I Am Spartacus

The power of the Twitter community is famously known for breaking news and highlighting issues. The recent hashtag, #Iamspartacus has added something new to that list - political activism.

Twitter user Paul Chambers was recently convicted and fined for posting an angry joke on Twitter :"Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You've got a week to get your shit together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!"

Even before his court appeal failed, the Twitter community was already deep in debate about the saga, tweeting under the hashtag, #twitterjoketrial. Shortly afterwards, one Twitter user under the name christt decided to retweet the exact same phrase that got Paul Chambers into trouble, and encouraged others to do the same in protest against the charge.

This 'Spartacus' style show if solidarity spread so quickly that the phrase was a key national trend within hours. Even social media addict Stephen Fry tweeted that he would pay Chambers' fine after the hearing.

If the government does decide to convict and fine every Twitter user that repeated the phrase, at least it'll be an easy way to solve the deficit. We could have all have a glass of bubbly on the NHS. Just saying...

What the new Twitter means to me

Last week the new Twitter began a phased-in launch which will be completed over several weeks, and though I don't yet have it on my account, I think it may actually make my life a lot easier. Very excited. If you're reading this Twitter, me next please.

The main difference is that there will be a double-page instead of a single page home screen, which will allow you to view more information without having to click away from the homepage, a bit like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite but less complex. This is how Twitter puts it:

"On the site, you’ll see the familiar timeline, yet underneath each Tweet is a handful of information, deeper context and even embedded media. Simply click on an individual Tweet and a details pane slides out on the right and reveals this content"

(Aside, I feel I ought to give an old friend a mention; the new Twitter also means it's time to say goodbye to the fail whale)

R.I.P. FAIL WHALE!

I think I am most excited about being able to view multimedia more easily and view profiles without leaving the homepage (Usually I painstakingly right click and 'new tab' to avoid losing my page). My only concern is that the new Twitter won't be available on my Blackberry app. It probably wouldn't be practical anyway. Life goes on.

I lied. I am actually most excited about the first ever Twitter advertisement to promote the new Twitter. Impressively, this video gained over a million views on its first day on YouTube. I can understand why. It's the happiest video ever and I want to watch it over and over and over...

PR in a digital world

I just found this video on the KetchumPleon website and found it really interesting. Those featured are discussing what social media means for the PR industry, and they raise some interesting issues:



These are the most poignant for me:

• "Do a lot of stuff and see what works" - Many PR professionals are afraid of getting it wrong in social media and creating a reputational disaster. What they forget is that everyone starts in the same way, so they should probably get stuck in and make a few mistakes now so that they're not the last ones off the starting block.

• "Content is KING" - This is really interesting, because PR professionals should already know this. Maybe some think that because the platform is different the rules have changed. It's still not about vanity, it's about engagement and mutual interests.

• "Social media is always on" - And PR professionals are always working, in my experience. They might say that they do 9-5 hours, but more often than not their phones are ALWAYS on and they will ALWAYS answer, and they've always got their ears to the ground - they can't help it!

• "There are a lot of institutional barriers between the PR industry and social media" - This is the problem. With large companies particularly, there are too many rules for online engagement. I understand the need for guidelines, but when there are too many rules, people often don't bother INCASE they get it wrong. And there goes that missed opportunity. Shame.

Oh My Lady Gaga.

OMLG. I understand that it's all part of Lady Gaga's image to be outrageous, but she is in real danger of crossing the line from eccentric to psychopath. A meat dress?? I know she likes it rough but this is sadistic. Next she'll be sawing off her poker face for the paparazzi. Not all publicity is good publicity Gaga.

Picture from Metro.co.uk

How to get a first in PR

I can't believe I completely forgot to brag about the article I wrote for Behind The Spin: 'How to get a First in PR' a few weeks ago. Have a look and let me know whether you agree with my methods.

I wrote it as a list of rules, all of which worked for me but I had to discover them on my own. Despite my previous claim, I didn't write the article to brag. I think I would have found my degree a lot easier had someone told me those rules when I started.

