The major point is that the costs to be placed on businesses in complying with this legislation may well cripple them. Take, for instance, the proposal to scrap the £10 administration charge to customers wanting to access their personal data. All very well, you might say, it’s their data. But that cost is not there to cover the cost of compiling and sending that data, it is there to dissuade requests that aren’t genuine or important. With no charge, data requests may radically increase, putting a large cost and time burden on the companies who hold that data, be it brands, agencies or data brokers. The Ministry of Justice estimated it cost UK business £50 million in 2009 to fulfil these access requests. Smaller businesses will feel the effect of this far greater as the recession has already made it harder to drive profit and break even. With the costs of data requests, something will have to give, and it is glaringly obvious where this will be – investment and jobs.

Another damaging proposal, for customers as well as companies, is the classification of IP addresses and cookies as personal data. We all like a personalised user experience online, much like when we go to the pub and the barman knows our favourite tipple. Websites would be banned from remembering your data from previous visits, and so every time you went to your favourite online store you would have to enter all your preference details again. This has the potential to have a negative impact on sales at a time when online shopping is growing strongly in popularity. What good will it do to stifle this development? And what about web analytics? Without access to IP addresses to study online consumer movement, that entire subset of the marketing industry will be effectively wiped out, along with the companies that provide those enhanced customer experiences.

On top of all this, the effects that it will have on the business world as a whole could be dramatic. If marketing departments and agencies can’t effectively target their customers due to a lack of quality data, sales will undoubtedly drop. This will affect all businesses, in every sector – not just marketing.

Now, amongst all this doom and gloom, there were a few positive elements that will continue to develop the public’s trust in the industry. Data breaches will have to be reported within 24 hours to effectively safeguard and combat data theft. The age of a child has officially been defined as 13 years old, and so safeguards on child marketing materials can be more effectively discussed and implemented.

However, the vast majority of the proposals outlined on the 25th January have the potential to stifle business growth and damage the marketing industry beyond recognition. Now is the time for the business world to have its voice fairly represented before any part of these proposed changes become enshrined in law.

This time however, direct marketers were ready. The industry comprising 280,000 jobs, the industry which contributes £27bn to the economy, the industry that created Tesco Clubcard joined together under the DMA and took a stand and let it’s voice be heard. And what a roar it made! Using social media and the hashtag #panoramamail debate whizzed round twitter; 574 tweets were logged reaching 48,000 people.  Eulogy! spent much of Monday seeding the hashtag and encouraging industry members, thought leaders and consumers to join the conversation whilst the programme aired. And judging by the buzz, the industry’s first foray into social media self defence was a resounding success. We felt proud to represent the industry.

The jam packed schedule started the moment we hit the airport where we met with Gemma Greaves, Marketing Director of The Marketing Society to talk serious business (well more the best restaurants, parties and bars, it was imperative to visit).

After dumping our bags we hit the Croisette for a spot of steak tartare and bumped into no other than Tim Hipperson of G2. Vicky then had a meeting with MEC and Phil and I co-created probably our most glamorous comment piece ever (in terms of location) with Christoph Becker at Gyro. No rest for the wicked (and no planned nap) we headed off to the back of town to catch up with The Brand Union following their stupendous installation, The Big Book, which had pride of place at the foot of the Palais. And yes our photos could be found amongst the pages, much to our delight. Although we still haven’t forgiven Rankin for not recognising our photographic genius by failing to select them for the top 11 (eleven is the new ten, apparently). Never mind, we don’t hold a grudge (much).

Supper was a lovely affair at a beautiful garden terrace, where we spotted none other than Robert Redford – although on closer inspection, I suspect it wasn’t really him… although has anyone else noticed the distinct resemblance to John Hegarty???

