Welcome to the PRmoment blog!
Ben Smith, Tasha Pert and Daney Parker, the people behind PRmoment.com, use the blog section of the site to vent our opinions and sometimes anger about the world of PR.
Enjoy …
Wikipedia needs you!
Posted on May 3rd, 2012 by Daney ParkerWhen speaking to Stevie Benton from Wikimedia UK recently, he mentioned an interesting initiative to bring one town, the Welsh town of Monmouth, to life. So I said I’d mention it here, in case you would like to help out.
Wikimedia UK, the charity that promotes Wikipedia across the UK, has been partnering Monmouth as part of an initiative to launch the world’s first Wikipedia town to the world’s press on 19 May.
The partners, including Monmouthshire County Council, have created a project called Monmouthpedia which is about creating multilingual versions of Wikipedia pages about every notable place, person, artefact, flora, fauna in the town of Monmouth and making them instantly accessible to smartphone users in the town through the installation of QRpedia codes.
Here’s how you can help. Wikimedia is looking for PR professionals to step forward and brief the world’s media about this world’s first, in partnership with the Wikimedia team. In particular, this will be explaining how QRpedia codes and multilingual Wikipedia pages can take a town’s history and place it before an online audience of almost half a billion people a month.
The commitment will be to participate in two or three briefing calls, to clarify the task and agree on which media each set of volunteers will be approaching. Then the weekend before, an agreement to sell the story into those media, in time for the launch of ‘The World’s First Wikipedia Town – Monmouth’ on 19 May.
There’s already been media interest from all five continents and this will only intensify as the launch date draws closer. To get involved please contact Stevie Benton, communications organiser, on 020 7065 0993 or email stevie.benton@wikimedia.org.uk
You can learn more about the Monmouthpedia project here.
Who is using Pinterest?
Posted on April 30th, 2012 by Tasha PertThere has been a lot of buzz surrounding Pinterest over the past couple of months, with seemingly everyone signing up to 2012′s hottest social media site. Even we have a Pinterest profile (take a look here).
But is this really the case? Who is actually using Pinterest and why? Tamba have gathered some stats and created this interesting inforgraphic.
London 2012 Director of Communications to speak at AMEC Summit
Posted on April 26th, 2012 by Tasha PertIt’s been announced this week that the latest addition the line-up of the European Summit on Measurement is Jackie Brock-Doyle, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the London 2012 Organising Committee of the Olympic & Paralympic Games (LOCOG).
The communications professionals gathered at the three-day summit in Dublin will be able to hear her presentation on June 14. This is just 43 days before the Games begin on 27 July, bringing 15,000 athletes from more than 200 countries to the United Kingdom.
Regarded as a leading expert in strategic communication, Brock-Doyle has designed and directed communication, media and sponsorship programmes for some of the world’s biggest brands and events, including the Sydney 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games. Whilst London was vying for the 2012 games, her work as Head of PR and Media for the campaign was a facet of its success.
This summit, organised by AMEC, will see Brock-Doyle present to delegates via video conference from Canary Wharf in East London.
Barry Leggetter, Executive Director of AMEC, said: “The Olympic and Paralympic Games present communications challenges of incomparable scale. We are therefore thrilled that Jackie will be able to share her experience and expertise with us on how London 2012 are getting ready to welcome the world this summer.”
Other confirmed speakers on the summit’s line-up include: Anna Kepka, Media Insight Director Europe & North America, Unilever; Sandra Reape, Senior Consumer Insight Manager, Jameson International; Andre Manning, Vice President Corporate Communications, Royal Philips Electronics; Melanie Brooks, Media and Communications Coordinator, CARE International, Geneva and Philip Sheldrake, author of The Business of Influence.
If you’re interested in going along to the summit, it takes place from June 13-15 and includes a Workshop Day with international speakers. There’s early bird price offer in place for those who register their place here before Monday 14th May.
The Google+ Cheat Sheet
Posted on April 26th, 2012 by Tasha PertBusiness Zone have shared this great infographic on their site and we liked it so much that we thought we’d share it here too. Created by Nikki Pilkington and Sarah Arrow, it’s packed with handy tips and cheats to help you make the most of Google+.
So, if Google’s networking system still leaves you baffled, scroll down and have a good read.
How to track consumer touch points through their purchasing process
Posted on April 20th, 2012 by Ben SmithI attended a “Driving Sustainable Conversations in the Automotive Sector” seminar earlier this week. I had an interesting time but what that stood out for me was the opening presentation from TNS’s Andy Turton.
It focused on tracking consumers’ path to purchase. In this case it used the automotive sector in China as an example, but I think most of the lessons can be placed into other markets, both geographical and vertical.
TNS called this project TAPPS. TAPPS was designed to track a panel of consumers who, as I say, in this case were thinking of buying a car in China through a four month purchase research process.
Where this gets interesting is that it tracked consumers’ physical touch points with brands over this period and also the digital touch points. The digital touch points were measured by consumers downloading an app onto their laptop; this tracked all the websites they visited. (I thought that was pretty dangerous too, but apparently the panel all agreed it was fine!)
As a result of this approach, all (or nearly all anyway) of the online and physical touch points that potential car buyers had with different car brands, both through the media and direct, were tracked.
TNS reckoned that the real life purchasing decision process they identified of consumers (Figure 1) was markedly different to the traditional approach (Figure 2). Clearly this has huge implications for brands and communicators.
The consumer purchasing process according to Tapps (Figure 1):
The traditional way brands have considered consumers’ processing decision (Figure 2):
That said, the devil is in the detail and the insight that family and friends play a key role in deciding which car to purchase, while not surprising, is probably not enacted upon sufficiently by most car manufacturers. At the same time, the research showed that the websites of the brands were used by consumers all the way thought the buying process, not just at the beginning and at the end. This has implications for the type and amount of content that car manufacturers have on their own sites.
One interesting stat that stood out for me was that premium car brands have a shorter research time than other cars. I guess this is because of the power of the brand and the consumers’ pre-disposed position of wanting the status of the car, rather than being interested in the finer details like value for money and whether the car is any good!
Another very important part of the purchasing decision is previous purchaser feedback. What customers say about a brand has a decisive affect on the purchasing decision of potential customers.
Here is the split of the different touch points over the four month buying process:
All interesting stuff, and clearly there are lots of implications for other markets here. What it also says though is that there is a need for brands to produce content for their own websites, for customer reviews and within the printed and digital media. And this content has a massive impact on the consumer purchasing decision. Ah, the power of PR!
