#Occupy[your city here]

Gigaohm has a fascinating piece on the movement that started with the Twitter hashtag,#occupywallstreet. They point out that, regardless what you may think of their politics, it’s a fascinating phenomena. The Financial Times went further, giving it’s blessing to the movement as a good thing, in particular the fact that it has no leadership, and no specific set of demands. The protest’s strength comes less from its aims than its form – its adherence to a cumbersome type of popular democracy in which anyone in the “general assembly” in Zuccotti Park is not only consulted on all decisions but can block those that he or she dislikes.

Adobe bursts onto the HTML5/CSS3 scene

Remember Flash? Well, it seems Adobe has not been procrastinating while mourning the death of one of its flagships. This week, they burst onto the scene with two important acquisitions and a very interesting CSS proposal. Let’s look at the acquisitions: 1. Typekit: a service that make beautiful fonts web usable, and hosts them on a scalable, robust, content delivery network.2. Phonegap: a product that takes HTML5 mobile web apps, and turn them into Native apps. This all seems just too obvious: Dreamweaver is going to output HTML5 and CSS3 pretty soon. Why is this a good thing? It means suddenly millions of Flash developers will, in stead of turning up at job centres, start outputting HTML5 and CSS3. That is why.

Facebook’s ad strategy is now clear

Like Google, Facebook is an advertising company. That’s no secret. What has been vague up to now, is exactly how Facebook is going to differentiate themselves from Google in the advertising space. This is now clear. Mashable points out that Facebook is revealing their strategy with the new Ad Unit feature. It shows a brand’s ads, which can be liked an commented on, to people who like a brand page. In other words, they are focusing on a brand’s fans and close friends to deliver the message.

In addition, Facebook has launched a new metric, called talking about, which meassures – and displays to users, the total amount of likes, comments, shares or checkins a page is receiving. Add to that the fact that Facebook pages are now available in all languages, and it becomes very clear where Facebook’s attention is focused.

And just to add a bit of spice to all of this, Royal Pingdom released some comparitive stats, which shows that Facebook now has as many users as the entire Internet had when Facebook launched, in 2004! In the meantime, the Internet has grown by more three and a half times.

Twitter really matters, but at what cost?

When Virginia’s magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit last August, the first Twitter reports sent from people at the epicenter began almost instantly at 1:51 p.m.—and reached New York about 40 seconds ahead of the quake’s first shock waves…
In a fascinating article The Wall Street Journal explores the marvel that is the data coming from Twitter, referencing how stock trading firms are now using it to beat the market, as well as Market research. They also point out that two companies, Gnip and Datasift, have been made gatekeepers by Twitter. However, while an investment firm may be able to shell out thousands of pounds for Tweets, what about social scientists researching conflict? At prices ranging from $3 per hour for a simple query the cost of tweets through these gatekeepers soon add up.

Creative(s) of the week – Early adopters of Facebook Timeline

Facebook has barely launched Facebook Timeline, and only to developers (in a clever stint that makes developers jump through a few hoops that expose some of the new platform features to them), but already people have become very creative with their timeline designs.

NASA Embraces Twitter

Nothing says “space” quite like NASA. But, it seems the space giant is not too high in the clouds to miss what’s happening right here on Earth. They’re going to allow 150 of their Twitter followers to watch the next Mars Rover launch.

Yes, the trip is not paid for, and yes, it is a “follow-us-and-win” campaign, but hey … don’t say you don’t really want it!

Almost immediately, the entire tech industry was up in arms, explaining how this would kill any chance European tech startups have to succeed, compared to the rest of the world.

Few people got the point, really.

Since the directive has been announced, dust settled over the matter, and life went back to normal, to the frustration of online tech companies.

Now, finally, some case-in-point results came back from the first site to implement the cookie law requirements (see the message on top of the page). Ironically, it is the website of the Information Commissioner’s Office, responsible for overseeing the implementation of the law.

They are seeing a 90% drop in traffic due to the implementation of the cookie law.

Now, carefully sit back … don’t panic .. and consider this. Think it over carefully, and consider it’s meaning.
OK, now you may panic.