Signature PR: Sophie Blecha, Marte Semb Aasmundsen, King Houndekpinkou, me and Catherine Birch

Sofa surfing in London

I've never been to London for more than a few days before now. I've also never been sofa surfing before. Yet I have come to London for 4 weeks to surf various sofas whilst working an unpaid full time intership, and with an overall budget of £100. Luckily for me it's working out just fine.

Here are my tips:

1. Try and stay with people you already know so that you can relax.
2. Pack as little as possible and be mindful that you will have to live out of your bag - no wardrobes in living rooms!
3. Find a supermarket and stock up of cheap food because buying lunch every day is simply too expensive.
4. Stock up on early nights where you can because you never know what the next day will bring.
5. Be sure to thank your hosts with chocolate, flowers, cards, and/or by cooking them a scrumptious supper.

Simple. Happy surfing! :-)

Video: The Last Exorcism on Chatroulette

I am so impressed with this viral. Not just because it's hilarious to see young men jump out of their skin, but because it's highly creative and it communicates the right message for the film genre.

Everyone knows that Chatroulette is not about meeting people from all over the world and engaging in intellectual discussion (I made that assumption once with a friend...we were shocked to say the least). If you don't already know, Chatroulette is crawling with horny males looking for hot women.

This viral plays on this perfectly. It's sick, it's hilarious and you won't forget it in a hurry...

Facebook virtual currency for sale as gift cards

I read in Mashable today that Facebook are selling vouchers in the U.S. which will serve as virtual currency on the website. I am slightly concerned that this is not a joke. Check out the article for yourself: Target to Sell Facebook Credits as Gift Cards in Stores

So people are going to spend REAL money on fake money, so that they are out of pocket in real life but better off in virtual life. Someone needs to explain this logic to me please.

End Of Week One As An Intern

This is the last day of my first week as an intern in corporate PR, and so far I have been pleasantly surprised. I had expected to be used as a human filing machine and to have to suck up to people who clearly didn’t want stupid young interns under their feet asking questions. My expectations couldn’t have been further from the truth...

What has surprised me is that absolutely everyone here is so friendly! I’m being treated as an equal by all levels, which is...weird but great. All interns were invited to the western themed Ketchum Summer Party last night and it was great fun (although I wish I’d brought a chequered shirt). I really enjoyed just chatting and socialising with everyone.

Me (left) with some of the other interns at the Ketchum Pleon Summer Party

I have three weeks left of my unpaid internship at Ketchum Pleon, and time has flown by! Ok so I haven’t been given anything challenging or really important to work on yet, but hopefully I will earn that work in time. Meanwhile I’m enjoying just being in a smiley office.

I have found myself wondering whether anyone here ever has an off-day...

Students and Grads: Finding Your Way In Social Networking

Social networking is a daily activity for most of us, but we sometimes forget that our actions online can very easily be traced back to us. Any websites that you have a profile with, any Tweets that you post, photographs that you upload and blogs that you comment on will usually be the first to appear in online searches...and you'd be naive to think that an employer isn't going to Google you when you apply to work for them.

If you are a student or graduate it is important to market yourself as you would a business online and create your own brand. You have core values, perhaps even a mission statement (what you want in your career) and it’s also worthwhile to continue the same avatar across several social media platforms. It’s not just enough to link up your social media channels, you must provide your online audience with continuity as well as an understanding of who you are and what you stand for.

Don't contradict yourself!

This is quite a challenge. As a student it is difficult to know what you want to achieve from the offset online and to add insult to injury it can be almost impossible to change your social media footprint once it’s there. One year you might be commenting on several blogs about how much you want to go into social media only to decide a year later that you are more interested in public affairs. Therefore it is imperative to be honest and inform your followers about changes you make to your direction and explain why.

I recommend creating an account with http://disqus.com/ because if you comment on blogs, this website will already have your history. Using Disqus you can review all the comments that you have made and even delete some if you need to (It may not be able to delete your comment on a blog but it will at least change your comment to anonymous).

