Who should be in charge of social media?

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One area where Wolfstar does a lot of strategic consultancy with UK companies and global brands is helping them to create social media strategies and answer questions such as "How should we organize our company for social media?" or "Which roles do we need", or "Which department is in charge".

The latest social media report by Jeremiah K Owyang from Forrester Research is designed to help companies answer those questions. It concludes that

“the most sophisticated and efficient way is the Hub and Spoke, which provides centralised resources that can support business units. The business units still have the freedom and flexibility to dialog with the market –and should be in alignment with what other spokes are doing. Social doesn’t impact one department –but impacts marketing, pr, product, services, support, and development –every customer touchpoint.”

This supports Wolfstar’s view and is the structure that we usually end up helping clients to implement with public relations and corporate communications taking the lead, supported by marketing, customer services, risk and control, R&D etc. At the recent Someso corporate social media conference Wolfstar’s work with Sony Ericsson was described as “a master class for companies to actually implement social media strategies.”

Why Wolfstar is a PR, social media and word of mouth marketing and communications consultancy

Last week I had a good article in PR Week questioning the benefit of using digital and online PR to combat the BNP. Today Richard Rawlins, MD, of Finn Communications has a letter supporting my view saying “a digital campaign could never be expected to connect with the communities targeted by the BNP.”

He mentions his work with the NHS and how he is working “to engage communities that are defined as hard to reach.” Wolfstar is also working with the NHS on social marketing projects using a fully integrated public relations strategy that combines elements of experiential, media relations, social media and sales promotion all within a strategic WOM (word of mouth) campaign.

That’s why Wolfstar is a public relations, social media and word of mouth marketing and communications consultancy. Public relations is the over-arching strategic discipline that enables us to deliver effective, media-neutral solutions. Yes, a huge part of our client portfolio is delivering UK, European and global social media consultancy, but we can only do this well because first and foremost we are public relations professionals.

That’s why I see our real competitors as the few public relations consultancies that actually ‘get’ online PR and social media. The digital, conversation and social media agencies are in a different space to us, as that’s ALL they can ever understand or do! Not even capable of half the job.

As Richard concludes: “In this age of digital everything, it’s easy to forget that social networks started in the real world and that, believe it or not, people who live next door to each other actually have conversations.”

PR vs SEO…

We’ve been talking a lot recently in the Wolfstar office about the upcoming NMK debate regarding online PR and something interesting came up…

In the last few days one of the team has had both a really great and a really bad email approach, both for the same product. (This is the interesting bit.) One came from a marketing department and one came from an SEO agency.

We are not one for naming and shaming, so we’ve starred out anything that we thought could expose the agency or the client.

See if you can guess which is which;

Hi There

A British entrepeneur called ******* is launching his very own search engine next Tuesday April 14.  The search engine (*****) is set to rival market leaders Google and has a novel take on ’surfing the net’.  This search engine will pay those who use it anything from £10 to £1000! as you will know this has not been sucessfully achieved  by many British businessmen, making it ideal for your business or technology pages.

I have attached a past press release which was not sent out, with some more information to help, but if you do decide to use this PR, would like to have an interview with ***** or photos this is all possible.

Thanks again

And the second approach;

Hi ****,

 

Hope you’re well? I’ve been reading your ******* blog over the last couple of months so wanted to get in touch and tell you about the attached PR. We are a new search engine, allowing users to rate search results with a custom ranking system, and using social media technology to allow users to interact with each other (for example to send private messages, ask questions and help with finding relevant information or recommend sites). I know you do a lot of features on tips for using particular elements of social media so hope this is appropriate as a new concept.

This PR relates to our first daily draw, which gives registered users a chance to win up to £1000 every day. Each time an account holder uses ***** to find information online, they go into a draw with one person per day winning a cash prize. The first winner was yesterday.

If this isn’t relevant, please accept my apologies.

Kind regards,

*******

We bet you can guess which one is SEO and which is marketing! The first is from an SEO agency and was sent out to ‘undisclosed recipients’ (BCC’d), the second is from a marketing agency and was completely tailored to a single recipient.

