I was catching up with some friends earlier this week, most of which work in some sort of marketing / digital / interactive capacity. During the course of dinner we noticed the array of mobile phones on the table and in particular the fact that 5 out of the 6 phones were iPhones. The conversation moved onto how to engage consumers on the mobile platform (seriously, we have some crazy rock 'n' roll dinners) with half arguing that brands need to engage users through iPhone apps and others arguing that the market share of the iPhone was still too small for it to warrant such a large focus. My view, for what it was worth, was that the focus should be on non-iPhone but there is no reason why this can't be supported through the iPhone. Anyway, it struck me, looking at the array of iPhones on display, how important it is for us to remember that as marketers we aren’t our client’s target audience – and we shouldn’t lose sight of what is the norm for us and what is the norm for the general population. I've see it so often, and I do it myself, when marketers presume audiences behave in ...

I'm beginning to find some innovate ways brands are leveraging the Twitter platform. Two new services caught my eye this week! The first, Qwitter, aims to help stop people smoking. As a non-smoker I haven't tried it but it's simple to get involved. Simply follow Qwitter and send messages to the user (@iquit) telling it how many cigarettes you have had. Qwitter will track how many packs you're getting through and provide tips and advice to help you kick the habit. The second is Tweet What You Spend which, like Qwitter, allows you to send messages and track how much you are spending day to day. What I love about this is the fact that it's such a simple way of engaging an audience through an existing and established platform. Both Qwitter and Tweet What You Spend are the start of brands engaging Twitter users with value-add services. Many of our clients are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, using it as a simple comms tool. But, the examples above show that Twitter is becoming much more than a micro-blogging service and extending beyond comms and into a powerful web app for both brands and consumers.

So some of you will have noticed that the old blog hasn't been in its best state recently. Between work, a holiday and work I really haven't had time to show it the love and tenderness it deserves. But I am still here and remarkably have found 10 minutes to myself and thought I would post a note around a topic I was discussing yesterday on Twitter - The Great Drain Robbery, or, in non-Sun speak, the fact that Starbucks has been caught wasting millions of litres of water every day. I won't go into the story itself, you can read it here. What is interesting though is how quickly the flames of such a potentially damaging story have been doused. Yesterday this was a front page story and appeared across a number of nationals and online publications. Today though, not a whimper. More than that though, a quick search on Google News reveals less than 30 articles. On BlogPulse and the various Twitter trend trackers the story barely raises a squeak! I'm not going to judge Starbucks on this as I don't know the ins and outs of the issue however given how prevalent environmental issues are within today's media, their ...

PR Lesson #63: Treat your customers like thieves and you will get, in most cases, a negative reaction Poor EA Games, not content with creating the biggest games franchise of all time with The Sims and making millions in the process they decide that their bulging wallets just weren't bulging enough. They have recently released their latest "must-have" game, Spore, with a new DRM system that means people that buy the game can only install it three times before the game locks and it can't be used. Wait it gets better... ...now, this could be a brilliant ploy to sell more games but then a glitch with EA's registration system means gamers were struggling to authorise their copy of Spore and ended up using up their three installations and locking the game. The decision by EA games to treat all their (loyal) fans as software pirates has resulted in a flurry of negative reviews and uproar amongst the gaming community. In one fell swoop, EA has turned the most eagerly anticipated game of 2008 into one of the worst. Can I suggest next time EA skip the formalities of online registration and simply take fingerprints and DNA swabs at point-of-sale.

A couple of weeks ago I posted an article discussing how traditional PR is dead and today's Google Chrome announcement only furthers my belief that PRs must continue to looks at new and interesting ways of communicating to the media and consumers. Google has pulled off, in my opinion, a mini masterstroke by announcing its new browser through a cartoon. Why? Well for a start it's much more interesting than a press release. But, more importantly look at how the story is being reported, there are just as many blog posts and news articles discussing the cartoon as the product itself. The cartoon does nothing more than communicate the key messages and features of Google Chrome but by packaging it in an interesting and unique way, (all of) those messages are reaching the end-user. By discussing or even posting scans of the cartoon the media are doing the equivalent of reprinting a press release. I don't think we can all go start sending out cartoons to journalists, we can't lose sight that the Google brand and this particular announcement carries a fair amount of weight with the media. However, we shouldn't be afraid of exploring new ways of engaging journalists and consumers, especially ...

