First port of call is the corporate site – specifically the media or investor section. This will contain the Annual Report, which will provide an indication of the strategic ambitions within the company, plus a useful outline of who is who and which business units hold the big cards. I tend to only read the Chairman’s summary. The next things to look for are the analysts reports, again within the media or investor section – these are industry presentations (just look for the PPTs)  that the Board make to stakeholders and can be a minefield of useful information. It is amazing how few people within companies are actually aware about the commitments that are being made by their Boards to shareholders.

Next, it is worth going to the independent analysts e.g. Interactive Investor, Yahoo! Finance etc. as they tend to have a view on the company and its position within its competitive set. What you are looking for here are snippets or souundbites – useful things that give you an indication as to where the industry is going and how well placed the company is to deliver. If you can get hold of a paid for analysts report (e.g. a Deutsche Bank report on the industry) they are worth their weight in gold.

For employee views, I tend to look at Glassdoor and LinkedIn; the former gives you an indication as to what the employees are feeling, the former tells you what they are actually doing. Slideshare can be a great resource of presentations that people within a company have given, and tends to cover a much broader suite than the analysts reports.

Twitscoop, Google Insights, and BlogPulse can provide a huge amount of insight into publications, conversations, issues about the company etc., whilst LinkedIn Answers and Yahoo! Answers can also be useful for seeing what the buzz is on any particular roles etc.

Google Ad Planner is a great freeware tool for media planning, but it does have its limitations – Patrick may be able to give you a broader list. The two aspects to look at are the Site Planner tool, which gives you information related to a particular site (e.g. usage, visitor demographics, keyword usage and similar sites used) and the audience search tool, which helps create a list of the sites that tend to be used by particular audiences.

Finally, Being Peter Kim is a great wiki that contains a list of Social Media Activity for organisations, industries, countries etc.

This week’s task was all about marketing: the teams were given a new cereal targeted at children and asked to develop a brand identity, the  packaging and a 30 second TV Commercial in two days. Which they duly did. Cue much mirth and merriment about the ridiculous ideas, the poor packaging, infighting and poorly executed TVCs.

My issue is simple. The apprentices should have gone so much further: two days is plenty of time to develop a sophisticated campaign which should include (at the very least) an approach to introducing the product to the market, differing channel strategies, promotional ideas and a variety of channel executions. Despite one team being led by a “experienced marketeer” and the target audience being kids and mums, we saw not one digital execution, heard no suggestion of on-pack promotions and saw no thought into how the product would actually be released to the market.

Now I know that advertising to children is a sensitive issue and merits careful thought and I’m also aware that the programme istelf is heavily edited to make for engaging viewing, but this is an activity that candidates are asked to work on every year and since the programme’s inception, I haven’t heard any sniff of using digital media to achieve the task.

Use digital ‘change agents’ have had to deal with the advertising bias towards television since we had the ‘audactity’ to suggest that perhaps a brief could be met without a shoot in the Maldives. Given the numerous studies into channel erosion and the increasing lack of relevance of the TVC for particular audiences, it would be nice to see clients like SrAlan recognising that perhaps, after almost 20 years, it is worth considering an alternative to the TVC.

It doesn’t take much thought to include. I mean, even the BBC programme site has games, a blog, a Facebook page, Forums, embedded videos and links to other related sites.

Hrmph

The clip was posted on April 15 to You tube. Over the day, views on You Tube increased as follows (all CET):
• 562,627 views (8am)
• 636,000 views (11:15am)
• 690,000 views (1pm)
• 728,816 views (3pm)
• 745,679 views (5pm)
• 930,390 views (9:30pm)

As you can see from he chart below, despite a mild drop, the share price has actually increased as the Twitter storm has gathered pace. I’m wondering whether this is a general response to any publicity (as the share price fluctuations are in line with what seem to be normal Domino’s trades) or whether the swift response of the CEO to the crisis actually enhanced his credibility?

In these days of manufactured boy bands, media manipulation, short-termism, capitalism gone haywire and “reality TV” it is incredibly easy to be cynical. The daily press is rife with tales of greed, theft, selfishness and extortion; if one were to read each item literally, it would paint an incredibly depressing picture of humanity.

And every so often something like this comes along. One of those moments that shocks you and captures your attention so immediately, it is, quite literally, unforgettable.

For those of you who are unaware of the background, Britain’s Got Talent is a reality TV show designed to find the most talented person (or people) in the country. Individuals or groups are given their 30 seconds of fame in a series of (seeminly never ending) auditions until they are either voted off by a panel of judges, or voted through to the next round. The idea is that we get to laugh at the arrogance of people who have the audacity to showcase their ‘talent’ (categories range from acts like  juggling, contortionism, magic, stand-up comedy through to the ever popular music) and quietly applaud those who are acceptable enough to make it through to subsequent rounds. To be frank, most people aren’t really interested in seeing the genuinely talented acts until the ‘dross’ has been cleared, so most of the early rounds is about the TV producers finding the weirdest people they can and allowing us to laugh at just how crass they are.

So here we have Susan Boyle. A 47 year old single woman from Scotland, who lives with her cats in a small town in the  regions of Scotland. She looks odd, dresses like Anthony Perkins’ mother character from Pycho and has eyebrows that meet in the middle. We are teed up from the onset to expect a dramatic failue – she is overconfident when being interviewed, wants to be a “professional singer”, like “Elaine Page” and the reason that we have never seen or heard of her before is that she “hasn’t been given the opportunity” and what’s more, she chooses a huge song to sing – “I dreamed a dream” from Les Miserables.

The music starts and whilst we wait with baited breath for a hideously tuneless screeching, we are treated instead to an incredibly powerful, goosebump-enducing rendition. It might not be musically ‘perfect’, but it certainly makes your hair stand on end.

But, more compelling than the notion of an individual who belies their appearance and proves their worth, was the reaction of the audience. From the first note, they recognise that there is a genuine talent on the stage and the tone instantly switches from cries of derision to roars of encouragement. The crowd are on their feet, applauding and willing Susan to deliver the performance that they have immediately recognised she is capable of. And that she does. Then, having delivered the performance of her life, she simply walks off stage.

For those of you who get depressed in the cynicism and self-centred nature of humanity, it is a humbling experience to watch. And on a weekend where the theme is about rebirth, it is quite fitting , really.

I guess that, given the modern use of media as a weapon in warfare, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it did get me wondering how far this media strategy went.

Are we talking simply management of media resources and connections in the same vein as a good PR manager would exercise, or are we talking something more funamentally holistic and Obama-style? Control of media in terms of managing the timing of when information is released, or manipulation of media in terms of creating a (dis)information strategy, designed to stimulate/sway public consensus?

Whatever the answer, I’m sure that Bob Quick and his team hadn’t prepared a media strategy for a blunder of such proportions…

Today’s classic – the legal department wants to review our contact reports before they are published on the internal wiki (which is only availbale to the closed group), just in case the report “contains any information that may provide an indication that [the company] endorsed any of the technologies or conversations that were contained within.”

Unbelievable.

Just class

Interface for the Churaumi Aquarium

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