Sarah Stimson

Blogger Spotlight: Sarah Stimson

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Sarah Stimson is a Top 10 UK PR Blogger and chief executive of the Taylor Bennett Foundation. A champion of diversity and making the PR industry accessible, Sarah is a prominent figure in the PR industry. We caught up with Sarah to talk about diversity, the changes in PR and advice for newbies.

What makes your blog successful?
I have two blogs with slightly different perspectives. Sarah Stimson is my personal blog and it’s where I tend to give my opinion on PR and recruitment of comms talent. PRcareers.co.uk is mostly other people’s opinions and is related to career development in the industry. The latter gets a lot of traffic on the 150 PR internships and graduate schemes I publish each year. There’s a real lack of information on PR as a career choice out there, so I have tried to bring together perspectives from practitioners, students and academics

What has writing a blog taught you about the way bloggers see the PR/influencer relationship?
I often see bloggers saying they’re frustrated at the lack of understanding of their blogs from PR practitioners; that they get pitched irrelevant content all the time. It happens to me too and I have a new sympathy for bloggers and journalists who must get far more pitches than I do. I have never published a sponsored post or been paid to write content for my blog – I’m not saying I’d rule that out forever but at the moment I’m very selective about what I publish and it’d have to be super relevant for me to consider it.

What’s the biggest issue facing PR today?
As CEO of the Taylor Bennett Foundation, my working life is dedicated to addressing the lack of diversity in PR and it’s definitely one of the issues the industry is struggling to deal with. There is huge appetite from employers to find solutions and to make PR workplaces more inclusive and diverse so the intention is there, but there is still some way to go in taking practical steps to make a real difference.

What are the biggest changes to the PR industry you’ve seen over your career?
I remember speaking to a financial PR agency about ten years ago who told me they don’t talk to their entry-level hires about digital because it’s not relevant in financial PR. That has changed completely. No matter what sector or discipline you operate in as a comms person, digital is integral to everything you do these days.

Will print die out altogether?
Not in the foreseeable future. Print will always have a place. The way people consume their news has changed in the last twenty years and the move to online media has reflected that, but some people will always prefer to hold an actual paper or magazine in their hand.

What’s the best social platform?
I’m a fan of Twitter, for work. I’ve met lots of interesting industry people having first built a relationship with them on Twitter and it’s possible to contact people who might otherwise be difficult to reach. For personal use, I like Facebook. I have very few industry people on my Facebook so if you’re one of them you should feel special – although photos of my children and cats are not everyone’s cup of tea.

What’s better, agency or in-house?
Both. I often get asked this question by young people looking to start out in the industry and I honestly think both have pros and cons. In agency you’re likely to be able to learn from a range of PR practitioners, work on a multitude of different clients, and get new business experience. In-house you can really get under the skin of one organisation, might get experience of managing an agency relationship, and quite often will end up doing more senior level work very quickly because the teams can be smaller.

What advice would you give someone looking to work in comms?
Set up a blog. Blogging gives you the opportunity to showcase your writing skills and to ask established PR practitioners for their opinions to include in blog posts. It’s a way to get your personal brand established before you’ve even started your career. It costs next to nothing to do and writing regularly is a good discipline.

How do you work with PRs as a blogger?
I very rarely work with PRs for Sarah Stimson but for PRcareers I’m always looking for new, interesting content related to career development, specifically focused on the comms industry. I also feature PR practitioners at all levels and I’m keen to shine a spotlight on people who have trod a less traditional path into a comms career and those who are breaking barriers – particularly women at the top, BAME, LGBT, and PR folk with disabilities.

What’s your favourite PR campaign from the last year?
I like firms which make the most of the news agenda and piggyback on that – for example, when Madame Tussaud’s put Donald Trumps’ waxwork in London after he cancelled his trip, and Iceland trolling KFC with billboards during their chicken crisis. It takes smart, creative people to recognise opportunities and they’re usually very amusing stunts.

What other blogs do you read?
Loads! Richard Bailey at PR Place does a good round up of industry blogs each week so I tend to head there to see what’s new. It also features PR students and their blogs are an interesting insight into emerging talent in the sector.

Sarah Stimson and both her blogs are listed on the Vuelio Influencer Database along with thousands of other leading bloggers, journalists and editors. 

Relevance PR

PR Interview: Suzanne Rosnowski, CEO, Relevance International

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Suzanne Rosnowski is the founder and CEO of Relevance International. Originally launching in 2012, Relevance New York (as it was then) quickly expanded and the company opened its second location in London last year, and rebranded to Relevance International. The agency now boasts a clientele that includes some of the world’s most prestigious luxury brands in real estate, hospitality, travel, luxury goods and corporate PR.

Before independently launching Relevance, Suzanne was a partner at a lifestyle PR agency and has also worked in government and healthcare PR in Washington DC. She began her career doing PR in Hong Kong. Suzanne went to the Scripps School of Journalism at OU, is a mother of three, wife and CEO who believes in encouraging other female entrepreneurs.  

We spoke to Suzanne about how she’s growing a global agency, reaching a lucrative luxury audience and the ethical dilemmas facing PR in relation to the blurring lines between earned and paid media.

Why is a UK office important in the global market?
Like New York, London will always be a global city and also contains some of the most luxurious lifestyle brands in the World. The time zone is perfect to work alongside New York and cover more of the key media targets, and the prevalence of English is always helpful when identifying a global target that will work well with headquarters.

Can you tell us about the team in the UK?
The team in London is growing and we are hiring at various levels. We have just hired two very talented staff members, one specialising in hospitality and the other in property. We want to make sure the UK office retains the core values of the Relevance International brand and consistency in quality, but has a zeal all of its own. As we add offices, we want to maintain strong brand standards but embrace uniqueness from the personalities who join each location.

London

How does having a global presence affect your pitching process and client representation?
Having international offices and local experts adds a great deal of strength to our pitching and client representation. We have our two offices now and plan to grow across more time zones. We also have an affiliate network around the world, which we formed through proven relationships with other likeminded and successful publicists.

What are the biggest challenges of working with prestige and luxury brands?
The biggest challenge is that their audience could be anywhere in the world. Reaching the high net worth buying power globally is in increasing demand, whether it be for property, hospitality, luxury goods or corporate PR. It is an art form for which we have unwavering passion.

In a world of digital and social media, how important is traditional media to you?
The credibility gained by the traditional media is not going anywhere. The clients still want print placements in the major global glossy magazines and significant newspapers. We would be remiss, however, to ignore the rising prominence of blogs and social media and the key role they play in visibility and influence. Ideally, traditional and social media relations go hand in hand and that is why we also often handle clients’ social media as well as traditional PR. It is simply another channel key to communicating to the potential customer.

New York

What are the biggest challenges facing the PR industry?
As we go global, we are finding that much of the world still has a pay-for-play mentality on news stories and we have had to navigate this carefully. We do not blend the advertising/PR world, because much of our staff have journalism degrees and still believe in earning our PR placements and not buying the coverage. Influencers on social media often want to be paid as well and this presents an ethical question that didn’t really exist when I was in journalism school.

The key for PR to maintain credibility as a profession is to stay on the earned media side and outsource advertising. Some people argue that a one-stop-shop is ideal for clients, but we have found it really blurs the lines between acting in support of the media and acting as an ad agent, which is not what we do.

What advice would you give someone who wants to start their own agency?
I would advise them to be a partner in another agency first. Much of what I learned was honed as part owner of a previous agency, where I got to learn the inner workings of the business side of the job. You can’t learn that as an PR account professional very easily.

What’s next for Relevance International?
Up next is an increasing ability to service international clientele and reach international media targets. We will add future offices in various time zones, but right now the priority is to continue to grow the London office.  It is exciting to be in-demand in this new marketplace and to be hiring. We look forward to winning more clients throughout Europe as a result of our London team.

