldn’t hang completely flat. “Still amazing though,” I replied.
Robert thought for a moment and then said: “Well, you could have that one for a reduced rate, if you like.”
“So … how much?”
“Say £300?”
Now, at the time I was a pretty hard-up reporter with three children to support and another on the way. Three hundred quid bought a lot of nappies and Wet Wipes. But still …
“Yes,” I said. “But is it OK if I give you a cheque for £100 now and pay the rest over the next couple of months?”
He agreed, and I loaded the piece into the back of my battered Peugeot 205.
Back at the office, I phoned my wife and – having spent the journey back planning the best way of pitching the purchase (investment/it’s beautiful/it’ll cover that dodgy bit of plastering in the front room) – recounted the tale.
An ominous silence. A reaaaalllllllly long, ominous silence. Then: “You know we can’t afford it, so I don’t even know why you’d consider this. It’ll have to go back. And you need to get the bloke to tear up the cheque before he banks it.”
The channel for negotiation had clanged shut. I muttered something about a loan, or perhaps borrowing some money from a parent or a mate, but we were already overdrawn to the hilt, and this was met with a dangerous snort.
So back it went.
I’ve tried to “take a positive” from this over the years, but I can’t. I experience a pang – actually it’s more of a stab – every time I read about a Banksy selling at auction, or something like the wonderful Dismaland opening its rusty doors to the public.
If there’s anything I learned from my own very personal Banksygate it’s this. If you love a piece of art for what you believe it to be – something you love – then buy it, if you reasonably can. Absurd as it sounds now, I genuinely didn’t have the spending power at the time, but I guess I could have rustled up the cash somehow.
The other thing I take comfort and joy from is that I can still see and enjoy Banksys every day, in the streets here in Bristol. He even painted a commemorative flower over the trigger-happy clown on Hotwells Road, which always raises a smile. I see them every day, and they’re free.
The Joy of Print
Having spent my entire career working in digital media, it may seem like a counterintuitive move to eulogise the great tactile thrill I get from thumbing through my favourite print journal - each new page the ultimate soul-cleansing elixir.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my now scarily close to 40 years on this planet, it’s that whatever I’m saying, doing and thinking, there’s someone else in the world going through exactly the same experience – perspectives on print’s function and importance are beginning to converge.
Scratching around for any advantage to being ancient, I can remember the birth of content marketing programmes, when print programmes were being hastily transitioned to ‘all media’ equivalents with a view to binning print altogether.
Though video, visual and bitesize social content has since thrived and become an essential mainstay of any marketing mix, print has miraculously survived, much in the format I hoped it would.
Limited run, custom-bound, meticulously crafted and curated magazines are all around us, ranging from cultural beacons like Oh Comely to hybrid travel and fashion mags like Suitcase and Cereal, via the literary darkness of The Alarmist and Australia’s greatest ever export, Dumbo Feather.
As ever, a large factor in this particular pleasure is the chase, with coquettish glimpses of new titles catapulted into my social feeds on a daily basis – Avaunt being the latest, a beautifully-shot bible for global adventurers.
The key difference between then and now for print publishers is innovation – magazines are being marketed and distributed in ways only the social age could facilitate. This is a true marriage of analogue and digital – and it’s exciting.
Take Stack, for example, the subscription service that handpicks the best independent magazines from around the world relevant to your interests and delivers them to your door, but trains its marketing crosshairs on social, digital and radio.
Also consider Airbnb’s initial foray into print, Pineapple, which has been used by the brand to unite its community with an elegance the social web can’t compete with. Hosts and travellers collaborate on stories that form the magazine’s editorial spine, creating an axis of expedition and anthropology that digital publishing would struggle to articulate.
With big names in youth publishing like Hypetrak getting their print on, not to mention Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean releasing print magazines alongside their latest albums, I’m beginning to wonder whether print could actually outlive websites?
With social content hosting and custom print in the ascendency, traditional websites have never looked more clunky and anachronistic.