What are Cookies?

A cookie is:

1. A small sweet cake, typically round, flat, and crisp.
2. A small file stored on your computer when you visit a website, containing information that the website can retrieve when you visit the website again.

Why do websites need this? Let’s look at human behaviour.

Walking in a busy street in a big city, almost everyone you encounter is a stranger to you. You can’t provide them any personal experience, like greeting them by name, so they just walk along, treating you like you’re treating them – as complete strangers.

When you see someone you do know – the situation changes completely. You greet the person, possibly by name (depending on how well you know them), and if you’re both so inclined, you buy each other coffee, catch up, and this serendipitous meeting possibly leads to a joint business opportunity, friendship; some kind of deeper relationship for both of you.

How did this happen? Positive indentification. You received information fed into your brain by your eyes, enabling you to know who the person is, and unlocking a wealth of stored information about the other person.

Websites can not (at least not easily, yet) identify a person by looking at their face. So, they do this by storing a small piece of information on the user’s computer, that they can later easily identify, and link to other information they have stored on the user. Cookies allow you to not have to log into gmail every time you open it in your browser. They also allow you to not have to log into every page you’re visiting on a website. Without them, you would have to log in on Amazon after every link you click on.

Cookies as Currency

One amazing aspect of the modern tech world is the ability to give things away for free, and still have a valid business model.

How on Earth does this work?

Online companies deal in a different currency than money. They deal in users. Users can generate money by being advertised to, or by buying premium features at a later point, if they like the service enough that they don’t mind paying for it. Thus, investors give companies start up capital to build and improve their service based on the amount of users that are using the service. Thus, they “buy” users from tech startups with real money.

Now … how do we know how many users or visitors an online service or website has? That’s right. Cookies.

Thus, the ability to store cookies in online business is like a cash register in a shop. If you don’t have a cash register, people can browse the products you display, and they can love it. They can come back day after day to look at it and admire it, but they cannot buy it. Your shop will close soon, unless your landlord also operates without a cash register.

What’s the EU’s problem with cookies then?

Cookies are mostly used as explained above, but as with all technology, innovation lies in creative application.

Online advertisement networks have started using third-party cookies to innovate advertising. These are cookies set by websites, not to be used by the same website again, but by the advertising network, on different websites.

What are these used for?

Say you use the online property site Zoopla.co.uk. After a short while of browsing different properties, Zoopla knows more or less what you’re looking for, and start showing you suggestions based on what you have looked at in the past. They can do this, because they can identify you by the cookie they have stored on your computer.

But, Zoopla also advertises on other websites. By allowing the advertising network to read their cookies, the advertisements on other websites knows who you are, and can advertise properties that Zoopla knows you are interested in. This turns useless ads into targeted, useful ads.

This behaviour have proved to have one of two effects on users:

1. Profound amazement and joy, as if experiencing magic
2. Uncertainty and fear, as if experiencing magic

This is determined by the extent to which the user understands the mechanism involved, combined with the user’s level of latent paranoia. Unfortunately, the paranoia aspect causes even well-informed people to also fear this innovation.

The EU sees it as their first obligation, as usual, to make everyone feel safe and secure, and secondly to strive towards economic health. In this case, the two are mutually exclusive, and the strive for economic health has to be sacrificed.

What to do now?

Well, if you are a tech startup or web publisher, it seems the options are few, with no easy options:

1. Stop using cookies, and start charging for your service up front. Your service will have to be absolutely indispensable, though, or no-one will pay for it
2. Start using cookies, prompt for users’ consent, and deal with the 90% traffic drop by charging 10 times more for you premium features. This is not guaranteed to work though, because the premium business model only starts working after a certain tipping point in user numbers, which you may never meet.
3. Move your business out of the EU. This seems to be the most feasible option of the three. Feasible, but not easy.

If you are a user, be prepared to start paying for free services you’re completely taking for granted, and be prepared to go back to non-targeted, useless online ads, rather than ads that are actually tailored to suit your needs.