 

Work in PR and want to be featured on the Vuelio Blog? Get in touch with Jake O’Neill.

npower

npower passes PRCA audit

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The PRCA’s Communications Management Standard (CMS) is an industry mark of quality and excellence, which can now be used by npower after passing the audit.

Focusing on standards and best practice, the CMS was originally designed for consultants but has expanded to include in-house teams. For Steve Miller, memberships and partnerships director at the PRCA, in-house teams are effectively internal consultants, so the same standards can be used. One such team is from npower, who are one of the first to complete the online version of the CMS, which launched late last year.

Teams generally pass the audit, but that’s because of the work that goes into the process before the audit day. Miller also thinks being a member of the PRCA helps, he said: ‘Because they all have to be PRCA members, they’re at the sophisticated end of agencies and in-house teams, and mostly have the right systems and processes in place. With new members I’ve spoken to, they’re 80% there already, they just need to tweak things.’

npowerThe CMS also develops over time, so when it comes to re-auditing, there may be new elements to consider in order to maintain high standards. One such area that is likely to be grown upon in future years is ethics; Miller said: ‘Ethics is now a huge focus for the whole industry, as it should be, and we’re very aware of that at the PRCA. We’ll be talking a lot about ethical professionalism in our messaging in the coming years in order to continue promoting best practice and standards.’

Passing such an audit is a huge achievement and a serious justification of the professionalism of a comms team. Zoe Melarkey, head of public relations at npower [pictured], said: ‘Being awarded the PRCA’s Communications Management Standard is external recognition of the professionalism and rigour of the PR team. The audit was challenging and demanding and really made us think about how we do things; we had to interrogate and map all our processes and information management. It’s been an extremely useful exercise.’

We caught up with Saskia James, PR graduate at npower, who was tasked with project managing the process and implementing many of the criteria that were required to pass the audit. She found the whole process brought out the best in the team.

npowerHow prepared were you when you started the CMS procedure?
When we started reviewing the PRCA criteria, we were worried we would have to start from scratch. The assessment is a list of eight units, with sub units covering the things you have to be able to evidence. It’s a big document and a big task. Zoe recognised that my skill set is very process-orientated and that I like to work quite independently. She said: ‘This would be an ideal challenge for you – and would mean you could deliver something very meaningful during your time in the PR team, so why don’t you give it a go?’

I started with the non-PR requirements, which focus on suppliers and diversity. It was easy to talk to the procurement team or HR and get those requirements ticked off. Being a big company, we have to have policies for those processes anyway, it’s just how it works.

So, after that, you tackled the PR requirements?
Yes. I picked a couple that I thought would be easy to get started on and organised a full-day team meeting to discuss. For example, we discussed what our vision might be, what our mission was, what we wanted to achieve, and worked through a training needs analysis. To help, I’d identified all the competencies that a PR professional might need, and we worked through these, dividing these up according to which we felt we had, which were irrelevant and which we wanted more training on. It was very interactive, which I think the team liked.

But at that stage, passing still seemed like a pipe dream.

I carried on working, doing a lot of organising and categorising material and processes.  At the time, I had to work from home a lot so didn’t have a lot of contact with the team. When I came back, I asked Zoe for some extra time to go through the main outstanding areas.

How close were you to finishing?
By going through this process, we discovered that a lot of the required processes and details already existed – they were just in people’s heads, as opposed to being mapped out and written down. A lot of the team have been at npower for several years – they know exactly what they’re doing and how to run a project and a campaign, but it had never been formally documented. The PRCA audit forced us to do just that.

We went from thinking we had very little to work with, to realising that we all simply had to be a bit more mindful when we acted, and develop a suite of management documents.

Zoe and I drafted a really comprehensive communications plan by reviewing a lot of pre-existing material and smashed one out in a day. The dynamics of it worked well because Zoe is hugely experienced, very capable and very knowledgeable, but hadn’t stopped to examine or record how the team works. Whereas I could bring a real fresh perspective – I didn’t know how it worked so I asked a lot of questions and interrogated everything. That combination worked really well.

After I had prepared or compiled all the required material, I spoke to the team, showed them all the main documents, the self-assessment scores we had to send to the auditor and I explained the requirements of the audit. They sat there and were like, ‘Wow – we’ve done it: everything is in one place’.

Now we’ve developed a really thorough suite of PR management documents that the whole team uses. Going forward it’s going to make our lives much easier. We now have a checklist to go through the requirements of any process without worrying about forgetting things or having to rush back to do extra pieces.

Communications Management StandardWhat does it mean to the team?
It was about proving ourselves as a team. We know we’re excellent at what we do – but it means much more to have independent, external recognition for it. Now we’ve passed the audit, we have the PRCA saying: these guys are pretty good, they know what they’re doing; they can evidence this, this and this, and they’re doing a damn good job. And the team is.

What have you learnt?
Primarily, what a great team I’m in. At the start, we were all worried that we had a mountain to climb. But it was all there, it turned out we had everything, just not in one central place.

More widely, I’ve learnt about the importance of constantly interacting with the stakeholders on this sort of project, so that I’m not just writing something that will be forgotten; I’m making changes that will make a long-term and positive difference to people’s jobs.

Now we’ve passed, we can say that we’re accredited by the PRCA, that we’re experts in our field, and prove it, to ourselves, our board, and our company.

And, how do you feel?
I was absolutely ecstatic to find out that the PRCA had accredited us for the systems and processes we’ve put in place over the past few months. It’s been a long journey, but well worth it, and one which I hope will leave a legacy long after I’ve left the team.

Congratulations to npower for an excellent audit and achievement.

Find out more about the PRCA’s Communications Management Standard here.

Relevance International

Relevance International announces London hires

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Relevance International has made two London-based appointments as it continues to grow around the world. Anita Gryson has been appointed associate director and Alice Lacey has been appointed account director.

Relevance International

Relevance International specialises in luxury brands and goods, real estate, hospitality projects and corporate PR. Headquartered in New York City, the company recently rebranded from Relevance New York as it sets its sights on a global clientele who are hungry for joined-up communications across every market.

The Soho-based office launched in October 2017 and its client portfolio already includes: The Royal Atlantis, Dubai; Leading Real Estate Companies of the World; Real Asset Partners; Concierge Auctions and Spector Group. Relevance International was founded by CEO Suzanne Rosnowski in 2012, who last week spoke to Vuelio about growing a global business. She said: ‘Having international offices and local experts adds a great deal of strength to our pitching and client representation’.

Of the new appointments, Suzanne said: ‘The opening of our new London office has given Relevance International a firm foothold in Europe working in tandem with the NYC team and our global affiliates. As we add offices, we want to maintain strong brand standards but embrace uniqueness from the personalities who join each location.

‘With a dedicated social media strategist and crisis communications expert on staff, our firm offers a seamless boutique level of client service on a global scale.’

Relevance InternationalAnita Gryson is a luxury communications specialist with over ten years of experience working with the world’s most respected brands in hospitality and design. During her career, she has worked with high profile clients such as Raffles Hotels & Resorts, The Leading Hotels of the World, The Lanesborough London, The Chatwal New York, AccorHotels Luxury Brands, Technogym and Design Haus Liberty.

In her most recent role at LUCHFORD APM Anita brought Beverly Hills to the forefront of the luxury market and strategically launched The Future of Luxury global trend report. Also experienced in corporate client work, Anita directed marketing partnerships with London Design Festival and the Royal College of Art to raise FTSE 100 property developer British Land’s credentials in the design sphere.

Alice Lacey is a property PR expert with over five years’ experience working with both UK and international real estate clients. Most recently, Alice held the position of Account Director on the Property PR team at Four Communications, working on an account portfolio encapsulating estate agencies, developers, specialist housing providers and international destinations. Previous clients include London Square, Jackson-Stops, Dexters, JOHNS&CO, Henley Space, Martin Grant Homes, Anchor, Renaissance Villages and Limassol Marina.