The Social Media Election. Was this it?
Five years ago, at the time of the last general election, I was studying for my undergraduate degree. For the first time ever I felt the election buzz. Although I personally wasn’t that interested, I found myself surrounded by people who couldn’t shut up about it, and everyone, of course, was voting Lib Dem.
This time around things are different. I’m back at home, fully employed and paying attention due to my own genuine interest. This is in no small part down to the role of Social Media (and hours of TV satire and a determination to not let full time muppet and general pain in the arse, Nigel Farage have any sort of power). The role of social media in this election has been much anticipated. We’ve already seen how social media can be used to reflect the way votes are likely to go in our own light-hearted infographic. However it is the use of social media to attract and persuade voters and to promote the campaigns of individual parties which has stirred up all the fuss.
The 2015 election has been dubbed ‘the social media election’. This was partly due to the speculation and anticipation due to the rise in Social media’s popularity over the last five years. 5 million people have joined Twitter alone in the years since Britain last went to the polls. This has been key for political parties. It meant that parties and politicians had a direct way of speaking to people without having to trawl the streets. This was good for two reasons. Firstly it meant that the powerful elite of our society didn’t have to go into areas where people shop in Aldi rather than Fortnum and Masons. Secondly, it meant that they could target specific demographics at the touch of a button. In particular they could target youths, or as they’re known in Westminster, ‘bloody hoodies’. Youths are not a group politicians normally go near for fear of being mugged or stabbed but now they could talk to them without fear of physical contact.
The televised debates in the last election boosted turn out by 65%, but only 44% of young people (aged 18-24) turned out to vote. It would therefore be amiss of parties not to take advantage of a primarily young person’s medium to reach this audience. It was revealed fairly early on that our current lord and master, Mr Cameron and his Conservatives had spent £100,000 pounds on Facebook advertising, ten times that of Labour and 1000 times that of UKIP. A recent article in the Guardian stated that Facebook has the potential to reach 9.2 million young people with one post and with UK adults spending a minimum of 1.33 hours on social media, spending obscene amounts on these platforms isn’t exactly a bad idea.
But it’s not just paid promotion and it’s not just Facebook. Politicians have taken to Twitter to personally promote key party policies (or at least their social media managers have). This means for the first time in living history, politicians have been forced into giving short concise answers and policy announcements.
Parties have also embraced the ways of YouTube. As you can imagine this means a lot of clips of speeches and cringe worthy videos of politicians looking to camera giving heart felt speeches “to you, the voter” *VOM*. The Conservatives channel is particularly bad for this. The video of David Cameron welcoming you to the channel actually makes me physically look away as if I were watching a man on Embarrassing Bodies with some disgusting skin complaint. Labour’s channel is marginally more watchable. It displays a great deal more personality. For example the featured video is of Miliband playing pool with snooker favourite Ronnie O’Sullivan. In fact celebrity support is something that Labour play on quite heavily with their channel featuring videos from people such as Martin Freeman, Steve Coogan and Jo Brand. The Lib Dem videos on the other hand focus very much more on the general public. Their featured video is the Clegg Meister visiting a school, followed by a video of him visiting animals. Everyone together now…awwwww.
Despite this use of social media many say that the ‘Social media election’ never came to fruition. The build-up has even been described as ‘routine, predictable and over cautious’. If that weren’t bad enough much of it has been unpleasant.
This is particularly evident on Twitter . Twitter as a PR and marketing tool can be and has been successful. For example a recent Twitter campaign prompted the petition to get leaders from smaller parties involved in the leaders’ debates. However much of the party campaigning consists of mocking and bitching about other party leaders. A perfect example of this is the Twitter feed of the one and only Boris Johnson. Bo-Jo’s feed consists mainly of jibes at Miliband, with his tweet referring to Miliband’s wall of policies being a personal highlight (see image). 