Online distopia? Probably, yes.

Mark Zuckerburg once again showed his subtle nous for all things social when he launched Facebook’s new Groups features. Groups work better when they aren’t too big says Zuckerburg (audio interview with Robert Scoble).

The new Groups functionality includes collaborative document editing and real-time chat with Groups members. Facebook is becoming serious. Google Groups eat our heart out.
 

Facebook vs Twitter 1 – 1

Facebook is by far the leader in getting people to share stuff, but Twitter has the highest click-through rates, says this fascinating report. Email still drives the most overall clicks but has lower click-through rates than the social networks.

On the subject of Twitter’s popularity, at DevNest in Brighton on Tuesday, Tim Whitlock gave an interesting talk on the implications of Twitter hitting the mainstream.

However, if this report is to be believed, the Twitter founders are still pretty much in the dark as to why and how Twitter users use the platform.
 

Sing that Tweet

In case you missed it, Orange did a cute and creative little Twitter campaign last week, called the Singing Tweetagram.

They monitored tweets with the hashtag #singingtweetagrams, chose the best ones as they came in and quickly turned them into a jingle-type song with killer-heel-killer-harmonies retro band Rockabellas.

Which turned a tweet like @MayorOfLondon Mr Boris, Mr Mayor, thank you for the bikes. And for the extra exercise we got, on Monday’s tube strike into a cute tune like this.

Advertising and social’s march

According to the IAB, UK online advertising spend reached a new record, but with new drivers (not search). Which confirms our post last week, which said that social might be the saviour of display advertising.

UK online advertising spend increases 10% to nearly £2 billion in first half of 2010. Video and social advertising fuel online display’s return to growth.

Econsultancy in the meanwhile conducted a survey of 800 industry leaders and the news is that 83% of in-house teams plan spending more on social next year, while 89% of agencies expect the same from their clients.
 

App building for dummies

iPhone apps are sexy and powerful. But they’re also expensive.

With Mobile Roadie that might become simpler. It’s a tool that allows you to build an app through an intuitive interface; for iPhone, Android and soon for other platforms too. No need for complicated Objective-C coding. We popped round their office earlier this week to get a demo and we were pretty impressed.

Kerching! The sound of the FT’s iPad app

The FT has released some numbers about the iPad version of their newspaper service. In the 5 months since its launch, it’s been downloaded 400,000 times.

Decent figures indeed, but more importantly, it now accounts for 10% of the newspaper’s digital subscriptions (remember: the FT has a paywall). And even more importantly, it has generated £1m in advertising revenue.
 

The need for a Big Society Platform

RAAK visited CityCamp London this week and we came up with an idea to help Big Society. It’s an API to encourage civic action. Read More »
 

Twitter Degrees of Seperation

Here’s a good fact for in the pub. Research company Sysomos has shown that the classic Six Degrees Of Seperation theory might just be getting out of date. A study they’ve done with 5.2bn connections shows that on Twitter 78% of the users or only 4 or 5 steps away from anyone else.
 

Creative of the week – Miss Aniela

Miss Aniela is one of those artists that has used the power of the internet to establish herself completely independently. She’s a self-taught photographer who has gathered a major following on her Flickr page, she blogs regularly to promote her workshops and she’s used Blurb to publish and sell her own photobooks.

But of course all that smart online thinking is backed up by beautiful work that often evolves around self-portraits. And you can go and see her work as part of the Photolounge exhibition this weekend in London’s Truman Brewery.
 

Tech insight of the week – Twitter Annotations: The art of driving fast without lights

In April, at Chirp, a Twitter Developer’s Conference, Twitter announced a feature called Annotations. This was announced alongside very exciting developments like User Streams and Site Streams, which caused it to not quite get the press it deserves. In this week’s tech insight we explore the potential disruptive power of Twitter Annotations. Read More »

Hit the Like Button - Watch the future

Earlier this year during the World Cup Nike scored big.