PR Industry Steps Up Crisis Communications Training

Crisis communications is an established PR discipline, but its invaluable importance is finally being recognised by businesses following numerous corporate blunders that have recently saturated the news and damaged the related companies indefinitely.

Businesses want their crisis communication insurance policies in place, now. Having watched the carefully built up reputations of Toyota and BP fall to pieces over the last year, thoughts have turned from building reputations to maintaining them, and the PR industry is responding to the business opportunity.

From October, the CIPR will be running a masters-level diploma in crisis communications at their London headquarters. According to PRWeek, the new course ‘will give PR practitioners the skills to respond to threats and challenges to corporate reputation’.

Ann Mealor, interim CEO, CIPR said:

"This is an exciting and timely new addition to our qualifications. It will build skills, knowledge and understanding, enabling people in PR to step up to the mark at times of crisis when a clear and authoritative response is required" (PRWeek)

A CIPR conference on ‘Reinventing crisis management in a wired world’ is also scheduled to take place on 23rd September. The clever PR agencies are taking note and stepping up training. Businesses don’t just want crisis communication teams; they want the best crisis communication teams available. It’s not as if BP didn’t have them, and look what happened there...

In my opinion, the most important aspect of crisis communications is to keep the brand and corporate values in mind at all times. So BP, if your values state that you care about the environment, don’t hold back the extent of a catastrophic oil spill until the last possible moment. Instead disclose it immediately and get all the help you can to clean it up.

And PR agencies, use the disaster stories to set yourselves apart and make sure you know where others went wrong.

Moving On From Community Publishing

I have been a community publisher for dorchesterpeople.co.uk for over a year now. I have been writing several local news articles/features per week, promoting the website, attending town meetings and putting on events. I have built good relationships with local business owners, event organisers, community groups, sports clubs, and many local individuals both online and offline.

As of 31st August 2010 I will no longer be working for The Local People, and dorchesterpeople.co.uk will be taken over by a new publisher. Her name is Margery and she is brilliant. I am confident that I'm leaving the local community in more than capable hands.

I have had such brilliant fun getting involved with my local area and discovered so many exciting things about Dorchester and the people who live here. When I applied for the job I had lived in Dorchester for 21 years, and thought I knew it inside out. I was so wrong! There is so much more going on than I realised and it is constantly changing and evolving.

Me at the Dorchesterpeople Live Band Night

I have thoroughly enjoyed the many discussions and debates that regularly take place on dorchesterpeople.co.uk amongst residents, and it's clear that there are a lot of people who care about the town. I have particularly enjoyed many fierce debates about the West Dorset District Council development plans. Wow, I think everyone in town has a strong opinion on the subject!

I now have an advantage in embarking on my career in public relations because I understand the importance of local communities and realise that hyperlocal websites can provide the perfect platform for engaging with them...and encouraging them to engage with each other!

I have worked with some fantastic people over the last year and I feel I have been totally supported in my efforts so far, by The Local People and by other publishers too. I only hope I can find the same thing in my next place of work.

But employee or not, I will still be getting involved with dorchesterpeople.co.uk and writing articles, uploading photos etc. I am hooked on community debates and local gossip so mark my words. You have not seen the last of my avatar Dorchester people.

Superdrug Proves Age Old Selling Tactics Still Work

I was in Superdrug the other day, as I tend to be every now and then, picking up some essentials. Nail file. Check. Shampoo. Check. Cotton wool pads. Check. But then something out of place caught my attention…

I noticed that a prominent sales stand was stacked high with bottles Optimum SWISS APPLE Overnight skin renewal serum on sale at £9.99. But that wasn’t what caught my eye (I am still quite young and not interested in looking younger when I still get asked for i.d). What I saw in the centre of these bottles was a recent newspaper cutting from the Daily Mail with the headline ‘£9.99 Elixir Of Youth’.


It wasn’t a neat cutting or even a photocopy and it was slightly wrinkled, but it was obvious that this article was placed there to sell the Optimum serum. After bombarding the nearest shop assistant with my questions, I found that the shop manager had taken it upon him/herself to try this tactic and that the serum has been flying off the shelves ever since. I had thought it was a bit tacky but I suppose the sales speak for themselves. It worked.