An events specialist, Alice is an expert in organising partnerships to support clients’ placemaking activity. Alice begun her career at Accommodation for Students, a property portal based in Manchester.

Five things You shouldn't have missed

Five Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed – 23 February 2018

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This week’s Five Things includes the billion-dollar power of Kylie Jenner’s tweets, Corbyn’s media attack, the Westminster council lobbying story, KFC’s chicken crises and the Guardian’s new media editor.

 

1. Kylie Jenner wields the sword of influence

Snapchat

Last week’s Five Things, included a report that revealed 44% of the public think influencer marketing is damaging to society. This week, we’ve learnt that 100% of Snapchat’s shareholders think influencer marketing is damaging to their company.

On Wednesday, Kylie Jenner tweeted: ‘sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me… ugh this is so sad’, and promptly wiped $1.3bn off Snap’s stock market value. Within ten minutes she said she still loved snap, her ‘first love’, but the damage was done.

The biggest issue facing Snapchat is its recent update, which prompted a petition that’s achieved over a million signatures. While Snapchat bullishly said people would get used to it, this recent dip may cause them to change their minds. And for what it’s worth, a member of the Vuelio Political Services team has stopped using Snapchat because of the update too (though we think the share price is safe from him).

 

2. The name’s Corbyn, I-love-and-hate-the-press Corbyn

Corbyn

By now we’ve all heard the ‘Corbyn was a Czech spy’ allegations that seem to have little to no evidence as support, as pointed out by Andrew Neil on Daily Politics:

While at first, the Labour Party and Corbyn ignored the allegations, the remarks from the press and Conservatives reached fever-pitch this week and Corbyn addressed the accusations in a video. But his focus was less on how ridiculous the accusations were and more an attack on the press – Corbyn outlined (in a little bit of a passive aggressive/threatening kind of way) that if Labour gets into power, ‘change is coming’. Needless to say, his video rubbed the press up the wrong way.

Watch the full video below:

 

3. Westminster councillor schmoozed

Westminster from above

Robert Davis, Conservative deputy leader of Westminster city council, has been described as the ‘most schmoozed politician in Britain’ this week, after details of 514 gifts and hospitality events came to light.

Labour has called the register of interests, evidence of a ‘broken culture at Westminster council’, and said there was a ‘clear perception that senior Conservatives councillors have a very close relationship with developers’. The concerns are around the property developers on the list of ‘schmoozers’, as the district has failed to meet affordable housing targets, and Davis chairs the council’s planning committee, which is responsible for approving deals with developers over affordable housing levels.

A Westminster city council spokesman said ‘the idea that any councillor has been ‘bought’ by the property lobby is demonstrably untrue’. Davis further defended his meetings, saying: ‘These meetings were all properly declared and open to anyone to examine. Their sole purpose was to ensure and encourage the right kind of development in Westminster and ensure that anything put before the council was going to benefit the city as a whole.’

 

4. OMG, WTF KFC

FCK

KFC hit the headlines this week for all the wrong reasons, when the UK’s branches ran out of chicken. Due to teething problems with the company’s new delivery partner, chicken wasn’t reaching stores. Outrage has hit the nation, with one woman furious with the closure, complaining: ‘I had to go to Burger King’ (This woman became the focus of escalating offers from KFC and Burger King, including a year’s supply of fresh ‘King Boxes’ from Burger King.

KFC’s initial response was relatively low key, and as a business that’s mostly made up of franchisees, the company is in a tricky position to resolve a branch-by-branch issue. That didn’t stop it from today launching a full-page newspaper apology with the letters ‘FCK’. [We’re shocked it didn’t go with any of the three alternative crisis plans we suggested].

 

5. Jim Waterson appointed media editor at the Guardian

Media editor

BuzzFeed UK’s political editor has been appointed media editor at the Guardian. The role is prestigious within the industry, as regardless of one’s political leanings, the Guardian’s media pages are read widely by journalists and media professionals.

Waterson has been the political editor at BuzzFeed UK since he helped launched news coverage for the site. Before that, he was a politics and business reporter at City AM. Waterson is likely to shift the section’s focus onto digital media, something both Waterson and Guardian editor Katharine Viner have mentioned about his new role.

Many people on Twitter have suggested stories for Waterson, which led to our BuzzFeed-inspired ‘10 Story Leads for the Guardian’s New Media Editor’.

The news comes off the back of BuzzFeed’s recently announced staff cuts – and the company has yet to name a replacement for Waterson. Media fans will be keen to note that Waterson went from traditional media to a digital start-up, dragging the latter towards traditional media status, and is now joining a traditional media company that’s arguably going in the other direction.

 

1 video you shouldn’t have missed:

The Car Expert

Blog Spotlight: Stuart Masson, The Car Expert

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Stuart Masson is The Car Expert. Featuring in the Top 10 UK Automotive Blogs, The Car Expert covers car news and reviews as well as focusing on financing and buying new cars. We spoke to Stuart about developing his blog, the issues in the automotive industry and being honest with products and services from brands.

What makes your blog successful?
Independence and authenticity. We don’t pander to anyone or offer opinions in exchange for free stuff. We provide plain-English advice and information to car buyers without catches; no commissions and no compromises.

I also take time every day to answer reader questions, and The Car Expert has become a powerful resource for confused car buyers and owners.

How has your blog developed from when you first started?
The Car Expert started off with me writing articles that answered a lot of questions that I used to get when selling cars (like ‘Should I buy a diesel car or a petrol car?’ and ‘How does car finance work?’).

It is now part of a larger company, and employs freelance journalists to provide specialist reporting. We’ve had to upgrade server hosting numerous times to accommodate continually growing traffic, and have had to deal with ever-increasing demands on our time to keep producing quality news and advice articles, weekly newsletters, fulfil media opportunities and other things I was never expecting.

We are now more rigorous about producing content to deadlines and on a regular basis, whereas it used to be very much an ad hoc thing where I would write articles as and when inspiration struck and time allowed.

Alfa Romeo 8C Supercar

What’s the best car you’ve ever driven?
Certainly the most memorable was an Alfa Romeo 8C supercar. It was a very rare limited-edition model, in left-hand drive and very noisy, and I had to navigate it across south-west London in peak hour traffic, through Hyde Park and out onto the Westway. 80% of the drive was at about 20mph and I was terrified of damaging a £150,000 car that was for sale! It was like being a celebrity, as people were taking photos of the car every time I stopped.

What’s your dream car to own?
A classic 1960s Ferrari. Entirely analogue, beautiful to look at and (apparently) beautiful to drive.

Ferrari California
What do you drive at the moment?
My day-to-day car is currently a MINI Cooper hatch, and I also have a 1973 Jaguar XJ6 Series 1 [pictured below] that only comes out on weekends and sunny days.

Can you predict what year autonomous cars will become ubiquitous?
Ubiquity is still a long way away – probably sometime in the 2040s. It’s not about when the first truly autonomous cars will arrive (probably the mid-2020s), but when the majority of used cars are autonomous. It will take decades to eventually replace the 35 million cars currently on UK roads with autonomous versions.

What’s the biggest issue facing the automotive industry at the moment?
Cheap credit propping up sales figures. The car industry is totally reliant on people buying cars they don’t need with money they don’t have. It can’t be a sustainable business model to force your customers into ever-increasing debt to afford new cars every three to four years, and that bubble is going to burst sooner or later.

How do you like to work with PRs?
When they have taken the time to understand who we are and what we do, rather than simply trying to shoehorn mentions, links and ‘brand messages’ for whatever they’re promoting into our content. Unfortunately, that’s becoming the exception rather than the rule these days, and we end up swerving a lot of PR ‘opportunities’ because they involve compromising our values for the benefit of a large, rich company that can frankly afford to behave better.