And then to the Gala Party, followed by the Gutter Bar where they ran out of beer – outrageous. I think we crawled to bed at 5am.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed the next morning (going via a pharmacy for Phil, who managed to lose his voice the night before), we grabbed a coffee and awaited the arrival of another client, Alchemetrics.  Given it was their first time at Cannes, the weeks previous we executed a campaign nattily entitled “Cannes You Find Us” through LinkedIn and Twitter. This culminated in a photo shoot by The Big Book, which challenged delegates to come and find us; the prize a free lunch. We were “found” but we promised not to reveal by whom – they don’t want anyone to know they like free lunches! (But it’s sooo tempting). After a long lunch in the old town we were joined by the lovely Caroline Barker at Momentum and Gemma from the Marketing Society, where the “after, after party” was conceived, brainstormed and agreed. Amuse bouches (not sure that’s the plural) were a key feature.

Caroline and I then went to her interview with Adforum.com and then had a wander around the amazing Japan exhibition, a collection of fundraising creative activated by adland in response to the earthquake. Here we spied Michael Roth and the Japanese Ambassador to France. On to The Big Book cocktail party where we entertained journalists from as far afield as Australia.

Again shunning a nap we hot footed it to the Campaign Party (sleep is for wimps) and hobnobbed with Phil Smith, Sara Kimberly, Jeremy King, Suzanne Bidlake amongst others. Without a doubt a fantastic event (although I probably would say that!), not least because I had my first paddle and met a super new business lead. On to supper and then another session a la Gutter alongside Momentum who had just finished organising one of the parties that everyone wanted a ticket for. So exclusive was it,  even we didn’t get a pass (!!!). Then to Bed. Selflessly we had given up one of our rooms to the plight of a journalist so  Vic and I shared a rediculously small bed – it’s a good job we like each other (and I think we still do, Vic?).

The following morning we sorted out our Shots tickets, caught up with a few more journalists, harassed Phil Smith, who happened to have the misfortune of staying in the same hotel, and then hung out on the Carlton Terrace to people watch. Then off to the Ogilvy party which had the most magnificent aerial acrobats amongst flowing cocktails and plentiful sausage rolls. Contentment is a party called Ogilvy. The battered mars bars were a big Eulogy! hit.

We then decamped to The Shots Party, which was absolutely heaving and at capacity by 12.30am. An apparent record. Big thanks go to Attilio and Hayley for looking after us so wonderfully.

And then because it’s the law, a stint back at the Gutter. Where the prices had magically increased by 7% on the night before. We are seriously in the wrong business.

Not only did we meet and spend time with some great people,  but we also learnt masses too. Watching sessions such as the debate between Murdoch and Sir Sorrell were invaluable, not to mention listening to the controversy  caused by Will.i.am’s exertion that “Ad agencies are yesterday”, innit.

Another festival over, but it was without a doubt the busiest I have seen in recent years and the mood exceptionally buoyant. If that’s anything to go by, hopefully the industry can look forward to a more positive year than last.

Currently you can’t talk about community without tipping a nod to “the” wedding but now the bunting has been taken down, the trestle tables packed away, the chairs borrowed from the local village hall restacked, will that be it until another national celebration?

Not if David Cameron has anything to do with it. Not only did he flex his muscles in April by publically berating bureaucrats who were concerned the humble home-made scone could cause a pandemic of botulism, he also continues to promote his Big Society premise despite media derision over the last week.

Irrespective of whether the Big Society is working or not, consumer sentiment towards brands with a more societal mindset that goes beyond CSR is evident. Half of the people surveyed by G2 Joshua believe that companies have a key role to play in maintaining community spirit. Moreover, five of Trendwatching’s 11 Crucial Trends 2011 are related to consumers wanting brands to stand for something positive.

It’s not just consumers, but agency folk too. We’ve been working with ex-Proximity founders Elly Woolston and Duncan Gray to help them launch their new agency {United}, which is the first belief-driven offering that will work with brands that we’ve coined “not just for profit” – organisations with a distinct social conscience that want to give something back. {United} is based on Elly, Duncan and Steven’s (Dodds) conviction that a brand’s beliefs are a valuable marketing asset and their desire to help organisations unlock these for mutual benefit to the company and the consumer.

