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That, we do.

With a Valentine’s buzz in the air, today, we mark another milestone in our campaign for Alzheimer’s Australia. Read about it here.

We give credit to our sister office in New Zealand for creating the below image, they’re also a clever bunch. Check out their Valentine’s blog post here.

Spread the love.

And so this is Christmas. And what have we done? John, Yoko? No Christmas presents for me. I choose to eat latkes in celebration of Hanukkah this time of the year. I still enjoy the Christmas spirit that surrounds me – I love me some carols, get joy from the smell of fresh pine, participate in the office Kris Kringle and wish those around me a very Merry Christmas, not ‘Happy Holidays’ (after all, not everyone actually goes on a holiday over the break). A Christmas tree I will never have, but the traditions that surround this particular holiday I will continue to learn from those who share in the tales – in the same way colleagues and non-Jewish friends enjoy hearing about the many holidays I celebrate throughout the year. That’s part of the magic of Australia – cultural differences aren’t just accepted, they’re embraced. We celebrate celebration.

Travelling through India two summers ago, I couldn’t help but notice the Christmas cheer on the streets to make travellers feel welcome – in a country that mixes Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and many other traditions and cultures. More irony for you – I’m writing a blog on Italian food, but have absolutely no Italian heritage and have never been to Italy (I’ll get there one day!). Amongst all the Christmas decorations in the public spaces of our Como office building stands a large Menorah with a plaque explaining its significance. When Chinese New Year rolls around early in 2012, we’ll enjoy the fireworks and there will probably be a few red parcels shared around the place.

For now, your Christmas is about giving and my Hanukkah about light. Put them together: if we continue to give light onto each other’s beliefs, cultures and traditions, we can only be a better and merrier place.

Merry Christmas all, and Happy Hanukkah.

Some snapshots of the Porter Novelli Christmas cards in action

In the Porter Novelli Australia and New Zealand Digital Insights 2012 I predicted Tumblr would go mainstream next year.

Why? It’s fun. It’s easy. It’s visual. Sharable. And it’s growing rapidly.

So to start you off with some great Tumblrs to follow when you sign up (yes I am that confident), here are my top 10 Tumblrs for 2011.

1. Clients From Hell
I couldn’t work in an agency and not include this Tumblr page.  The title explains it all, and it will make you feel better about your day to day interactions.

2. Accidental Chinese Hipsters
Anything fashion/humour/meme-worthy will include an abundance of hipsters.  This wins in the hipster category for being funny AND true.

Runner up Hipster Tumblr: Dads are the original hipsters

They really were. Only not at all cool.

3. I Love Charts
Marketers will appreciate the humorous spin this site puts on traditional pie and graph charts. Marshall from How I Met Your Mother would be proud

Marshall’s Charts and Graphs

4. The Daily What
Reblog for automatic coolness. That is all.

5. Is Ryan Gosling cuter than a puppy
Is he? I don’t know. They’re both so adorable. You’ll have to keep checking to help you decide.

6. ANIMALS TALKING ALL  IN CAPS
ANIMALS! FUNNY CAPTIONS! SOCIAL MEDIA GOLD!

7. Awesome people hanging out together
Want to see David Bowie and Elizabeth Taylor hanging out together? This is the place to find it.

8. Mashable
A behind the scenes look at Mashable HQ. Not as informative as the Mashable website but a daily insight into the organisation and something other companies could emulate.

9. We are the 99 per cent
Regardless of your opinion on the Occupy Movement, this is the first Tumblr to really utilise the power of visuals and ease of sharing information for a cause, and has done so very effectively.

10. Barbie on Holiday
Okay, this is actually a shameless plug as it is my own Tumblr I started a couple of months ago. Because life IS a holiday when you’re a Barbie. Submissions welcome, and be forewarned, don’t tell me you’re about to go on holiday without expecting me to present you with a Barbie as a going away present.

Most would agree that it’s hard to feel sorry for Qantas. Like a stubborn old aunt, they appear all too comfortable with the reputation they’ve created over the years, and unwilling to change.

With the advent of budget airlines around the world, and the success of Virgin, they refuse to make their ticket prices competitive, or upgrade their cabin crew airplanes. Sure they acquired a couple of A380 jets, but we are well aware of how quickly the shine from these new jewels dulled.

They don’t even strive to generate feelings of warmth and patriotism in their advertising anymore. So how do they make us feel about them?

Unless you are a loyal Qantas die-hard, you may feel indifferent towards them. At worst, dismissive.

You might feel that if they had enough money and clout to overcome PR disasters such as mid-air Rolls-Royce engine explosions, and emergency landings, then they might have been strong enough to deal with the rumblings of a few unions. Perhaps you’re slightly disturbed by their nonsensical association with John Travolta. You could be forgiven for thinking Qantas are a little smug.

However, perhaps there is a disconnect between the shininess of the Qantas brand, and the reality of the company’s financial situation.