Obviously all parties’ campaigns feature a certain number of put downs but this election is being referred to as one of the ugliest campaigns in history. One therefore has to wonder whether Twitter is doing nothing more than making things worse. After all with Twitter you get trolls. The only thing that gets met through the Twitter bitching is the hope that there is a Malcom Tucker figure behind the scenes taking control of people’s mobiles and blasting them with a particularly taboo outburst.
I think, on reflection though, social media has played a huge part this time round. Yes it might not have been ‘the Social media election’ that we were all promised but it’s certainly a step in the right direction. If nothing else, it has shown how seriously we should take social media as a platform and the benefits of social media advertising. That’s something businesses can take out of this election regardless of the outcome. If Twitter promotion and campaigning is good enough to get you to run the country it’s good enough to get you some business and get your message out there.
Furthermore Stephen Coleman, professor of political communication at the University of Leeds, commented that traditional methods of party promotion, primarily newspapers, are being disregarded time and time again by readers who are desensitised to it. This also applies to the mounds and mounds of party leaflets we get through our doors which seems to have reached frankly ridiculous levels this year. Therefore it makes sense that other methods of campaigning should be introduced, if only to pump a little fresh blood into the election build up. Remember the last election, the so called ‘TV election’ that saw the first ever live TV debates that boosted voter turn out by over half? What I’m essentially saying is that when it comes to getting your message out there you can no longer just rely on one platform to do so. It’s very much a multi-platform world that we live in and as a result campaigns, political or not, can only benefit from multi-platform content. Just remember to make it nice. The place for trolling is in fairytales. Not the internet. Or the Hopkins residence.
(All of the above views are mine, not the company’s…or are they?! Yes, they are.
"April Fools!": The Best of April Fools 2015
Some days throughout the year pass us by under a commercialistic, ‘you must buy this crappy card that you don’t want’ sick making cloud. Even some days that we enjoy, such as Christmas and Easter have become so much about the products and the gifts that they are beginning to fade in to insignificance.
April Fools Day is, on the other hand, one day that everyone can enjoy. It’s a chance for everyone to bring out their inner child and be as silly as you possibly can with the security of the “April Fool!” get out of jail free card.
Whether it’s cling film on the toilet seat, salt in the sugar or simply pretending you haven’t done something you were supposed to do, April Fools day pranks never disappoint.Unless, of course, you haven’t actually done that thing that you were supposed to do, in which case you’re probably due a smacked wrist.
Some of the best April Fools pranks, though, are done by the geniuses in the Marketing + PR departments of major brands and companies. This year we the general public have been treated to a veritable Smörgåsbord of pranks, including such treats as Clear Marmite, a self-tanning digital shower and even the birth of a unicorn in Florida.
Having researched this year’s pranks in detail in order to write this utterly entertaining piece of literature, I have decided that there are three main types of April Fools Stunts.
The first type are the pranks that are so ridiculous they couldn’t have been anything other than pranks. For example the RNIB (that’s the Royal National Institute for the Blind, if you didn’t know) announced the launch of #CATNAV. If you haven’t guessed where this is leading, no pun intended, I’ll tell you. #CATNAV is the proposed use of Cats trained to guide the blind or partially sited. My favourite thing about this stunt was the images of cats on leads.
Similarly the Clarkson Caravan from Freedom to Go was unconvincing, despite admittedly being quite funny. The caravan offers such features as pre-programmed Sat Navs directing Jezza to the nearest Job Centre and an abacus for counting to ten in times of rage. Actually in hindsight that second feature might not be a bad idea.
Other obvious, yet hilarious examples include the launch of the Ginster’s TOWIE pasty- chicken and chardonnay in a pastry case with edible jazzles; Homebase’s Rainbow Paint; Hunter’s Dog Boots and Hailo’s ‘piggyback’ feature, which yes, does involve people getting piggybacks instead of cabs.
The second type of stunts are those that are clearly fake but actually may have the basis of a good idea, or at very least make people think for a second.