What’s the best campaign you’ve worked on and why?
There have been a load of highlights along the journey so far, but the common thread – whether huge and elaborate or small and simple – is where brands or agencies don’t try and place expectations, and welcome constructive criticism rather than trying to spin their way out of it. We don’t bash brands or products for sensationalist purposes, but we will criticise where we think it’s fair. Some brands are fine with that, others seem to have dropped us off their Christmas card lists…

What do you call yourself (blogger/influencer/content creator etc)?
I actually don’t know anymore. It feels like these titles have all become blurred and rather meaningless. I’m not a trained journalist, although we do employ journalists for specialist reporting. I suppose when I write, I’m a blogger, but I tend to think of bloggers as people writing about their own personal life stories, whereas I write advice articles based on professional experience.

I’m also an editor, a sub-editor, a publisher and a director, but those roles are all much more easily defined!

What other blogs do you read?
All sorts – I tend to read by topic, rather than following specific authors or bloggers. While I’m following a topic, I’ll zero in on particular authors, but then once I’ve moved on to another topic I tend to leave them behind. That’s probably a reflection of how my own website has always been structured, which is topic-based rather than the story of my personal adventures (or anyone else’s).
Jaguar XJ6

Stuart and The Car Expert are listed in the Vuelio Blogger Database, alongside thousands of other influencers including journalists and editors.

Paul Hadley

Blogger Spotlight: Paul Hadley, Motor Verso

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Paul Hadley is the author of Motor Verso, a Top 10 UK Automotive Blog. Covering the hottest cars and latest rides, Motor Verso has built a huge following from visually stunning content. We spoke to Paul about amazing cars he’s driven and wants to own, how he works with brands and what’s next for the car blog. 

What makes your blog successful?
One of the things that has made Motor Verso such a success, in my opinion, is our way of delivering the content to the user. We focus on consumable, highly visual content that is easy to digest. It’s no surprise that attention spans are short these days, so we try our best to work with that rather than against it.

How has your blog developed from when you first started?
Every day has been a school day on this blogging journey. I’m obsessed with learning and improving Motor Verso to grow both the audience and the business. Since we first started, everything has changed – from how we write content and take pictures to the overall look and feel of the website. I have learned so much over the five years of operation – and most of it the hard way.

What’s the best car you’ve ever driven?
This is the number one question you get as a motoring journalist, and certainly one of the most difficult to answer. Every year I’m impressed with the range of crazy cars I get to drive, and picking the best car is tough. Of course, it always depends on what you’re looking for. Last year the most expensive car I drove was the Rolls-Royce Ghost that I took on a tour of Wales. The fastest was the McLaren 720s which is warp-speed crazy. Still, I personally love the Tesla Model S P100D. It’s insanely practical, its 0-62mph is faster than most supercars and it’s full of the latest technology.

Rolls Royce Phantom

What’s your dream car to own?
Following on from the previous question, the Tesla Model S P100D is my current dream car. It’s not too crazy or out there – I’m not talking about owning a McLaren F1 or LaFerrari, but it is really the car that I’d want to drive every day. It’s certainly a car I think is well built, well priced and lots of fun.

Tesla

What do you drive at the moment?
For the past few years, I’ve been in the process of testing cars on a weekly basis and haven’t really needed my own car. However, in 2018 I’m focusing a bit more on the business side of things, and improving the reach of the quality content we have. When not driving a test car around, I use a Range Rover Evoque for a bit of luxury. I most recently bought the Nissan Leaf. It’s actually a bit of a Motor Verso project car at the moment; we’re going to create content around the Leaf, exploring daily life with a pure electric car. As the automotive industry is looking at moving away from combustion engines, we want to make sure we’re testing relevant cars and creating relevant content.

Can you predict what year autonomous cars will become ubiquitous?
In short: no, I can’t tell you that for sure. But I can certainly tell you that it is coming. There are lots of cars about out there with certain elements of autonomous capabilities. Here are a few examples: today you can  buy a Kia Picanto that has autonomous emergency braking. So if the car thinks you are about to have an accident it will perform an emergency brake for you. Cars such as the Discovery Sport have features such as automated parking that will steer the car and parallel or bay park for you, no hands needed. And then we look at the Teslas and Volvos of the world that currently have pilot assist features, which perform motorway driving to a high standard. So, the technology is definitely out there and working, but the question is more when will we be ready as a society to accept it.

Volvo autonomous

What’s the biggest issue facing the automotive industry at the moment?
Emissions have certainly been a hot topic for many years. As much as I love fast cars with big engines, I do think that it’s important to look at the damage cars do to our environment, and how long things can be sustained for. The use of alternative fuels like electric and hydrogen-powered cars are real feasible options. I’m excited to witness this transition in the motoring industry as we move away from fossil fuels and onto whatever comes next.

How do you like to work with PRs?
All year round we work with different brands on editorial content. We’re not only creating the best possible content for our audience to enjoy, but also maximising the reach and exposure to the companies that we work with. We’ve done photography work, editorials, social media promotions, face-to-face interviews, workshops and product testing with a wide range of brands.

What’s the best campaign you’ve worked on and why?
We have worked on lots of good campaigns with different clients over time. One of the most memorable, purely from a selfish perspective, was creating content around the new Kia Picanto. We travelled to the coast of Tuscany, Italy, on a luxury private jet, and stayed in one of the best hotels I’ve ever seen. We got to drive their cars around the Tuscany area for two days to create some promotional content for Motor Verso – I enjoyed that.

Kia Picanto

But another noteworthy campaign that we worked on was for a car brake company called Textar. They put on a workshop at one of the facilities so I could take my car down and learn the correct process for installing their braking components. I found that this method on a one-on-one basis was very valuable, and allowed us to create some good cornerstone content on the topic. It really provided a great basis for sharing knowledge on brake refittings while promoting Textar’s brand.

Engineering

What do you call yourself (blogger/influencer/content creator etc)?
I mostly class myself as a motoring journalist, but I admit I’m a blogger when it comes down to it. I don’t think it really matters too much. I create content across forms – whether that’s written, photographic, or on video – so it always depends on how you interpret that.

Bentley

What other blogs do you read?
I used to follow a lot of what was going on in motoring online through other car blogs; however, now I’m focusing that time and energy on building my business instead. The blogs I do end up reading are mostly SEO and marketing related. It turns out it’s less BHP and LB-FT and more CTR and SEM nowadays!

 

Motor Verso and Paul Hadley are listed in the Vuelio Blogger Database, alongside thousands of other influencers including journalists and editors.

PR Spotlight: Lisa O’Keeffe, Day Out With The Kids

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Lisa O’Keeffe is the brand manager at Day Out With The Kids, the family adventure planning service and network. The site aims to make it as easy as possible for families to find great days out near them, from the biggest names to the hidden gems. We spoke to Lisa about amazing days out, the secret plans for Easter and why the site is about family, adventure and fun.

What’s your role as brand manager?
In short, it’s making as many people aware of us as possible, through everything from PR and influencer outreach, to planning and delivering seasonal campaigns! As a brand, we understand the challenges of modern family life, so my role involves making sure that everything we do is part of that story. It’s about making sure that families are not only aware of us, but they feel a part of our community, and how that message can be relayed through all channels.

How do you work with other brands and experiences for recommendations?
We have a lot of parents working in the team itself, so we always have a good idea of the brands and experiences that parents trust and love. We have a number of different ways we can connect brands to our audience, and the focus is always on making it a genuine connection. We know our audience and what makes them tick, so we’re really confident in working with brands and attractions to get results!

Have you got a favourite ‘Day Out’?
With over 6,000 on the site, I couldn’t possibly pick just one! What I can tell you though is that in the last 12 months, sightseeing attractions like museums and theme parks make up the most-viewed category, while soft play centres, children’s farms and parks are the most popular subcategories. It’s about those everyday favourites as well as the bigger trips, something which we see each month.

