Tom Cooledge

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My thoughts on social media, PR and who, truly, was the very best Thundercat.

29/11/2009 • 6:07 pm 2

Peter and Paul

I work with creative and digital agencies and it would’ve taken a foreign holiday to ignore the impending doom around the Digital Economy Bill this week.

In what appears to be a collaboration between Business Secretary Mandelson and Culture Secretary Bradshaw, the Bill expects its second reading on Wednesday 2nd December. Although Guardian journalist Robinson highlights its attempt to support ITV and prepare the radio industry for digital switchover, proposals on illegal file-sharing have caused an unashamed furore.

To give the general gist, content producers (e.g. record labels/film production companies) would have the right to ‘force ISPs to disconnect internet users’ who illegally file share ‘without judicial course’ according to music blogger Helienne Lindvall.

Understandably, companies such as Talktalk proclaimed to the Guardian this will lead to a devolution or split into its component parts Talktalk (the second largest ISP in the UK) and Carphone Warehouse. The estimated cost to the ISP of £2.00 per line to cover the cancellation admin etc. seems like robbing Peter (the digital economy) to pay Paul (the entertainment industry.)

But it’s not just that.

As any PR professional will tell you, New Media makes sharing information all too easy. The phenomenon of ‘Porous Companies’, coined by Phillips and Young in Online Public Relations, suggests that file-sharing sites or even mere emails have made it far easier to leak information than ever before. But often it’s not even deliberate – 15% of employees admitted to sending company information out to the wrong party in a 2004 SurfControl poll.

However, in light of the Digital Economy Bill, special consideration should be given to those PR specialists that operate on behalf of those seeking to protect their intellectual property. The Recording Industry Association of America, for example, had their entire CSR strategy questioned when filing a lawsuit against a 12 year old, underprivileged girl after illegally downloading music in 2003. Lobbyists felt so passionately that an independent group financially recompensed the family for the amount sued.

The RIAA’s Head of Communications was happy to take ‘PR hits’ to get the message understood. However, as Mandelson and Bradshaw share the load amongst the Government, the digital industry and the content producers, they risk the standing of all three.

Filed under: Digital Economy Bill, Filesharing

21/11/2009 • 7:48 pm 1

Devil’s advocate

This week, my mobile phone realised that it had been operational for far too long. It had reached the ripe old age of 14 months and something had got to give…I now lose power unexpectedly every couple of hours. 

However, T-Mobile have possibly kept my account itself upwardly mobile as the provider found themselves in the middle of a data theft scandal involving ‘thousands of mobile phone customers’ this week. 

The same journalist that bought this to my attention also – I’m happy to say – added further weight to my argument that corporations often employ unwelcome one-way New Media strategies.

Noelle McElhatton of Direct Marketing magazine confirmed that certain organisations bombard their followers with ‘irrelevant, mistimed and inappropriate’ email campaigns thus destroying the relationship. My temper at Topman is vindicated. 

However, to balance my viewpoint, I have been reading a lot this week about symmetrical communications amongst company stakeholders that have come about with success. Blogs offer, after all, an ‘opportunity [for a company] to receive positive and negative attention’ according to Duhé.   Danny Brown, Media and Branding specialist, blogs about Starbucks’ use of Twitter as more than ‘a broadcasting tool’ that actively engages. There’s an online employee forum, for example, where employees can suggest ideas which might improve the business (see links.) 

Cohen’s article in Marketing, Social Media: Year of Crisis Converts Small-Bank Skeptics, details a case where Bank Manager Steven Kruskamp was alerted to a customer grievance far more quickly than usual through Twitter. He proceeded to call the customer, put things right and left the banker completely satisfied. However, Cohen’s article goes on to acknowledge two further important points I hadn’t really entertained: 

  • Using social media is becoming increasingly essential if a corporation wants to be competitive in terms of customer care.
  • The fear of negative attention means organisations are often reluctant to engage in social media. 

In his blog, itsopen.com, Justin Hunt talks about the constant friction within an organisation regarding their online presence. Copywriters are dedicated to ‘humanising organisations’ by engaging stakeholders with a colloquial dialogue whilst the Legal Department often try and constrain this same discourse as much as possible.

As Hunt considers in his other blogs, it’s the company’s customers that own social media and it’s up to the business to ensure it is ‘managed intelligently.’  The BBC, for example, is without the need to drive sales thanks to the licence-fee. Yet, just as their content ‘largely depends on viewer input’, they have recently appointed their first Social Media Editor to ensure viewer contribution is kept as safe. After all, shouldn’t their websites be kept as suitable for mass consumption as their programming? 

Perhaps ‘foxes watching the henhouse’ was a little harsh. Corporate forum invigilators might be more like a responsible adult watching a playground?

Filed under: BBC, Online networks, Topman, Twitter

17/11/2009 • 4:24 pm 1

Bullies

I’ve been reading about Anti-Bullying week recently and a phenomenon that seems to grow at a dangerously exponential rate. ‘Cyber bullying’, according to the Guardian’s technology blog, is now the most common of all bullying according to a recent study by the Department of Children. 