Another of our agency clients, gyro is also getting involved with community spirit by supporting BITC’s Give & Gain initiative which takes place on 24th June. It is the UK’s only national day of staff volunteering where employees of a company can donate their time and expertise during work hours to help support local communities in need. gyro will be designing and building a sensory garden and are also donating their PR budget, so during the rest of May and June the Eulogy! gyro team will be working closely with BITC to help publicise Give & Gain Day to help sign up other businesses.

We have also got involved with Start (Prince Charles’ sustainability charity), The Marketing Society and BITC’s Meteorite-devised campaign One Day. One Day is a mass call to action to consumers driven by the marketing community to initiate behaviour change. The aim of One Day is that on 1st November 2011 (1/11/11), all marketing communications should embrace one central consumer theme: Think about and do something sustainable today. The initiative aims to get a community of one million consumers to pledge to change their lifestyle in one small way that will make better use of natural resources. It hopes to have more than 100 top brands engaged from the outset to demonstrate the persuasive power of the UK marketing industry. It will be our job to help promote the initiative and we’re really excited by it.

The One Day initiative clearly shows the potential power that tapping into community can bring. With the might of the marketing industry awakening to these benefits it seems likely that our lives as consumers will be positively supplemented by brands as community focused campaigns become more prevalent, which in my mind is no bad thing.

One trend we’ve noticed at Eulogy! is the movement of public relations from agency to in-house, particularly in the B2B space, and drilling down even further – most noticeably within the marketing services and media sectors. Having spent over a decade agency-side and with no in-house experience to my name, I’m definitely not the person to write a well balanced appraisal of the pros and cons of each – I suspect if I did, agency would win. Yet, with a number of friends opting to move in-house over the last few years, and having worked very closely with in-house comms teams at organisations such as Royal Mail, GyroHSR and JWT I am not blind to the advantages that having dedicated resource affords a business (although would obviously argue voraciously against).

That said over the last few weeks I have noticed a series of articles within both the national and trade media focusing on the phenomenon that is groupthink – such as this one in The Telegraph, which blames groupthink for the financial crisis and this one in Money Marketing, which talks about the dangers of groupthink on policy.

Stepping down a bit from the recession and financial policy it is widely recognised that groupthink can also be a destructive force and a real issue for businesses. At its worst it stifles creativity and independent thinking often stilting development, which can ultimately impact the bottom line of an organisation. Typically, however, it manifests itself by championing a status quo and all too often businesses find themselves getting on with the day to day jobs without looking at the bigger picture and creating regular challenges. This I believe is where outsourcing (irrespective of discipline) can really add its value. Working with teams that know you well, but ultimately sit outside of the business, can help inspire and ignite ideas and forward thinking.  This is precisely why we work with people such as the (marvellous) Amber Group, to challenge our thinking and assist us with our own direction. The fact that consultancies, such as PR, have this ability is what I enjoy most about agency life.

Features Editor Cathy Bussey’s well balanced piece attempts to bring to the surface tensions which have been bubbling away for the last few years between the creative communications sectors that have up until now had fairly clearly laid out stalls which defined their existence. The debate in PR Week puts the three would-be contenders into a boxing ring to see which one emerges the victor.

Whoever it is that surfaces from the final round still standing and with their bloody nose intact will undoubtedly believe that they rightfully deserve to wear the social media crown. The truth of the matter is that they will be wrong: there are no crowns to wear -only matching sets of badges to be worn by all.

Firstly, the idea of any agency owning a channel is laughable and dare I say a little bit arrogant. An agency’s role is not to ‘own’ but to support through expertise and consultancy. Chris Lake, Director of Innovation at Econsultancy echoes this very sentiment in a post he recently wrote on the Econsultancy blog:

“I firmly believe that a company’s social media strategy should be owned and managed by the company itself, rather than by external agencies.”