Their ad “Write the Future” was all over television. But before it blanketed traditional media, Nike launched the video on Facebook. Reports Business Week:

The video started as an ad on the site. Then it was passed from friend to friend, often with comments and members recommending it. In the resulting discussions, the clip was played and commented on more than 9 million times by Facebook users—and helped Nike double its number of Facebook fans from 1.6 million to 3.1 million over a single weekend. Getting the ad onto Facebook cost a few million dollars, according to the companies. All that passing around was free. Davide Grasso, Nike’s chief marketing officer, says Facebook “is the equivalent for us to what TV was for marketers back in the 1960s. It’s an integral part of what we do now.”

The success of Google’s Adwords is legendary. But almost all of that success is a form of direct response. Brand advertising – the kind of advertising that commands the biggest share of the market by a country mile – has not taken off online at all. And it’s not as if companies like Google have not tried to make it work.

Sheryl Sandberg left Google for Facebook, for exactly this reason. She believed Facebook to be much better placed to address the $600 billion gorilla that is brand advertising.

Facebook has been making brand advertising look easy. Just recently Techcrunch reported that Yahoo! paid $1 per Like on the platform. Says Techcrunch:

Facebook Ads employ demographic characteristics (Age/ Sex / Location and Interests), which corporate brand managers and television ad buyers have been accustomed to purchasing for half a century. By contrast, Google AdWords target on the intent revealed by search queries, a practice that has seemed odd and new to Madison Avenue for the past decade and frankly has many of them worried for their jobs.

But before you train your budget on Facebook, a few things to note. Yes, Facebook has solved the internet advertising problem you’ve been moaning about: you can now reach almost everybody with one single ad spend.

But also consider the following. Facebook is a social space and it’s important that you don’t only understand it in terms of paid media. To maximize your spend you absolutely have to understand the importance of earned media.

If you are from an ad buying background, you might not even be familiar with the term. Earned media is a term originally coined in the world of public relations. It basically refers to those stories and mentions of a brand in the media that spread because they were considered news-worthy and were not paid for.

It is a term that has found new currency in social media. It’s become apparent that the former audience love sharing their opinions on almost everything – including products and brands – with their own small and sometimes not so small audiences.

In an excellent report Nielsen Research says explicitly:

“It’s critical that we understand advertising not just in terms of paid media, but also in terms of how earned media and social advocacy contribute to (paid for) campaigns.”

When buying Facebook ads there are in fact three types of ads you might be generating, whether you want to or not.

Facebook ads - social ads, organic impressions

But why are the last two types of impressions important? Consider the evidence.

Nielsen compared the responses of users who had seen ads with social context against users who saw ads with no social context from the same campaign, they saw a measurable lift in… well, lift.

Ads with a social context - recall, awareness, purchase intent

In fact it had better awareness, recall and purchase intent.

This was even more pronounced when a person saw both the normal impression and an organic impression.

Organic impressions - recall, awareness, purchase intent

Says Nielsen:

Those users exposed to both the “paid ad” and the organic impression remembered the ad at three times the rate of those just exposed to the paid homepage ad. We saw a similar effect for the other two metrics evaluated. Homepage ads increased awareness of the product or brand by 4% on average, but exposure to both homepage ads and organic ads increased awareness by a delta of 13% versus the control group. Exposure to organic impressions also impacted purchase intent as well, increasing the impact of the ad from 2% to 8%.

A fourfold increase in purchase intent. Very impressive indeed. But I hear you ask, what percentage of impressions have a social context, and what percentage would be organic? And, how do you plan for that?

The first answer is that it’s often small.

The second answer is that brands with large groups of Fans or Likes on Facebook has appreciably better chances – in a quite predictable way – of either. Have a look below.

Facebook Likes - Fan bases are key

And while it’s hard to scale organic impressions, ads with social advocacy can show the kind of reach associated with normal impressions.

A key take-away here is that the brand ads need to take a leaf from the earned media book. It needs to be very creative to be compelling. In old PR parlance: it has to have an angle, a story that will carry it. Nielsen agrees:

To maximize the reach of earned media, advertisers must start with interesting and engaging paid homepage impressions. Because the organic impressions are generated through interactions with the ad unit (which are then posted as stories in friends’ feeds), there is a strong relationship between the engagement rate of an ad campaign and the number of organic impressions.