My favourite example of a stunt which fits this category is the bouncy isles in Tesco. Being vertically challenged, the placement of items on shelves higher than the jolly green giant is utterly irritating. Obviously trampolines in the floor of Isle 12 has its safety issues but the idea isn’t without promise.
Then there’s the introduction of selfie spots for footballers during goal celebrations. Again, not without promise. I’m sure many of them would quite like a selfie. Remember the Steven Gerrard camera kiss celebration? I’m sure he would have loved to have captured that moment in the ultimate celebration selfie.
There’s also Hiive’s effort. Being an (not-so-secret) fan of 90’s/00’s boybands Hiive’s stunt made me giggle. The social networking site announced the creation of sister site 5iive, a professional network for former members of the boyband 5ive. Obviously silly as there are only 5 of them, well now 4, but maybe it’s an idea they could roll out to the Sugarbabes. That idea’s got legs.
I have decided that there are three main types of April Fools Stunts.
The third category of April Fools Stunts are the ones that you actually can’t determine to be pranks. For example, this morning I read an article in the independent that stated that Jeremy Clarkson was to become Cameron’s chief advisor for Transport. I admit that it may seem an obvious jest but I wouldn’t put it past them. They live in the same village. They both hate the Green Party. Plus the Independent wouldn’t lie to me, would they?! My suspicious were raised, however, when reading the caption for the image which stated that ‘The Top Gear presenter will have ‘all the steak he can eat’ at Westminster’. To be fair he probably would but that’s not a genuine caption.
Amazon also cashed in on the tomfoolery with the launch of their new feature ‘Amazon Dash’. This is a little button that you press when you are running low on something, such as washing powder or shampoo, and then sends an reminder to your phone to remind you to order it. The interesting thing about this prank was that, apparently, it wasn’t a prank. That’s right it was so believable that it was true. The PR World were left debating whether the timing of this announcement, in line with April Fools was a touch of genius or simply fool hardy. Personally I think it’s a stroke of genius. People would look at something, wish it was true then find it out it was and do a little squeal.
What all three types of stunt have in common is the demonstration of how creative marketers and Comms Teams are. Also how embracing your inner child and simply looking at things in a silly, light hearted way can actually help creativity. I guess the moral of this story is don’t over think stuff. Some of your best creativity comes when you simply have a laugh.
To paraphrase Doc Brown in Back to the Future, if only we could somehow harness that creativity and churn out such innovations for real on a daily basis. If nothing else it would make Dragon’s Den more amusing and, more generally, the world would be such a happier place. No pressure Marketing. No Pressure.
To see more examples of this year’s hilarious April Fools tom foolery visit our Pinterest board https://uk.pinterest.com/72Point/april-fools-2015/ .
If Facebook hosts news, I'm hiring...
Humans are inherently lazy - and product managers are aware of this.
The swiping motion with which we command our phone screens reduces us to the basest of motor skills we learn virtually at birth, while voice commands have superseded even the remote control as our preferred way to interact with entertainment systems in the home.
I mean, why would I read a whole IKEA instruction manual when I can just watch a video instead? (Just kidding - I don't shop at IKEA).
Facebook, never one to miss a trick where the user experience is concerned, is in talks with media groups about hosting news content within the social network, enabling users to consume entire stories without tapping out to external hosts.
While such an alliance presents obvious gains for Facebook and publishers alike, most of which concern economics and reach, it also throws up plenty of positives for content suppliers and the humble reader too.
As a supplier of branded news, I can see demand for our content growing in-line with audience expectations on the channel and the increased needs of the news outlets we provide to – so more video, more visuals, more copy and more stories in general to meet increased publisher outputs. Happy times.
Additionally, and I may be getting a little ahead of myself here, if Facebook were to pull a Vice and launch a standalone Facebook News sub-brand, then it gives me yet another outlet to sell stories in to and potentially partner with - plus they really don’t come bigger in terms of audience size and segmentation.
Back to the user experience and it’s still good news.