If you ever want to see what a slow news day looks like just look at page 23-26 of today's Metro: P.23 - 118118 Survey revealing people are "discomgoogolated" P.23 - New Samsung mobile phone that detects when people are smiling P.23 - Vauxhall reveals best place to watch a sunset P.25 - Hiscox Insurance reveals car engines turn women on P.26 - Grazia announces its "cool list" Great coup for the brands and the PRs involved but it does feel like the newsroom got to page 22 and ran out of stories. With Gustav, the Presidential election, the credit crunch etc - is there really not enough real news to fill the paper?

Found a great new website over the weekend that could prove to be an incredibly useful tool for some raw measurement of campaigns, events and activity. It's called Twist and allows you to plot the frequency of keywords found on Twitter. It's quick and dirty as far as measurement goes but clients love the odd chart and this is an effective way of demonstrating the amount of online buzz being generating at any one time. As a side experiment I created a graph based on mentions of "Gordon Brown" and "David Cameron". There is a lot of talk of David Cameron being the new-age digital political compared favourably to Mr. Analogue Gordon Brown. But on this evidence, GB is much more prominent amongst the Twitter chatter!

Today marks the 4th anniversary of BlogDay. To take part the rules are simple: Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2008 Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st) and Add the BlogDay tag using this link: http://technorati.com/tag/BlogDay2008 and a link to the BlogDay web site at http://www.blogday.org - So without further ado, Happy BlogDay 2008: Delightful Work: Coach Tom Volkar provides advice on achieving, as he puts it, "work life freedom". Great blog that should be visited whenever those deadlines start mounting up! PsyBlog: Psychology is little more to me than a fleeting interest however I find this blog incredibly useful for gaining small insights into the way our minds work. For marketers this RSS feed should be a staple The Blog of Tim Ferriss: Any blog with the url fourhourworkweek.com is going to get my vote. Great advice on Tim on working smarter and not harder Chris Brogan: The hardest working man online? Probably! Chris regularly rolls out insightful, in-depth advice and information ...

I get a little bit of stick in the office for being a self-confessed techy but more and more I am finding an array of software, websites, gadgets and tools that allow me to stay one step ahead in the fast-paced world of PR I thought I would compile a selection of things I kit myself out with to make me a little more PR 2.0: 1. Firefox & add-ons: I took the plunge with Firefox earlier this year and have never looked back. Aside from the speed, stability and usability it provides it also allows you to install add-ons and plug-ins to tailor the software. Pertinent to this post include: LinkedIn Companion: Allows me to keep access and my business network at the click of a button (Disclaimer: LinkedIn is an H&K client) Foxmarks: Invaluable for working between the office and home. Synchronises your bookmarks across computers so you never have to find that obscure news article you saved during some late night surfing Googlepedia: Displays a Wikipedia article next to your Google searches. Excellent resource and time-saver when doing desk research Cooliris: Fantastic tool for some one-man creative thinking. Turn your PC into a mood-board in seconds TwitterFox: I can’t remember the last time I ...

We all hear of horror stories of journalists being incredibly rude to PRs and many of us have experienced, first hand, exasperation turn to frustration turn to rage after unwittingly selling-in the tenth survey of the afternoon. But recently I'm beginning to understand how they feel and to be honest wonder how they manage not to slam the phone down after two minutes of stumbling over the first sentence of a pitch. As we near the end of the year many industry bodies and magazines start planning their awards ceremonies and with that comes the invitation to "take a table" at the event to PRs and the clients they represent. I have had two already today and the pitching has been so woeful it's a wonder how they manage to fill the smallest of venues. The first one: Sales: "Hi is this Dan" Me: "Yes" S: "Yes...er...hi....um...I'm not sure what clients you look after but we're holding the xxxx 2008 awards in December. Have you heard of them?" M: "Yes" S: "Would you like to book a table?" Second one: Sales: "Hi I'm xxxxx and I'm calling about the xxxx Awards 2008" Me: "Hi" S: "Yes, we would like to invite you to the awards ceremony as I understand you represent xxxx" Me: "Oh ...