This leads me on to think about the potential within networks such as Facebook and Twitter for users to manipulate and bully others. Not just children either. 

Arguably, corporations aren’t making enough of Web2.0 if they don’t seize opportunities to drive sales and promote themselves. Social media networks and online groups are full of receptive, yet highly vulnerable people. Some of the examples that Uwe Matzat lists in the article A theory of relational signals in online groups include those that require “social support…medical help…business knowledge…educational [material.]’ Often, according to the theorist, organisers/commercial organizations monitor members of their forums (e.g. Facebook groups, company blogs) like foxes assessing a hen house.

Did any of us realise that how long we communicate with another group member might be recorded? As well as our general behaviour, corporations monitor the nature of our online relationships to assess what we will respond to best, often DM e.g. discounts. But what is really scary is that often assessors will devise an ‘indirect’ strategy by discovering the group members most committed to the cause and encourage them to reinforce the ‘forum framework’ to ‘deviating members.’ 

However, we should take comfort in the fact that our online persona often represents only a tiny portion of our true selves. In his book The Rise of the Network Society, Manuel Castells considers that our online identity is often based on ‘a given cultural attribute or set of attributes, to the exclusion of a broader reference to other social structures.’ As a member of a group, we tend to orientate our online persona around only one or two elements of who we are e.g. nationality, sexuality etc. Also, text based messaging, Howard points out in his article, diminishes the ‘social cues’ that can be read by traditional ethnography (‘the study of scientific description of races and cultures of mankind’ according to my dictionary.) We still, largely, remain a mystery and unable to be completely manipulated. 

Probably even more reassuring, is the fact that the online group ringleaders can have their comeuppance by ‘Twitterjacking.’ CIPR award winning agency, Finn Communications cite the example of South West Trains being subject to a rogue Tweeter in their blog. The hijacker advised of false signal failures on their behalf. However, as Greg Felgate points out, this should be a call to action rather than one that dissuades corporations from being heavy handed with forums. It would seem if companies don’t take charge, someone else/anybody else is more than happy to do it for them.

Filed under: Online Individual, Online networks, Twitter

07/11/2009 • 5:57 pm 2

Reunited – and it feels so good

So, the team at aFinite managed to transplant a hard drive and salvage my data. They worked tirelessly and beyond par (and are still yet to invoice – yoink.) 

So, what did I do first on being reunited with my PC? Facebook, naturally. I take no shame in saying I’m a bit of a fan although, worryingly, it appears this is to be expected as I get older. According to Guardian blogger Mercedes Bunz, the median age of the active Facebook user is up from 26 (as calculated May 2008) to 33. 

However, the Twitter median age remains stable at 31. This seems interesting, especially as the growth of active users seems exponential, according to this same post by Bunz. 

I’ve fallen out of love with Twitter this week. The main reason is the corporate tweeters or, rather, one in particular. On the fourth of November, Topman UK tweeted a total of fourteen times across the day including three times between 1200 and 1300 alone. With their last tweet being a link to a photo of their stylist wearing purple Nikes, I had to question what Topman was trying to accomplish with high frequency messaging that offered little relevancy to the recipient. 

I tweeted back, requesting information about up and coming events in my area and received no reply. 

Although I cannot speak on behalf of their entire PR strategy, Topman demonstrates no sign of symmetrical communication, the public relations ideal model conceived by Grunig. In his article, Beyond Ethical Relativism in Public Relations: Coorientation, Rules and the Idea of Communication Symmetry, Pearson discusses the ‘collaborative advocacy’ and engagement of the stakeholder through two-way communication, both parties (i.e. company and customer) giving and receiving messages to each other. 

Also considering the ideals of Habermas during the seventies, participants, according to Pearson, should feel free to move ‘from one level of abstraction to another.’ In a dialogue, any party is free to question any basic assumption. As Topman failed to enter into any discourse, I was offered no channel of communication at all, let alone the opportunity to question the relevance of purple Nikes, although they were considered so pertinent. 

However, as the Cluetrain Manifesto considers, I could be missing the point. There’s no denying that rule Number One was broken – Markets are conversations and Topman failed to engage. However, the Cluetrain collaborators are dealing with the Online Market, something Grunig and Habermas couldn’t have anticipated. 

Although the ‘conversations’ possible through Web 2.0 were never realised here, there are other ways of gleaning information. As per Thesis 11 of 95 – ‘People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than the vendors.’ Communication with Topman remains one-way but its Twitter account is more than happy to share a whole network of other, more informed followers with me.

Filed under: Cluetrain Manifesto, Grunig, Topman, Twitter

About Tom


Tom is a PR professional with six years experience of working within Leeds' creative community. With a background including events management and journalism, he recently graduated with an M(Sc) in Corporate Communications and continues to support high profile clients on national B2B and B2C campaigns.

Follow me: @tomcooledge

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