Those that submit to the notion that social media can readily be claimed in its totality as belonging to the domain of PR, advertising or the newly emerging digital sector clearly do not understand the scope, complexity or potential of social media channels.

Take the telephone, for example. It would be extremely bizarre to restrict its usage to just members the PR team, or have a ‘phone call strategy’ defined by an external marketing agency. It would be equally unlikely that a brand’s digital marketing agency would have the right to decide how the wider company uses email as a communications tool? Social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr… they’re all just tools (with varying degrees of sophistication) that serve to meet multiple needs.

Only when marketers start viewing social media platforms in this way, as facilitators which address multiple needs across numerous departments (comms, marketing, branding, customer services, corporate reputation, stakeholder management, research and development) will the ownership debate be replaced by a discussion that focuses around an integrated approach to social media.

At Onlinefire, whilst we’re often seen as a ‘social media agency’, we actually prefer to work collaboratively with clients and their agencies to allocate defined roles for social media activation. In truth, we’re much more than a social media agency; we’re a creative online communications agency with PR at our heart. Social media is our channel of choice but much of what we do for our clients draws upon multiple marketing touch-points from experiential to events to traditional news generation – regularly drawing upon the skills of the wider Eulogy! Group. It’s no accident that this blog has ended up being posted on the Eulogy! site. It’s all about integration, don’t you know!?

• We don’t create flash iPad apps, but we work with digital agencies that do.
• We don’t do search engine pay-per-click campaigns, but we work with many great companies that can do these (and do them really well).
• Onlinefire isn’t a specialist in organising promoted tweets but we can get your brand trending on Twitter whilst a quality media buying specialist sorts out your specific Twitter ads.

I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a clear role for PR in social media. In fact, us PRs have traditionally been the gatekeepers of the brand conversation and as such are in a good place to see the potential opportunities that social media offers us. Admittedly the conversation has always been with identifiable mid-point influencers (media, stakeholders, analysts, etc.) but new online tools have allowed us to take this dialogue direct to consumers. Never before have communicators ever been able to have this level of proximity to our end users and this is a gift that the PR industry should embrace rather than shy away from.

Advertisers on the other hand have always been on the receiving end of huge budgets and as such have been able to create truly great pieces of branded content which inspire talkability. However even small advertising budgets on social media platforms can reap great rewards. Executed correctly, Facebook’s social ads can deliver amazing results for the right campaign due to its pinpoint targeting capabilities. This is probably still very much the domain of the media buying agency but the ease of which brands can manage these social ads makes it more difficult for some unscrupulous agencies to play the smoke and mirrors game with their clients. And Amen to that!

Agencies which have previously taken great pride in dining at the top-table with their clients have been forced to reassess their offering in light of direct to consumer alternatives that social media has provided the industry.

Self-defined digital agencies are currently the best equipped to advise and build social apps and widgets which add an extra layer of usability to social networks. This technical knowledge is something that most PR / social media agencies currently do not offer nor would they probably every want to.

So the content versus conversation divide still exists to some extent but for how long?

Huff and Puff…

Three Little Pigs

Remember the story of the three pigs? They all set about making separate houses for themselves. Imagine that instead of each having sticks, straw and bricks respectively, one had just cement, another had a spade to dig the foundations with and the third pig had just bricks.

Individually, neither would be able to build anything resembling a solid structure but collectively, they each bring a different and vital quality needed in the construction of a robust home. Replace ‘pigs’ with marketing agencies (perhaps this doesn’t require too much of a stretch of the imagination) and substitute the act of building a house with the objective of contributing to a successful social media campaign – and that’s where we find ourselves today; everyone working in collaboration to build something that ultimately benefits all parties to serve a larger purpose.