What’s your audience breakdown/demographic?
We have 26 million visitors to our website every year, made up of people looking for things to do locally. Our audience is predominantly made up of parents looking for days out, but we also get some lovely messages from grandparents, aunties, uncles and even teachers who have used our site to find inspiration and ideas! We have the most engaged social media audience in the sector too, so we’re a great way to connect with real parents in real time.

Family fun

How do you work with bloggers and journalists?
We’re happy to work with journalists in lots of different ways! With our targeted audience all actively looking for days out, we’re perfectly placed to talk about the most popular, the most unusual or anything around a theme – anything goes really!

We’re also really proud of our data driven stories, talking about the trends that are emerging, how the weather can affect the types of days out parents are searching for there and then, plus general insight into seasonal events and consumer behaviour. It all sounds very technical, but we love working with journalists to share what we know and turn those into attention-grabbing stories.

We also do a lot of blogger outreach, and have a dedicated blog section within the site. With attractions all over the UK, it’s important for us to build relationships with bloggers and influencers in all areas so they can provide local insight to inspire other readers. We’re always happy to hear from bloggers who might want to work with us, across opportunities including attraction reviews, local guides, family talking points and even things like arts and crafts!

What does a successful campaign look like for the brand?
Our campaigns usually run across multiple channels, including the site itself, social media, blog and PR, so success comes in lots of different ways! Generally, if a campaign drives new people to visit our site, encourages quality family time and increases brand awareness, then we’ve done what we set out to do as a business. Of course, with any campaign, we’re also looking at the numbers in detail, including reach, click through rate, page views and conversions, so there’s always a quantifiable measure of success, it just varies from campaign to campaign!

What was the half term campaign, and what’s in the pipeline for Easter?
With Valentine’s Day falling in half-term this year (for most of the country anyway!), our campaign was all around crowning the UK’s most-loved attractions. Based on categories on our site, like animals, water and sightseeing-themed days out, we picked our favourites using site data and real customer reviews, with a whole campaign revealing the top picks. We’ve also been able to partner with some leading family brands to support the campaign, and have had some great results so far.

We have some egg-citing plans for Easter (sorry!), but we can’t give too much away… all I will say is that something exciting will be hatching and there’s set to be some really great content!

staff

How do you engage with your community – what works well?
The key to engaging with our audience is to truly understand their needs and their day-to-day lives, and seamlessly fitting in with that. We’re here to make their lives easier by connecting them to great days out, but we’re also a community sharing in every aspect of family life. On social, relatable memes and regular humour keep our engagement the highest in the sector, while attraction posts showcase amazing experiences all over the country that parents want to be a part of. We make it our mission to know what’s important to parents, when it’s important to them and then deliver content and inspiration to match. Good engagement comes when you achieve that, something we do week in, week out!

How do you go about creating content for the blog?
Our blog is all about ideas and inspiration, whether that’s seasonal, attraction driven or just the things parents are searching for online! We have a fab SEO Manager who keeps track of keywords and search terms, and then we work together to come up with creative ideas around those. I write a monthly round-up of 15 things to do that month, which is regularly one of our most-read blogs, alongside guides to Christmas days out, the school holidays and even things like where to go pumpkin picking in October. As mentioned previously, we also work with bloggers who regularly write reviews for us or other themed content, so there are loads of opportunities!

What’s next for Day Out With The Kids?
2018 is set to be huge for us, as we build on our fantastic first year following the relaunch! We’re gearing up to launch a brand new product especially for members (watch this space!), and we’ve already had some really exciting conversations with brands and attractions about working together this year. It’s a really exciting time to be a part of the DOWTK story, I guess you’ll have to follow us to find out more!

To find out more about how Day Out With The Kids can connect you to millions of families each year, email [email protected] or visit the Facebook page. 

media

Social or traditional?

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Social media is often seen as the death of traditional media, as more people go online for their news. The ease with which competitive news sites can be created – coupled with low advertising rates – has stunted revenues and traditional media’s grip on the industry.

But for the PR industry, and often agency clients, it is traditional media that holds the appeal – a mention in an article in The Times is considered, by many, to be a greater achievement than a trend on Twitter.

On the other hand, new agencies are now popping up with a dedicated focus on social and digital media – promising results with huge numbers and Instafame.

Which is right? Traditional or social?

The answer, unsurprisingly, depends on your brand and what you want to achieve, but chances are, you should be focused on both.

Social boasts the audience numbers and one mention can make or break a business. But what social lacks, is respect. A timeline on Twitter can publish a tweet from the Pope alongside your cousin Dawn and Geoff from accounting, which for brands makes it less attractive.

In a printed newspaper or magazine, the content is hand curated, and the audience expects quality. Sure, the reader numbers may be low (or tiny in comparison) but the engagement levels are high and your mentions can again make or break a business.

So, if you’re still trying to work out if you should be monitoring social or traditional then the chances are it’s both. If you focus on one, you risk missing half the conversation about your brand and with that, opportunity to react, grow and evolve.

No business can afford that.

That’s why Vuelio is integrating our social monitoring and measurement alongside traditional (print, broadcast and online news). You’ll be able to see how you’re performing across every platform, all from one dashboard.

Vuelio integrated social media monitoring allows you to monitor the topics and influencers that your audience is engaging with by tracking their activity across social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and many more. This content will now appear next to your traditional monitoring and metrics, so your success is clear on all fronts.

We have also introduced pre-built reports to help you compare social media coverage to traditional media and understand the impact social has on your campaigns and brand.

Tired of curating stats and monitoring mentions? Don’t waste time researching reports, let Vuelio do all the hard work for you.

KFC chicken crisis

Kentucky Fried Crisis: 3 alternative crisis plans

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KFC has dominated headlines this week due to a delivery problem causing a chicken shortage. The latest news is that stores are reopening, but for some people’s hunger, it’s already too late.

The issue arose because of a new delivery partner in the shape of DHL and some ‘teething problems’. KFC tweeted the following on Saturday:

Responses ranged from the concerned:

To the ridiculous:

Most closed shops put up the same message on tacked paper outside their stores, explaining they were shut due to a lack of chicken supplies. This may seem a bit of a lacklustre response from a company that advertises with a chicken dancing to X Gon’ Give It to Ya, but with 95% of the UK’s KFC outlets run by franchisees, how easy is a joined-up crisis comms plan?

Andy Nairn, founding partner of Lucky Generals, has written for PR Week about how KFC has done well to address the problem. Focusing on KFC’s Twitter announcement, Andy says: ‘This won’t have been easy, given the extraordinary frustration they must be feeling right now, but is the right call: it suggests confidence and is true to their brand in a way that a robotic, corporate statement wouldn’t be.’

Obviously, a corporate statement would be inappropriate for a brand that is known for being both creative and fun. But what else could KFC be doing in the face of such adversity?

Here’s three, completely unsolicited, suggestions:

1. Roll out the Colonel
At times of struggle, we look to our leaders. Now is the time for the Colonel (yes we know he’s not real) to be holding press conferences – he should be in all the papers and chatting on Good Morning Britain (If he plays his cards right, he might even get invited to manage Arsenal by Piers Morgan). No one can own this crisis like the Colonel. A man of action (maybe), the Colonel will make KFC customers confident that chicken is on its way.

2. Kentucky Fried Cheese
We all know that the secret to a great fried chicken comes down to 11 original herbs and spices. But why wait for a chicken delivery? Cheese is cheap and readily available everywhere – and coated in crispy KFC goodness, it’s sure to be a hit. It’s vegetarian friendly (at last, am I right?) and because chicken and cheese start with the same letter there’s no need to rebrand.

3. KFC at home
Stores not open? No problem. KFC chefs should be making home visits, bringing their secret recipe coating to the chickens in people’s fridges up and down the country. KFC is still paying staff in non-franchised stores and encouraging its franchise owners to do the same – this way the company can still make money and the employees can still work. But most importantly, people get their KFC. Win, win, win.

How would you react to the KFC chicken crisis? Let us know on Twitter.