Facebook hosting will make shaping content for social consumption mandatory for publishers, ensuring all outputs are visual, digestible, shareable and mobile – marry this to the convenience of consuming content from multiple outlets in a single space (while also doing all of your social housekeeping) and we could easily save 10-15 minutes a day on our reading time.
Finally, and this is of benefit to reader, platform and content supplier alike, Facebook hosting will lead to deeper engagement and all-round satisfaction – longer reads, greater dwell times, more sharing, increased content performance, happier authors and happier clients.
And for those who fear Facebook dominance, there will always be an alternative – there always is.
Just think of this Facebook/publisher partnership as being one of several labour-saving devices delivered over the years, enabling us to open our ever-expanding daily procrastination window to more cat gifs such as this one and Tinder freaks (I don’t use Tinder).
Sledgens and Legends: The 2015 Cricket World Cup in Tweets
At the risk of sounding like a bitter Englishman, the 2015 Cricket World Cup has been a bit of a laborious affair. Ever since that fateful day in Adelaide when England failed to overcome Bangladesh (BANGLADESH!) to reach the knock-out stages I have been huffing and puffing about the long-winded nature (irony of ironies for a cricket fan) of a tournament that has served only to draw attention to the gulf in class that divides India, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand from the rest of the world.
But despite there being a distinct lack of momentous games, there has been no shortage of momentous moments. New Zealand’s Daniel Vettori defied the laws of physics with a spectacular one-handed catch at the boundary this weekend, Windies all-rounder Chris Gayle mirrored Sachin Tendulkar with a double century, Pakistan's Wahab Riaz bowled a mesmerising innings against the Aussies and Martin Guptill’s 237 runs from 163 balls are just a few of many moments that match the gravitas of a World Cup.
And this year Twitter has been there to capture all the action after signing an agreement with the ICC to launch a host of innovative and interactive features. The move, which sets a precedent for future tournaments, positioned the social media platform as a central hub for match commentary, expert analysis and fan insight, transcending geographical and time limits to make the cup a truly ‘world’ affair with fans at the heart of the action.
In true cricketing fashion the Twittersphere responded with admiration and tactical intimidation in equal measure. Old rivalries re-born, fierce competition re-lived and passions personified as the highs and lows of The Imperial Game were played out across Australasia, all of which made great fodder for social media channels.
Here’s a review of how the Sledgend and the Ledgend lit up this year’s tournament on social media.
The Sledge
Australia (gotta love ‘em) initiated the sledging (a form of verbal intimidating) with a campaign by an online bookmaker advertising two cricket balls with the slogan: “Missing, Pair of Balls – if found please return to the English cricket team.” The ad ran before the home nation’s game against England in Melbourne and immediately became a social media success with the hashtag #MissingBalls trending in a matter of hours.
Our Digital Hub team picked up the social media movement and were quick to publicise. The first sledge of the tournament was soon up on the Telegraph, the Mirror and various other online titles who published the story as a good-natured exchange of banter.
But it doesn’t always work out so well. A club cricket final in New Zealand has recently made national headlines after it was abandoned due to one team refusing to play on, citing "bullying" from their opponents as the reason for pulling stumps. As the national team prepare for a feisty encounter with South Africa tomorrow could we see a repeat of the feisty 2011 World Cup quarter-final, or will the intimidating exchanges be left for the Twitterati to administer?
The Ledge
One thing we are sure to see as the semi-finals commence is a good dose of admiration for World Cup legends. The one day format differs from test cricket in that it propels individual performances into the limelight more than the team as a whole, a trait which is conducive to the 140 character limit on Twitter.
This year’s semi-finalists demonstrate this well. Australian fast bowler Mitchell Starc is at the centre of social media hype in the run-up to their clash with India who have every chance of upsetting the host nation in their own backyard if the likes of MS Dhoni, Mohammad Shami and Ajinkya Rahane can repeat their heroic performances. And if New Zealand batsman Martin Guptill can #Guptill South Africa tomorrow he will become a social media saint overnight.
With three of the best games of the tournament yet to come, prepare to see a frenzy of social media activity kick off as the sledgend meets the legend.