The impact of Social Media is so wide ranging that it encompasses elements of all of these erstwhile marketing silos and even some outside of marketing.

Most marketeers quickly grasp that social media is a tool to create positive brand awareness, even on a massive scale (see the Old Spice campaign).

Social Media - hard to pin down?

And PR? Puuuleaze!!! Social Media is about relationships – tick. Crisis management – tick. You can’t do crisis management properly today without doing it through social tools. And Social Media – possibly even more than PR – is very much earned media. People don’t share sub-par stuff with their friends.

Direct response? Dominos have announced a 29% rise in profit partly ascribed to FourSquare. Social coupons through services like Groupon are driving sales in unprecedented levels. Facebook has social ads that drive traffic to F-commerce websites.

Digital? Social tends to be digital by its very nature. In fact, most good and successful uses of digital tendto be social. (You can probably tell we’re not big fan of typical banners, skyscrapers or brochure type micro-sites.)

SEO these days often only means one thing, so-called Linkbait. Linkbait is just a technical word for remarkable (but not necessary on-brand) content that attracts in-bound links and builds PageRank. Good social media – like an informative or entertaining blog post/ video – can drive links too.

And then there’s the not so small matter of customer care. That could be social too.

In some companies, proper application of social could even impact product development in a massive way. You might recall that the best way to get people to talk about your business is to ensure you have a remarkable product.

So business is waking up to the need to take Social Media seriously. Yet while this hurdle has been passed there is a new hitch, precisely because social pervades almost all aspects of business.

Most brands have budget lines for brand advertising, PR, direct response and digital/ SEO, but not for Social.

The simple answer is that brands need to get with the program and add a Social budget line, a catch all for all of the above. Or is it?

Some companies will create new Social Media budgets that will cater for these things. In others Social Media will become part of the way existing departments do things.

It requires the kind of thinking that starts from the ‘audience’, not from the brand. What do they get out of it?
Seems obvious to me. When I’ve had to come up with a brief-specific idea, I’ve always used 2 criteria to test ideas. Will it keep people entertained? Or is it useful; will it make people’s lives easier and/or can they learn something from it?

Anyway, the shift in focus means that recently, there’s been some interesting examples of ‘experience advertising’. Either online, where it can go viral. Or in real life, where it gives people a fun, exciting,… experience.

A much talked about example of the first is the Puma Index, a fun idea in these drab economic times that links the stock market to some PUMA-wearing models. If the index goes down, their clothes come off. Pretty clever, but a bit boring when the indexes go up.

A good example of the second category, real-life, is the piano stairs campaign that Volkswagen did in Stockholm. Overnight, the steps of a tube station’s exit were turned into piano keys, which made people take the stairs rather than the elevator.

At first it wasn’t 100% clear as to why VW would do this, but it turns out it’s all part of the Fun Theory ‘campaign’, a website dedicated to the idea that fun is the easiest way to change behaviour. Financed by Volkswagen, I presume. As BBH Labs’ Mel Exon puts it

“(I’m) wondering whether brands should stop marketing themselves and start marketing the good stuff they believe in.”

Or, rather than creating new content, brands should start attaching themselves to existing niche content content curators. Sort of like sponsoring, indeed. There’s an interesting discussion going on about content curation Rohit Bhargava’s blog.

And I just wanted to point out a 3rd example, which combines a transmedia approach with good old excitement anticipation. It’s an Uruguyan campaign for Axe, called ‘Day & Night‘, where guys were asked to send an SMS, after the watershed of 9PM, to receive the missing body parts of a ‘naughty’ print ad. A smart, playful way of making your target audience think about you all day long.

And if you want more: 2 days ago @GuyKawasaki tweeted about this BoredPanda blogpost that lists 33 creative ambient ads. Some great work in there from all over the world. Still semi-shouting, but I must admit more than one of those examples grabbed my attention.