Media editor

10 story leads for the Guardian’s new media editor

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The Guardian has announced the appointment of its new media editor. Jim Waterson is joining the paper from his role of political editor at BuzzFeed UK. Jim has been with BuzzFeed since 2013, when he helped start the site’s UK news coverage.

On his new role, Jim said: ‘The media business is going through a period of enormous change, the public is waking up to the impact that major internet companies are having on society, and there’s huge interest in the behind-the-scenes forces which shape the news agenda.

‘I’m looking forward to reporting on these stories during an incredibly turbulent age for the industry.’

But where should Jim start? What stories should he be covering? And where will get inspiration for new stories?

Thankfully, Twitter exists. And when Jim announced his new role, the replies came flooding in. To honour the outlet Jim’s leaving, we’ve curated the best and present 10 story leads for the Guardian’s new media editor:

1. ‘Start with the Liverpool Anderson Echo’
Not particularly media-related but a solid place to start, Jim!

2. ‘Social media has replaced film as THE tool to influence and direct masses’
This may be a good point, though IS film the tool to influence and direct masses?

3. Please do something about the @mediaguardian online pages, which often appear stale and unloved
Especially important for corporate bloggers looking for media news…

4. Can’t think of anyone better to cover GDPR implementation and how GDPR will disrupt social media
GDPR will dominate the news on 25 May, but obviously the smart move is to get out ahead of it and publish a white paper on what is changing and what actions you need to take

5. Could you begin your tenure by folllowing the Guardian style guide, in which the ‘media’ (being derived from ‘medium’) are plural?
This should be everyone’s priority. The media ARE dying (don’t worry, it’s not)

6. ‘Will you address the appalling Guardian reporting on @jordanbpeterson that @theknifemedia gave an integrity rating of below 20%?’
Retrospectively assessing other people’s work is likely to be Jim’s first job

7. ‘I hope you will be presenting Jeremy Corbyn in a better light than he has been’
He’s MEDIA editor people, MEDIA

8. ‘There were still journos over the weekend claiming the US ‘only found’ 13 Russians at troll farm so that’s proof of no collusion/didn’t influence results. Shows a dire misunderstanding of digital marketing. Lots to do to educate your profession’
Yeah Jim, educate your profession

9. Please analyse the ideological migration in BBC news coverage over the last four decades
This could quite literally be complaining about the BBC being too left or too right, who can tell nowadays

10. We the people don’t want partisan media we want a free press who will hold to account the ruling party rather than scapegoat the other parties for the ruling party. Stop trying to control everything with politics it’s ruining free speech! Social media is breaking the propoganda
Stop ruining everything with politics, Jim.

We wish Jim the best of luck in his new role; the Guardian’s media pages are must-read across the industry.

Jim’s profile will be updated in the Vuelio Media Database.

Lucy Wood

Vloggers, YouTube and Brands – who is responsible?

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Logan Paul’s controversial video, in which he showed a suicide victim and joked about the experience, catapulted vlogging into the public’s conscience and raised questions over moderation, censorship and quality control. 

YouTube changed its rules, making it harder for creators to make money off videos, and kicked Logan Paul off the platform. The response protected the brands who didn’t want to be associated with negative content, but who is managing the uploads in the first place?

On Wednesday 7 March, Vuelio will be joined by top vlogger and freelance journalist Lucy Wood, who will guide us through the confusing world of brand collaborations on the video-sharing network and what best practice really is.

Sign up to the webinar here

As a journalist, writing for publications such as the Metro, Lucy is regulated. The press industry has standards bodies (IPSO and to a lesser extent IMPRESS), which manage complaints over accuracy and privacy. If Logan Paul had been working for a newspaper site – his video would never have been published.

But as a vlogger, Lucy is not restricted by such rules. Vloggers generally manage their own content – they may sometimes have agents and managers, but to a large extent their videos are created, edited and uploaded without passing through an external source. If someone made a controversial video at a newspaper, it would have to pass through editors and legal teams, who would advise on whether it’s sensible to publish the content – vloggers have no such luxury.

Since the controversy, Logan Paul’s videos are now being checked by his legal team – he thinks he is being censored but this is a man who seems to have learnt nothing.

So, what is the answer? Thankfully, we don’t have to work it out here, because we’ll work it out on 7 March with Lucy. And even if you can’t join us live, sign up for our webinar ‘Vloggers, YouTube and Brands – who is responsible?’ and we’ll send you the recording.

 

PR lessons

PR lessons from Center Parcs and Richard Littlejohn

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Last week, Tom Daley and his husband Dustin Lance Black announced that they’re expecting their first child. Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn then wrote a piece headlined ‘Please don’t pretend two dads is the new normal’, which led to Center Parcs withdrawing their advertising from the Daily Mail altogether.

Littlejohn’s article was at best controversial and at worse homophobic and bigoted. But it’s not surprising, Littlejohn has written dozens of offensive articles and the views he expresses in this article are not out of character – so why the furore?

Stop Funding Hate, the campaign group that informs brands that their adverts are appearing next to offensive content, has gained huge traction in the 18 months it’s been running. It encourages readers to screenshot or photograph articles that are offensive next to advertisers on the same page and tweet them at the company. Among the group’s ‘victories’ are Lego and the Body Shop, both of which ended their relationship with the Daily Mail after public pressure.

For many brands, the issue is their advertising slots are not handpicked – in a digital world, your advert can go out through a third-party network and appear in places you might not have expected or desired. The brands can limit which outlets they appear on, but with the Mail’s huge online audience and massive output makes it an advertiser’s dream.

But when it goes wrong, what should you, as a PR, do?

Center Parcs was asked the following on Twitter:

 

And it responded: ‘We take where we advertise very seriously and have a number of steps to prevent our advertising from appearing alongside inappropriate content.

‘We felt this placement was completely unacceptable and therefore ceased advertising with the Daily Mail with immediate effect.’

This caused division online with some believing they have made the right move by showing their values, and some believing they’re against free speech and should be boycotted themselves. The right action depends on your business and what you want to achieve, but these arguments are worth considering.

Brand Values
It’s building a brand 101 – what do you, as an organisation, believe in and stand for? This can be important to reach the right audience and grow as a company. Center Parcs’ corporate website explains the company’s concept is about ‘bringing families together and back to nature’.

It’s reasonable to believe that Littlejohn’s article, which suggested some families weren’t ‘normal’, goes against these values. And it is easy to argue that in doing nothing, Center Parcs could be seen as endorsing or supporting the content. Your values are your choice – and the decisions you make should align with them. If people don’t like it, they may not be the customers you want.

Getting political
It’s up to you if the brand makes political decisions or actions. Imagine telling Lush it shouldn’t be political – the brand is known for its support of animal welfare (among dozens of other issues) and its customers expect it to make decisions that align with that position. If a brand’s audience doesn’t like it taking a stance, perhaps the company has misjudged their customer base or their customer base has misjudged them.

Censoring free speech
No one is required to advertise in a publication and it’s not a publication’s right to be funded no matter what it publishes. Pulling your adverts is not censoring free speech, it’s making a decision that aligns with your company values and ultimately that decision is going to have an effect on you.

What do you think of the Littlejohn/Center Parcs issue? Let us know on Twitter @Vuelio.

Five Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed – 16 February 2018

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This week’s five things, includes misconceptions about influencer marketing, Unilever’s digital ads threat, the consolidation of Ogilvy PR, Max Mosley and Google’s adblocker.

The public doesn’t understand influencer marketing

Bloggers and vloggersA survey has found that 71% of people don’t think there are rules for brand collaborations with influencers, and 61% believe influencers don’t have to disclose they’re being paid to talk about a product. The survey, on behalf of Prizeology, also found that 44% of respondents thought influencer marketing was damaging to society.