Lack of Female Role Models for Girls in the Media
It’s painful just how hugely teenage girls obsess over beautiful celebs, isn’t it?
Even more painful is remembering being exactly the same way.
As an awkward pre-teen, the waist of my trousers still that bit too high, I directed all my adolescent envy towards two TV babes: Holly Valance (Neighbours fan – weren’t we all) and Frankie, of the highly-regarded eight-piece ensemble, the S Club Juniors. Pause for emphasis.
They were older than me; I guess around 14 - slim, clear-skinned and so unbearably good-looking.
Call me a shallow kid but if someone had said to me, ‘What do you want in life?’ I’d have thought, ‘Flick Scully’s complexion’ without pausing. I didn’t know what else to put my energy towards. School?
Perhaps it was a blessing then, that my only exposure to these girls was through music videos, CBBC and my monthly Sugar mag, so I was only mildly hateful of myself. Imagining what my life would have been like if I were 11 years old today….to endure the social media noise that teenagers have now… well that’s too stressful to think about.
It’s likely I’d be drip-fed a continuous stream of Holly and Frankie through their Twitter feeds; lapping it up as they churned out duck-faced selfies, holiday pics strewn with product placement, bikini mirror shots - at a Kardashian regularity. In a misplaced brainwave I’d probably have uploaded a ‘vlog’ of myself re-enacting a Fast Show sketch with a toy panda or something, which, years later, I would almost kill myself trying to remove. I might have even… enjoyed Zoella. It’s frightening, what might have been.
Imagining what my life would have been like if I were 11 years old today….to endure the social media noise that teenagers have now… well that’s too stressful to think about.
But the next generation – the millennials (apparently I might be a millennial, a fact I’d rather hide away from)- live each day in this media frenzy, which is barely being contained. We’re only beginning to see the dark side developing from this parallel world - the Instagram culture, the trolling, cyber bullying, revenge porn – and what an obsession with narcissistic, selfie-addicted reality stars might do to a teenager’s sense of self.
The problem lies in the fact that the really cool women – the explorers, zoologists, scientists, entrepreneurs, are NOWHERE to be seen. And the Kardashians, the Jenners, the cast of Towie - who are solely famous for publicity and looks, are EVERYWHERE. They aren’t particularly admirable, aren’t representing a viable career move and are spreading their own message of ‘you don’t look good enough’ to their young fans like a disease.
It’s mostly ‘the Kylie Jenner effect’ (the influx of girls getting lip fillers due to her sudden enormous pout) that made me write this post, as it got me thinking about idols. Aside from their own family members, not to be downplayed, and a stock list of historical figures like Marie Curie that are churned out in school, there are just reams and reams of glitzy celebs. Throw in a Karen Brady, a Michelle Obama and a Mary Portas and that’s it, really.
A space-travelling woman going to Mars may be mentioned in the news one day, or an athlete on another day, or a CEO on another And then she fades into obscurity as a ‘What has she done to her face?!’ story dominates the air time for weeks.
Put simply, there is no PR for the real idols girls need. No scientists, world explorers, chemists, psychologists. No web designers, charity workers, astronauts or business owners. And if we, as adults, don’t know anything about the women making real changes in the world but constantly seeing Kim Kardashian’s blonde mop gets a news headline, no wonder girls are chasing their goals right into the cosmetic surgeon’s office instead.
There is no PR for the real idols girls need
I want to hear about women that are worth looking up to and emulating, who have made something of themselves based on more than their cheekbones. Who have seen a problem and looked to solve it, through hard graft and innovation.
And we should research them, and talk about them, and share them, and give them the PR they deserve – but also (cue the Miss. World bit) because it’s what young girls deserve. The scope of what women are achieving isn’t bleak; they’re just humble enough not to be yelling about it. It’s up to everyone else to yell about them instead. It’s up to us change the situation.
International Women's Day is the 8th March. Don't forget to join the conversation using #IWD2015