Proof once more that people are becoming media channels in their own right. We’re working on a blogpost about why content is now the king it’s always promised to be, so more about later.

Yesterday however, the importance and role of experiential marketing hit home to me.

Everything we do, we do within a framework of our understanding of how digital media has opened up the media landscape to everyone. One of the obvious conclusions for some time now is that word-of-mouth marketing and therefore by extension, product, is key. This is especially true online. Google beat Yahoo!, Altavista and Lycos to be top dog because of their product, despite their competitors’ massive marketing spend.

It turns out that this principle holds true in a wider sense as well. We recently met Jonathan Baskin, ex-brand manager and author of Branding only works on Cattle. He argues that even brands like Nike were first built around superior product before anything else. Digital media just throws this truth in much sharper relief.

Anyway, Gerrie and I were in Brussels yesterday where we dropped in at Demonstrate (their website does not do them justice) under recommendation of Stefaan, copywriter and blogger behind Knotoryus. Demonstrate is one of the largest experiental marketing ‘agencies’ in Europe.

They occupy a huge warehouse on the northern outskirts of Brussels. One part of which is just that, an area called The Platform that’s full of props, toys and gadgets – the tools of their trade. Half a football field of the stuff. I kid you not.

And then there is a creative hub, off to the side, where strategy, account management and the creatives reside.

But what we found truly interesting was the chat with Kate Stockman, Demonstrate’s creative director.

Kate speaks fast. No need for her to ponder or um and ah, because she’s been there and done it.

“We don’t do PR stunts for PR stunt’s sake. Publicity is not why we plan an event or an action. We plan it around customer experience. “

If it generates publicity, it is not an unwelcome by-product, she ads. But it’s not the aim. The aim is to get the customer to try the product. If it’s a drink, get them to taste it. Simple.

Or it could be added value. She explains how they rigged a mobile bar where punters could learn how to pull the perfect pint.

On the web all the talk is about how to move away from advertising to product or if not that to content, i.e. offer some real value and sponsor it. Is this not exactly what Demonstrate is doing in the streets?

Also consider this. Online, music and video are ubiquitous. It’s easy to copy information and content. Being there -  the live experience – will become more important and not less.

US study of PR hiring – knowledge of social media, blogs SEO, now as important as traditional skills http://bit.ly/En6rF

…and this one

@MajorPlayerJobs: RT @DanGoldgeier PR agencies poaching creatives? ;- Interesting trend, see my take here http://tinyurl.com/lm5pq4

…and this one today…

@TessNeale: Is it time for companies to hire a Social Media Administrator? http://is.gd/3kOTl | by @dmscott – we have, and highly recommended it.

The holy grail: Creative technologist Aaron Koblin

Media guru Jeff Jarvis predicted a short while ago that the upheaval that has beset journalism will also hit advertising and public relations. That process now seems well on its way.

“Advertising is failure” he says.

I myself produced a presentation, now a year old, which asked – Will PR inherit the social media earth? (Included at the end of this post)

Because if PR is about public relations (and not press releases as Brian Solis puts it so eloquently) then it should be the part of the industry geared to make most of these social technologies that lie at the heart of digital media.

But this outcome – the paramountcy of PR – has been all but certain. Simply because of inertia. Many organisations never change until they have to. And then it’s too late to change.

The problem is part generational. I have been asked to speak at large PR firms on social media and PR (what I thought was a detailed analysis and compelling argument why PR must embrace social media), only to hear the head of brand PR state: “We can’t believe what we read on the internet!”, and “We Brits will never give up on newspapers, we love them!” Ahem! I had to take two steps back and start again.

But it’s clear, underlined by the tweets above, studies and blog posts doing the rounds now, that some are asking the questions about the best way to staff the agencies, businesses, and organisations of the future.

The agency model in itself is coming under pressure, as the internet does not like middlemen. In the one link above David Meerman Scott elaborates on Jim Stewart’s idea and explains the need inside companies for the role of the social media administrator.

…there is a need for this new role, much like in the late 1980s we developed the need for a System Administrator (Information Technology department people responsible for computer networks) and the 1990s brought Webmasters (responsible for company websites).