360-degree Implementation

A few years ago when Eurostar were being held up as an example of a brand being overly myopic in its approach to social media comms, few agencies acknowledged the lessons that clearly needed to be learnt from the fall-out. Having appointed a social media specialist agency to carry out a (pretty well-executed) sales campaign on Twitter, Eurostar hadn’t factored in the other internal departments that may need to use the platform in the future. So, when poor weather conditions meant that many passengers were left stranded at Christmas without any information advising them on their options, many turned to Twitter only to be met with a wall of deafening silence.

I remember being invited on to Channel 4 news to comment on how the brand misread its customer’s social media requirements. At the time, I seem to remember a lot of focus being placed on the channel and none on the message itself. Sure, there were some cultural learnings for Eurostar to be gained but any criticism of their trial Twitter campaign merely deflected attention from the real problem which was Eurostar’s inability to communicate with its customers in a time of need.

In this situation, it was clear that the in-house team were not equipped to deal with social media as a 360-degree comms channel and that a specialist social media agency were reluctantly handed ‘ownership’ of Twitter in its entirety wheras in reality they were only allowed responsibility for a small campaign area. The danger of ownership being taken outside of the in-house team becomes apparent when the platform overlaps with other departments’ remits as happened in the case of Eurostar.

Therefore, media ownership (social or traditional) should always remain with the brand gate-keeper (i.e. the in-house marketing team) and not on the agency side. Only by having centralised ownership, can social media be divided accordingly between various internal business groups with weighting distributed in an appropriate fashion that reflects needs and not historical budgets.

Aim for the stars…

The situation reminds me somewhat of the Space and Moon Races which took place between the USA and the then Soviet Union in the mid to late twentieth century where two politically opposed forces fought a very global battle to attain technological and ideological superiority within space exploration. A key marker within this political era was fixed on which would be the first nation to set foot on the moon. After billions of dollars, numerous fatalities and a plethora of disasters on both sides the USA emerged as being the first nation to have representatives step foot on the moon.

The flag was placed, the video images beamed back to the world below and now, over fifty years on, as the Star Spangled Banner continues to fly in solitude on a windless moon are we able to say that the USA managed to claim ‘ownership’ of the moon? The answer is almost certainly no.

One small step for social media

To learn more about the work we do at Onlinefire, visit our website or alternatively you can follow us on Twitter @onlinefire.

Everyone knows colleagues are important; you’d have to be a pretty cold sort of person to spend the majority of your waking life in the company of people you didn’t enjoy. And even if you’re not best mates with every single one of them, being able to pull together in a crisis, share biscuits at the 3pm afternoon lull, or talk about last night’s TV round the proverbial water cooler, all help to make Mondays to Fridays that little bit more comfortable.

At Eulogy!, and I’m sure the same can be said by many other agencies, we pride ourselves on the culture we’ve created. Even after the changes (in size, staff and structure) I’ve witnessed over the last nine years, our culture has remained intact, and continues to be something that we eulogise about to prospects, clients and peers alike.

And even today; a day when I’ve been left smarting by a particularly well orchestrated ‘let’s all unfollow Phil on Twitter because he’s about to hit 100 followers’ campaign by my (bastard) colleagues, I still love working here. It really is that good.

That or I’m a sadist (which if you’d seen the size of the high heels I was wearing, you’d fully believe).

In his leader column PR Week’s Danny Rogers has given his thoughts on consolidation (or lack of it) in the PR industry. Alongside his top line predictions for 2011, he makes the comment that “few PR agencies have achieved the scale required to challenge management consultancies – or even some advertising shops – for really lucrative strategic comms contracts from big business”.

In many respects he’s absolutely right. Scale is often a necessity when squaring up to the competition, and especially when you’re hoping to catch the eye of the newest big brand (with matching budget), being a fish capable of powerful breast stroke isn’t a bad thing.

But if we put scales (pun intended) aside for a moment, there’s also the issue of whether PRs are actually able to generate this kind of strategic thinking at all. It still amazes me that for every carefully considered, objectively underpinned and strategically directed campaign, a myriad more exist (at least at pitch stage) that go straight for the tactical spectacular, without a moment’s thought given to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’.