Now obviously bad marketing agencies send out bad releases and good SEO agencies send out good releases, but these two approaches certainly had some resonance when we were discussing the online PR debate…

Written by Chris and Jed.

Obama’s White House continues online best practice from the campaign

Impressed to see that the new President Barack Obama’s White House website looks like it will continue some of the best practice social media and online PR from the election campaign. The site has a blog, and perhaps most interestingly a Creative Commons license – the most permissive and open one possible.

The White House’s new Director of New Media is Macon Philips, and I shall be following new developments with interest.

PR and marketing people from companies and brands would do well to look at what the Obama White House is doing and ask themselves serious questions about why they can’t follow suit.

UPDATE: Wired has an interesting article on the practical and legal challenges in modernising how the White House communicates. The lesson for corporates is that change might be difficult, but it is still essential.

Olympics in London 2012, no thanks to LOCOG

Now we’ve marvelled at the spectacular closing ceremony for Beijing 2008 we can all start focusing on the Olympics for London 2012. But a post by Neville Hobson has made me wonder if LOCOG (London Organising Committee) will really be able to cope with the fundamental shifts in society that are occurring. By 2012 change will have accelerated even further.

Neville has used the London 2012 logo on his blog, even explaining “I couldn’t find a logo file for download from the image library or anywhere else on the 2012 website. What’s at the top of this page is a screen capture from the 2012 home page.”

The reason Neville couldn’t find the logo in the image library is that he’s breaking the law by using it. The draconian LOCOG ‘Using the Brand’ guidelines make it clear that:

“For example, without the London 2012 Organising Committee’s written consent, it is unlawful to use the Olympic symbol, the London 2012 logo or the mark ‘London 2012’ in the course of trade.”

Neville’s blog is definitely used in “the course of trade”. But wait, the guidelines also say:

“The words protected by OSPA can, however, be used in editorial news pieces without our authorisation and journalists are, in certain circumstances, able to use our emblem etc to illustrate an editorial piece about the Games.”

You could easily argue that Neville’s blog is an “editorial news piece.” Unfortunately, LOCOG also say:

“This exception does not however apply to businesses which produce newsletters, client bulletins or other marketing collateral.”

But that’s very wooly wording. I’ve produced lots of newsletters for clients that I would argue are nothing to do with ‘marketing’ and it clearly says “other marketing collateral” therefore implying the first part of the sentence only applies to marketing newsletters.

What you are allowed to do is use this logo to “Link to the London 2012 website.” But it’s hidden right at the end of some very long and dull FAQs. Don’t bother following the link as it just takes you to a bunch of rather pointless, brightly coloured text boxes.

The site also has links to a series of big PDF documents detailing all the different ways that you aren’t allowed to do anything to support London 2012.

I fully understand and agree with the need to protect the sponsorship and investment in the 2012 games, but this is not the way to do it. It is 1995 thinking (The Olympic Symbol etc. (Protection) Act 1995 (OSPA)), added to in 2006 (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006) by people who don’t understand how society is changing. Personally I can’t see this old school ‘command and control’ dictatorship lasting until 2012.

This is not the way to motivate the nation to get behind 2012 (and at the moment the whole nation is not behind it, many questioning the expense and the disproportionate focus on London, ignoring most of the UK.) Can you just begin to imagine the damage to the 2012 image as LOCOG brings the full force of its legal might down on a tiny local business or community group that is just trying to support its local sporting heroes?

The intelligent solution would surely to have two versions of the London 2012 logo – one for official sponsors and one for enthusiastic supporters.

UPDATE: I wrote most of this post last night, but didn’t post it. There is already a comment about this and Neville’s response on the post.

A good strong brand is far more than just a logo – it is the embodiment of your corporate personality and DNA. We help our clients to develop a brand that works effectively and then we help them to produce well-executed marketing collateral including brochures, magazines, websites and direct mail.