The problem is a lack of understanding around an industry that is regulated by the ASA and has to comply with the same advertising rules as anyone else receiving money for exposure. This isn’t helped by the spate of recent negative stories, from Elle Darby’s hotel request (not really her fault) to Logan Paul’s suicide video (definitely his fault).

Influencer marketing and brand collaborations will be part of the discussion in Vuelio’s next webinar with top vlogger Lucy Wood. Sign up for Vloggers, YouTube and Brands – who is responsible?

 

Unilever threatens to withdraw digital ads

UnileverThe world’s second biggest marketing spender, Unilever, has threatened to remove digital ads from platforms that fail to deal with negative content. Chief marketing and communications officer, Keith Weed, told a US conference: ‘It is in the digital media industry’s interest to listen and act on this. Before viewers stop viewing, advertisers stop advertising and publishers stop publishing.’

While he didn’t name platforms, Google and Facebook take the lion’s share of digital ad spend and face the most criticism for failing to deal with user content.

Weed’s speech was one year on from a similar speech given to the same conference by Marc Pritchard, of P&G. P&G went on to cut its digital ad spending by $100m and saw no negative effects on the business. Whether Unilever’s call will be heeded is unknown, but businesses are much better placed to force change where governments are currently struggling.

 

Goodbye Ogilvy PR – hello Ogilvy

FrohlichOgilvy PR and other ‘sub brands’ of Ogilvy are likely to disappear in the UK as the company follows the agency’s global approach of consolidating into a single, branded, integrated operating company. In an interview with PRWeek, newly appointed CEO Michael Frohlich [Pictured] made it clear the ‘One Ogilvy’ integrated operating system was a priority.

He said: ‘Ogilvy will be known as Ogilvy; that means the Ogilvy PR, Ogilvy One and the Ogilvy advertising logos will be replaced by one single Ogilvy brand. That’s coming in the next couple of months, we hope.’

 

Max Mosley and the newspaper industry

Max MoseleyMax Mosley’s lawyers are attempting to use data protection laws to stop the press from talking about his past or accusing him of controlling government-back regulator IMPRESS.  The papers, especially The Times and Daily Mail, have run negative stories this week and are concerned about being censored.

If the challenge was successful, papers would have to remove historical stories from their sites and not run future stories if they contained personal information. Mosley has defended his lawyers’ actions in an article for Press Gazette. Check out the full story on the blog here.

 

Google turns on adblocker

ChromeGoogle has started automatically blocking intrusive adverts within Chrome. The update released on Thursday, means that the browser 56% of internet users are on, will block full-page prestitial ads, flashing animated ads and auto-playing video ads with sound. The websites that will be targeted by the blocker are to be decided by the Coalition for Better Ads, a group made of members including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, P&G, Unilever, News Corp and Reuters.

Not only will the blocker select websites that repeatedly show the offending advert formats, but it will also target sites that have an advert density of over 30%. Sites that fall foul of Chrome’s new conditions will first be informed, so they have 30 days to change, before Chrome blocks the ads.

Snapchat

Snapchat petition passes 1 million signatures

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People don’t like change, and nowhere is that truer than on social media. Whenever a platform makes a change, no matter how insignificant, there is a backlash. But for Snapchat, that backlash has come with a petition that’s achieved over one million signatures.

Released on 29 November last year, Snapchat’s ‘new and improved’ format was intended to be organised around the user’s relationships. In a blog post and video, Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel explained how the changes would make the platform more personal to the user.

Snapchat was attempting to get out ahead of a problem that every social network to some extent faces – content from the people users want to follow being overwhelmed by content from external sources, such as publishers and advertisers. Facebook has recently announced changes to its News Feed to tackle this exact issue.

For Snapchat though, the changes have not been welcome. In a short petition on change.org, Australian Nic Rumsey explains the update has made ‘many features more difficult’.

The petition goes on to say: ‘There is a general level of annoyance among users and many have decided to use a VPN app, or are using other risky apps or steps, to go back to the old Snapchat as that’s how annoying this new update has become.

‘Many ‘new features’ are useless or defeats the original purposes Snapchat has had for the past years.

‘This petition aims to help convince Snap Inc. to change the app back to the basics, before the new 2018 update.’

While any petition with a million signatures is a big deal, that number is dwarfed by Snapchat’s daily users of nearly 200 million people. But it’s not just the petition Snapchat has to deal with, celebrities have also complained.

As the BBC reports, Chrissy Teigen (model and social media star), tweeted [take that Snapchat!] that she didn’t like her followers not being ‘friends’ and said ‘How many people have to hate an update for it to be reconsidered?’. Kylie Jenner has also complained on Twitter – and if Kylie Jenner isn’t happy with your social network, you’re probably doing something wrong.

Platforms are infamous for ignoring their users who complain about changes and it’s easy to see why (is anyone still complaining about the star icon changing to a heart on Twitter?).

Snapchat’s official response was: ‘We hope the community will enjoy it once they settle in’.

Considering platforms are built on their user base, it is surprising how little power those users seem to have. But then, a petition isn’t power. If those that have signed really wanted to force change, they’d leave the platform altogether. And we all know how likely that is.

GDPR

How to comply with GDPR

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GDPR becomes law on 25 May. That means every business will have to change the way they handle personal data – from getting consent for email newsletters and using information from social media to cold calling and storing contact details.

GDPR can seem confusing, and with fines for getting it wrong reaching £17m or more, the consequences are severe.

Thankfully, compliance is pretty straightforward, and it is easy to make sure your processes follow the new rules.

We’ve put together a simple whitepaper that makes it easy to see what is required and what you need to do to comply. Download the whitepaper here.

GDPR is being implemented to give people more control over their own personal data and knowledge over which companies and businesses are storing what. As it applies to ALL personal data, including employee data collected by an employer, there are few businesses that the new rules won’t apply to.

So, whether your data processing falls under ‘legitimate interests’ or ‘consent’, we’ve got you covered.

You may need to review your current tools to make sure they’re GDPR compliant. Not only is Vuelio’s database GDPR compliant, our tools allow you to be GDPR compliant. Our Stakeholder Management Suite allows you to track (with time stamps) interactions, including when and where data was collected from. So, if the regulator needs to see your compliance, it’s all available in one place.

Find out more about stakeholder management.

Disguise

Bloggers and Brands Beware

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Usually we’re discussing the issue of fake followers, but this week another issue has come to light – fake influencers.

The Blogger Agent, an agency that connects brands and influencers, published a tweet warning about fake influencers:

The issue is not a new one, Em Sheldon of Emtalks has previously written a post about this back in 2015. For the fraudsters, the appeal is simple – pretend to be a top influencer, write to brands and ask for samples, freebies and, in some cases, money. Not only is impersonating someone illegal, but misleading a company or brand for gain is fraud and also illegal.

So, what can be done?

Bloggers
For the most part, for the fraud to ‘work’, the scammers use their own email address and physical address for the items to be sent to. Everything else – website and social handles – will belong to the target blogger.

If you display your email address on your blog, then it should be easy for brands to spot fraudulent requests. But this requires a lot of additional work on the part of the brand – and if they’re set up to receive requests, the chances are their blogger outreach is based on incoming communications rather than external research.

Therefore, keep up to date on the leading blogger database, so brands know you’re the real deal – update your details here and a Vuelio researcher will be in touch to verify.

Also think about making your practices clear on your blog – including your email and how you work with people. If you get ANY notifications about working with brands you don’t think you’ve instigated (and they think you did), take it seriously and ask to see the request the brand received.

Blog about it, so other brands can be made aware that you’ve fallen victim to a fraudster, and also report it to Action Fraud.

Brands
Due diligence and extra research steps should help stamp this out. If you accept requests from bloggers, you should double check every single one. Check their website, align details and make sure the person is who they say they are.

Obviously, an easy way to do this is to use the Vuelio Influencer Database – our human research team verifies every listing and does all the complicated research for you – so you can contact (and quickly check incoming contacts from) bloggers, without concern.