I think there are two fundamentals at play here. Firstly, a lot of PR agencies and consultants don’t know the difference between a strategy or tactic, and think objectives such as ‘make me / my brand famous’ are enough to govern the campaign. What’s more, they often bypass the ‘thinking’ part of the process entirely, and move straight on to dazzling creativity and tactics.

Secondly (and perhaps more tellingly) is the reticence of some clients to share with their agencies the salient details needed to make these kinds of strategic decisions in the first place. This study from late last year stuck in my mind, as it begs the question, if the marketing function is disconnected from a business’s strategy, what hope for (bolted on) PR?

I would say this (it’s our blog after all), but as an agency we pride ourselves on not only knowing our Os, Ss and Ts, but on our ability to confront clients, regardless of their size or the scale of the challenge, to demand the information and insight we need to make the informed choices necessary to achieve agreed and measurable objectives. Not only does it mean we’re all swimming in the right direction once the campaign goes live, but it also makes for a more exciting and inspiring journey for both us and the brand we’re representing.

From what the Eulogites can gather, the founders of Quora looked at Twitter and realised a significant percentage of tweets were people asking questions. So they got to thinking about taking this away from the Twitter platform and providing a space where users can build up a network around various subjects and position the question to a more targeted audience. So far, so on-trend –marketing is heading towards an era of personalised messaging that is aimed at carefully segmented audiences.  So the general business proposition seems to be accurate.

Founded by two former Facebook employees (note the invite to link Quora with FB on the homepage) in California, Quora has been steadily feeding a growing obsession over the last few months. It is now in full access mode (after a stint as invite only). Simply put, it is a Q&A platform that is created, edited and organised by its users.

Sound familiar? Well it is different to Wikipedia, apparently. Namely its ability to follow topics and attract reputable users – they are confident that the questioners can trust the opinions of the answerers. Quora has coined the phrase ‘continually improving’, in that once one question has been answered, the page continues to be developed into a stronger and more useful resource – with a narrower focus we can assume. Interestingly, there is no requirement for a neutral point-of-view (like Wikipedia), but a desire for some consensus…between both masterminds and laymen. How refreshing. 

As far as we can tell, contributors aren’t paid for their knowledge. If you are a cynic, this might beg the question of their validity. That is, invariably, the better informed you are, the busier you are and the more likely you might demand payment. But if Quora fulfils its aims and is indeed shared and spread across other social networks, then the revenue potential for experts thus increases. There will be some aspect of editing – by trained individuals who can navigate their way through the quagmire that is libel law. But censorship will be kept at a minimum as much as possible. Busybodies can also amend and edit content as they see fit.

What does all this mean for PRs and marketers? Well the general sentiment is that it actually has mass appeal, by dovetailing with Twitter and Facebook – thus reducing social networkers own network management time. It also nicely hones in on target audiences who are interested in specialist subjects (linked to a relatively sophisticated search function) and offers geeks – and gleeks! – the chance to interact with likeminded users. The blog-like facility may end up in client’s coverage packs and could aid natural search, even complement news aggregation.

However, PRs will need to take an active involvement – we’ll need to be on there, monitoring, waiting patiently for updates. It will also be good for assessing our spokespeople’s competition and another way of seeing who is talking about what. Be aware that Quora users are expected to use their real identity when answering questions, so transparency remains key.

Overall, people seem unanimous in their intrigue with Quora, if not united in their praise. Seasoned social network observers are already asking about the iPhone app – apparently it’s on its way. The mobile site is already live. 

I found out that Quora is named Quora because a group of people coming together and reaching a consensus is a quorum. Apparently it’s got nothing to do with the new Tron character. But the highlight of my Quora-tive research was this Tweet:

http://twitter.com/rhodri
I joined Quora and now I’m a member and people are following me and I’m following them and I don’t know what’s going on and want my mummy.