Aside from the bargain price of the serum and its’ prominent placement in the shop, this tactic proves the high value of public relations in helping consumers to make their choices. However I would suggest that in this case, the short amount of time between reading the article and making the buying decision is the main attributor to the high sales.

My Online Makeover

As I recently became a graduate and can no longer call myself a student, as you can see I decided it was time to swap my baby blue scribbly online visual identity for something more adult...ok a little bit more adult. I have changed both my blog and Twitter page to this pretty peach rose theme. I am rather girly and tend to wear peachy pink colours so I think it suits me. What do you think?

My Own Little Tag Cloud

I thought it was about time I jumped on the wagon and created my own little tag cloud. Unfortunately I struggled to embed it into the sidebar without having to use a magnifying glass to see it afterwards, so I have included it only in this post.

I made it on Wordle. The only problem is that you can't resize it on the website, and if (like me) you don't speak html it's a small nightmare. It's still a bit of fun that succeeded in entertaining me for ten minutes nonetheless!

I like staring at it and creating phrases and sentences. The most obvious is 'Want PR Job'. Very insightful. It's like the online version of reading tealeaves...ok actually it is just a pretty collection of randomly placed words that give a rough overview of the content of your blog.

I prefer Typealyzer, which I mentioned in a previous post. It not only describes the type of blogger you are but also shows a diagram of your brain activity when you write. Now that really is insightful (if slightly less colourful).

The Dissertation Marathon

I recently received my unit results and was pleased to learn that in the dissertation marathon, I came in 1st. If you have never written a dissertation, let me tell you it is unbelievably painstaking waiting for the decision on how you will be graded for something you have slaved over for months and months. But when you get the result you wanted, the good feeling is the opposite equivalent times ten.

The study was titled 'Is Political Blogging A Worthwile Tool For Engaging Young People In Politics'?, a subject I chose because I thought it to be a timely piece in terms of current affairs (funnily enough, the hand-in date was the same day as the general election). I also have an interest in politics and the study of social media, so that's how it came together.

I wrote a summary of my dissertation which I recently had published as a feature on 'Behind The Spin', an online magazine for students and young practitioners. The article is called 'Political blogging: can it reach young people?':

"Politicians are increasingly under pressure to engage with their constituents online. Some engage via social media. Some don’t. Some are blogging. Some aren’t. In the run up to this year’s general election in the UK, I was researching whether a blog would prove to be a useful way for politicians to get young people engaged…" (read the full article)

'Behind The Spin' is supported by the CIPR and is put together by Richard Bailey. If you are a PR student or professional I strongly recommend that you have a read and consider making a contribution.

Have Faith Fellow PR Graduates!

Students all over the UK have been terrorised by shocking news stories surrounding graduate jobs in the last few days. Headlines such as 'British job market bleak for fresh graduates', 'Nearly 70 graduates for each job vacancy' and 'Bar rises as graduate job squeeze tightens' have had us all sick with panic.

The obvious truth is that giving up faith is not the way to become the 1 graduate in 69 who gets the job. I am writing this for fellow PR graduates who, like me, have not yet landed themselves their dream jobs.

Ok, admittedly it is healthy to have some perspective and understand that getting a job is a little more difficult than usual. So here's a little perspective for you from M&C Saatchi Sport & Ent­ertainment CEO Steve Martin commenting on the launch of the brand new PR agency, 'M&C Saatchi PR', in PR Week today:

"The PR market is in growth and we feel the time is right to step up our offering in the broader consumer PR space. We just feel that there is an amazing opportunity in the PR sector now and hence we are launching the new agency to make the most of this from both consumer and corporate points of view"

I hope this makes you all feel a little better. It may be that we graduates have to work part time for a while (like I am doing) until we find the jobs that we want, but patience is a virtue. Possess it if you want to succeed, and don't lose sight of where you want to be.