If you do get requests that seem fraudulent, tell the genuine influencer. They’ll want to know if someone is pretending to be them, and you can work together to report it.

Bloggers should be seen as collaborating partners and that partnership should be based on a strong relationship. Influencers prefer long term collaborations – it gives them a better sense of your brand and aims, and allows creativity to flourish. As such, sending free samples to bloggers may seem like a quick win in the short term, but it is those that work together on building something truly excellent that will benefit in the long term.

If your brand wants to improve influencer outreach, and reach the right people in the right way, talk to one of our experts here.

Unilever

Unilever threatens to withdraw digital adverts

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Unilever, the giant multinational with brands including Marmite, Persil, PG Tips and Dove, has threatened to remove its digital advertising from platforms that fail to appropriately deal with content that ‘creates division in society and promotes anger and hate’.

Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever, has told the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting: ‘As one of the largest advertisers in the world, we cannot have an environment where our consumers don’t trust what they see online.

‘We cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain – one that delivers over a quarter of our advertising to our consumers – which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency.

‘It is in the digital media industry’s interest to listen and act on this. Before viewers stop viewing, advertisers stop advertising and publishers stop publishing.’

As Campaign points out, this speech is one year on from Marc Pritchard’s at the same event. The Procter & Gamble chief brand officer told the industry to clean up the ‘murky, at best, and fraudulent, at worst’ digital ecosystem. P&G then went on to slash its digital ad spend by $100m – and saw no negative impact on its business.

Unilever is second only to P&G in terms of global marketing budget – last year spending €7.7bn on advertising.

While Weed stopped short of specifically naming a platform or service, it’s easy to make the links to Facebook and Google, which between them account for 60% of digital ad spend and 90% of all new digital spend.

Both platforms continue to face pressure across the world for the content they host and allow to spread, from extremist propaganda to inappropriate videos for children.

This content is reflected in Weed’s speech – he went on to say: ‘Fake news, racism, sexism, terrorists spreading messages of hate, toxic content directed at children – parts of the internet we have ended up with is a million miles from where we thought it would take us.’

While the government investigations in the US, UK and other EU countries are problematic for the tech giants, it is unhappy advertisers that have the power to hit these companies where it hurts – their revenues and, subsequently, their market values.

And with the looming threat of GDPR – which means platforms will have to make it clear that user data is for sale – change is now a necessity.

Facebook

5 Things You Shouldn’t Have Missed

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Trinity Mirror buying the Express, Theresa May’s press review, Facebook’s age issue, Poundland’s banned ads and John Humphreys – are you up-to-date with everything that’s happened from the world of PR, media and communications? Here’s five things you shouldn’t have missed.

1. Trinity Mirror buys Daily Express publisher

Trinity and Northern and ShellTrinity Mirror has paid £126.7m for Northern & Shell’s publishing assets, including the Daily Express, Sunday Express, Daily Star, OK! And New!. That means the owner of the (left-wing) Daily Mirror now owns the (right-wing) Daily Express.

It hopes to make £20m savings on the deal – the biggest cost-cutting coming from overlapping editorial skills; for example, having just one journalist at a sporting event. This pooling of talent won’t extend to politics though, as each paper Trinity Mirror owns will keep its current stance.

Trinity Mirror now also boasts 234m global unique readers online – a huge asset the company will now be looking to capitalise on.

 

2. Theresa May launches sustainability of the press review

Prime ministerThe Prime Minister has announced a review into the sustainability of the press. A panel of experts will be looking at the health of the newspaper industry, how it is being affected by a decline in print circulations, funding models for printing, and how the industry is being impacted by Google and Facebook. The review will also investigate ‘clickbait’ and attempt to ‘tackle’ and ‘undermine’ it.

May said the closure of titles was a ‘danger to our democracy’. Her speech announcing the review focused on local titles, but the investigation will take in every level of the press industry to determine if the Government needs to implement measures or if the industry can sort itself out.

 

3. Out with young, in with the old

Facebook no notificationsFacebook has a youth problem. The platform isn’t cool anymore (anymore?), and a new survey from eMarketer has found that teens and young adults are leaving the platform in favour of Instagram (which Facebook owns) and increasingly Snapchat (which it doesn’t). The survey predicts 700,000 fewer 12-24 year olds will use Facebook in 2018.

On the plus side, 500,000 new over-55s are expected to join Facebook this year, making it the second-biggest demographic on the network (behind 16-34 year olds). While this group is lucrative for some advertisers (who are chasing the grey pound), eMarketer believes they’re on the platform to keep up with their children and grandchildren. If the kids go, parents might follow.

This is the latest of Facebook’s problems, which have recently included the News Feed and Fake News.

 

4. ASA bans Poundland’s Elf on the Shelf ads

Elf behaving badlyPoundland’s risqué Christmas social media ads, that featured the popular children’s character Elf on the Shelf in a variety of poses (some sexual, some demeaning to women), have been banned from appearing again by the Advertising Standards Authority. Poundland argued the adverts were based on humour and double entendres, were made so as not to be understood by children and suggested Twitter and Facebook’s minimum age of 13 for users stopped children accessing them.

The ASA ruled the ads could still be seen by children, they were not on age-gated pages and in at least two instances were demeaning to women. For Poundland’s part, the ban may have been worth it, as the very low-budget campaign yielded great financial results. Poundland has also launched a campaign to reverse the decision so their naughty Elf ads can appear again next year.

 

5. John Humphreys flustered by Jo Swinson
John Humphreys was caught out last week when interviewing Jo Swinson, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. In an interview about sexual harassment and conduct in parliament, Swinson blindsided Humphreys by asking if he had apologised to Carrie Gracie (after audio emerged of he and John Sopel making light of the gender pay gap). Humphreys, said he had, but was clearly annoyed by the question and said it was irrelevant to the discussion. Watch the exchange below:

Relevance International

New Global Client for Relevance International

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Relevance International has been named the global public relations agency for The Royal Atlantis Residences in Dubai. The pitch win followed months of a strategic, global public relations pitch, culminating in a three-day presentation in Dubai.

The property, opening in late 2019, will be the first ‘super prime’ branded residences in the Dubai residential market and is the first opportunity for residential ownership within the existing Atlantis portfolio.

Located on the crescent of The Palm, the luxe 43-story building will offer 231 residences, with a hotel in the west wing providing a further 795 guest rooms and suites. The property offers more than 90 swimming pools as well as several design ‘firsts.’

Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF) of New York designed the exterior, while interiors of each deluxe residence have been designed by Paris-based Sybille de Margerie. Hotel guest room and suite interiors are being designed by London-based GA Design. David Mexico Design Group has created Dubai’s newest icon, a sky-high infinity Sky Pool, elevated at 295-feet. The property includes another ground-level water feature with jaw-dropping fire and water elements by Californian master creators, WET Design.

Maria Morris, partner at Knight Frank Middle East said, ‘We selected Relevance International as our public relations firm for The Royal Atlantis Residences knowing they will be an invaluable strategic and creative global communications partner for us, positioning Dubai as the global destination of choice for luxurious lifestyles. This project will not only be best-in-class for Dubai but will certainly elevate the standard for luxury residences worldwide, and we know Relevance is the right firm to support us with its proven track record of representing high end real estate around the world.’

Suzanne Rosnowski, CEO and founder of Relevance International said, ‘Winning The Royal Atlantis Residences project is a dream come true. Not only is the property truly a global game-changer, but the caliber of its management, developer and sales and marketing team are truly in a league of their own. From our offices in New York and London, along with our carefully curated worldwide affiliate network, we are delighted to bring The Royal Atlantis Residences the attention it deserves globally.’

Formerly known as Relevance New York, Relevance International’s team has over a century of PR experience representing the very best in real estate, luxury goods, hospitality, design and corporate clients. With a dedicated social media strategist on staff, the firm offers a seamless boutique level of client service on a global scale.

Relevance International