I see the Social Media Administrator not as someone who develops content and participates in discussions on social media (although they could certainly have a business related personal blog or twitter stream).

This is not the senior leadership role for social media in an organization but rather the coordination point for company activities. The role would be someone who manages and provides consistency with an organization’s social media presence. Of course, to be done well, the skill set of a Social Media Administrator would need to include deep knowledge of tools like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

I think this is wrong. The social media person inside needs to be senior. How else could they get things done?

But I digress. I will deal with the slow decay of the agency model in another post. (We, by the way, don’t call ourselves an agency, we plug-in to you.)

There will still be a need for advice and cutting edge development and production skills. There is a role for PR and Ad people if they embrace the change brought on by digital media.

But why are PR firms hiring creatives from ad agencies – as one tweet alludes to – you may ask? Should they not be looking for a spotty programmer, or even better – the glamorous spotty programmer 2.0, aka: the social media expert? (We’ve also come across the term creative technologist recently. Presumably a ruby-on-rails genius that moonlights in an electro band and directs music videos when he has a spare moment. Aaron Koblin springs to mind).

Lorraine Barker, Head of PR at Major Players – a big marketing recruitment firm in London – claims that PR is looking for the ad creatives:

In the last 18 months we’ve seen a substantial increase (200%) in client requirements for Planners and Creative Directors (At PR agencies)…

To keep from being drowned out in an increasingly crowded media space, PR agencies are evolving. Creative Directors are being drafted in to inject fresh thinking and bring a new dimension to campaigns, while Planners are delivering consumer insights and developing rigorous strategic frameworks to underpin the big idea. The result is a focused PR offering that stays on brand, on tone and most importantly – makes people stand up and take notice.

So they are looking for archetypal coke snorting ideas factory & story geniuses with a certain je ne sais quoi?  Turns out no.

The newer roles are different from the traditional planner or creative you might find in an advertising agency and while some PR agencies are happy to consider above the line candidates, many don’t want the chin-stroking musings of the storyboard creative.

We’ve found that the most successful among those we’ve placed are candidates who have had a high level of involvement in the creative or strategic planning process – not only candidates from account planning, but account handling, research & insight and new business. However, it’s equally about the candidate’s hunger and passion for all things media and the latest comms channels, trends and cultures.

Mmm… ok. It seems the PR agencies are looking for content producers, experts, researchers and social media fundis?

Brian Solis – who has written extensively about the need for change in PR – defines his future roles for a new media team:

There is no doubt in my mind that eventually all PR agencies and consultants will follow suit and transform from publicity firms into New Media marketing and communications firms rich with in house and contracted content producers, digital sociologists, research librarians, community managers, digital architects, connectors, and industry experts or strategists.

Brian goes on to define what each of these roles would entail, it’s worth a read.

The reason why researchers, trend watchers and industry experts feature in both Brain Solis and Loraine’s list is easy to explain. Digital is bullshit allergic. You have to know your client’s business inside out. You have to keep up with the medium.

You can’t tweet for a client if you don’t tweet yourself.

PR ranks social networking, blogging skills highly

But of course the other categories Brian mentions will be key as well, including the content producers and what he calls digital architects (creative technologists).

Now research – also mentioned in an above Tweet “Study: New PR Hires Must Blog, Tweet & Use SocNets” confirms what he said:

In what marks a dramatic shift away from a mainstream-media approach to public relations, PR hiring managers in the US now say it is nearly as important for prospective hires to have social media savvy as it is for them to have traditional media-relations skills, according to a survey by iPressroom.

All very exciting, all very scary.

What we can be sure of is that come September 2010 neither PR nor advertising will look the same as now.

At RAAK we have done quite a lot of thinking about how we can help our clients and partners. And what we need to be to be able to help our clients.

“We need to rethink our role as intermediaries between the companies we represent, authorities, and ultimately the communities that determine our place in the market.”
- Brian Solis on the state of PR.

We don’t call ourselves an agency, we call ourselves a plug-in.