Goodbye Southampton Solent University

On Monday I completed my final day at university, so I am now preparing to launch myself into the professional world of PR and Communications as a relatively small fish in a huge pond. The student comfort blanket has been officially confiscated.

On the one hand I am sad to say goodbye to my friends for life, and I know I will miss the deadlines and getting stuck into various projects at once. However the thought of my future career prospects is exciting and I can't wait to start jobsearching.

To give you an idea - I am realistically looking at a high 2:1, with marks for the past year that I have already had returned varying from around 65 to 75. Although, there are plenty of grades that I haven't received which could make a huge difference, hopefully nudging my average to a 1st - fingers crossed!. Handing in my dissertation (see picture) was a huge relief, and I almost didn't want to part with it!


My biggest fear at the moment is losing touch with the industry now that I am not immersed in a PR environment and talking about it everyday. I intend to continue blogging about PR and Communications, read the PR books that I haven't had time to read yet, and keep up to date with publications such as PR Week and Behind the Spin.

You might say that I am being unwise in taking my time to search for a job, but I want to make sure that I give it a lot of thought and planning. I want to find a job that I really want, and that I will stay in for a long time. I will definitely keep you posted and any advice is welcome.

The ethical grey area

Although we studied cultural and ethical dimensions of negotiations this week, I have decided to focus on ethical negotiations because of its relevance to the case study. In addition, the ethical grey areas that exist within negotiations are of interest to me.

When the lecture began we were asked if lying during negotiations is ethical. Of course, I immediately said no. However, we were then bombarded with lots of questions about whether exaggerating benefits, downplaying negatives, omissions, saying you don’t know when you do, etc, is lying?
I was slightly stumped. I thought back to the study of BATNAs, and how theory dictates that in most situations they should not be revealed, but is it lying to imply that your BATNA is something different to what it actually is? These questions fall into an ethical grey area.


Thompson identified four aspects to lying in negotiations (2005, pg 166):
1. The speaker is aware that he or she is misrepresenting information
2. Regarding a material fact
3. The other party relies on this fact
4. By doing is so is damaged – economically or emotionally

These aspects are quite obviously unethical because they involve a party being openly deceptive about facts. I think the grey area contains misrepresentations about motivation. Thompson also identified two types of information misrepresentation. The first is passive – a party does not admit their true motivations. The second is active – deliberately misleading another party with a false claim about your motivation (2005, pg 167).

I would agree that passive misrepresentation falls into the grey area, and I would happily use this in a negotiation situation. However I would agree that active misrepresentation is unethical and belongs in the naughty area. Using active misrepresentation is also likely to ‘snowball’ and could cause problems in the future if a future situation is revisited.

With reference to the case study, we are only aware of the factual aspects to the meetings. However I would imagine that there were deceptions in the grey area. One of the borough councils in the negotiation had only just implemented a new performance management system, and other councils were trying to convince them to install a new system in collaboration with the rest of them.

Whilst this would benefit all of the councils collectively and save money overall, this borough council was likely to lose out individually. I can imagine that benefits were oversold and disadvantages ignored by the other councils whose true motivations may have been to benefit themselves in the long run.

Thinking ahead...negotiating the job offer

This week’s lecture was incredibly useful for me in terms of my future career. What we learned this week will not just apply to negotiating a graduate job, it can be transferred for promotions, pay rises, self-development, and anything else that I may wish to pursue within the workplace.

Negotiating a job offer is a classic example of ‘expanding the pie’. The process is very similar to the 5 step negotiation process studied previously. The following steps were suggested:

1. Figure out what you really want
2. Do your homework
3. Determine your BATNA and your aspiration
4. Research the employer’s BATNA
5. Determine the issue mix
6. Prepare several scenarios
7. Consider getting a ‘coach’

(taken from Thomas, 2005, pg 356)

What I found most helpful is the sixth step. Preparing several scenarios is an extension of determining yours and your employer’s BATNAS, because it involves projecting forward and imagining what could happen. In any negotiation situation, preparing your responses to potential situations could be beneficial for maintaining control of the situation when it occurs.