If the one they call Alan Joyce had been CEO of a struggling fashion label, and grounded his seamstresses who demanded more money, would we have been more forgiving? Perhaps if he were CEO of a publicly flailing book store chain, we would have been more understanding of all involved parties.

Could it be that Qantas’s brand position as the safest, the most reliable, and the most premium airline in Australia have distracted us from the fact that they are just another business struggling to make a profit in a post GFC world?

Much of the media coverage this issue received encouraged people to view it as a union vs corporate matter, and it worked. Australians were having impassioned conversations across the country, whilst in the blogosphere people were slandering Qantas and even defacing images of their CEO.

I was curious as to why people felt so strongly on the subject, and why so many felt so justified in expressing anger at Alan Joyce’s bold decision to ground the entire Qantas fleet.

Hindsight is 20/20 and perhaps Alan Joyce now wishes the company had waited til the New Year before announcing his $2m pay rise, but I don’t think this was the only reason there was such outrage.

I think that many Australians didn’t feel the heavy handed nature of Alan Joyce’s decision was very becoming of the flying kangaroo we once loved, the brand we thought we knew.

In this current economic climate, whether you are a restaurant owner selling pizzas, or an airline selling plane tickets, it’s not that easy to make a profit at the moment. The aviation industry has long been a notoriously difficult one to be in, even at the best of times.

The reality is that most Australians in fact do not fly Qantas internationally. So therefore, no matter which point of view you support, the unions, or the capitalists, the chances are that you’re probably not supporting Qantas at all one way or the other.

And why should you? You have a right as a consumer to choose the most affordable option available to you. Alan Joyce would probably argue that as a CEO of a privately owned business, he has a right to choose the most affordable option available to him in order to carry out the duty he is charged with; keeping Qantas profitable and the shareholders happy.

I’ll start by saying; this should be a Vlog, but, unlike hundreds of thousands of other people, I don’t like seeing myself on camera. Call me old-school – as opposed to some people: I really love cats.

I’ve been spurred on by the sheer number of videos we’ve been creating and intrigued by the announcement of Moby’s offer to provide his music royalty free (If you’re a NFP – jump on this offer).

So, I thought I’d ponder how more and more, we’re creating video to help us spread “the word”.

This is “word” that was once placed in a media release, splashed across collateral and blasted via email is coming to life.  And, whether it’s something to make you laugh on a Friday or enact change on a Tuesday, or simply showcase the work we do, it’s a great space to play in.

I received an email the other day about the power of stories. It made me think about one thing we’re very good at: telling a story. That’s in our nature as ex-arts and comms students, ex-journos and generally people who, at school, were bad at maths and good at English.

In 2010 alone, 700 billion YouTube videos were viewed. The 2010 Neilsen poll on Internet use tracked the amount of Australians who watched video content for September –more than three quarters of our population.  More current figures show that YouTube is the second most viewed social media platform (after Facebook) in Australia, with 10 million unique visitors – up 100,000 unique visitors from 2010.¹ It seems video content is king and it’s not just consumer brands that need to be there.

Newspaper mastheads are now broadcasters and broadcasters use print online bring black and white stories to life. It greatly changes the media landscape. This is something that we teach in media training; “if you have a  handheld recording device, you can report the news.” So, while we usually raise this as an issues management matter; it’s also a lesson of how, with the right tools, we can create integrated media pitches that extend a news story to different platforms.

It’s no new news, things are changing in the land of communication. And it’s fun keeping up.

I leave you with my favourite funny video. And three questions:

1. What’s your favourite video?
2. What do you find compelling, funny or interesting about it?
3. How can that formula be used to help share the story of your brand, organisation or cause?

The answer, may be in a phone call.

Reference 1: http://www.socialmedianews.com.au/social-media-statistics-australia-january-2011/

So I was quietly making my way to the office from the train station Friday morning and a little bloke came up from behind me, swung around and said, “Stop shoving your war support in my face!”

Apparently by wearing a Remembrance Day red poppy to show my support of all those who have fallen or suffered for Australia’s cause in war and armed conflict, I have offended this man.

He is entitled to his view, me to mine.

At 11am on 11 November 1918 the guns of Europe’s Western Front fell silent after more than four years of fighting. Since that time, 11am on 11 November has become a time to stop, reflect and remember all those who have died or been injured as a result of war.

I looked in quiet dismay at the stories running through the news sites and found those focused on what’s most important to me on 11/11 were not those most important to others. And then I saw this and felt sad:

You bought a poppy but do you really care?

Yes I care and very much so. I don’t care for war, but I care for freedom and justice and I care very much for the fabulous country that is Australia. I care deeply for those so brave people that lost their lives for my care of freedom and justice.

So I took one minute to be silent at 11am and I will wear my poppy proudly this day and every year going forward.

That little man may well chose to do otherwise.

Over the weekend, Qantas took an unprecedented step in grounding its entire fleet due to industrial action, a move that affects 68,000 passengers a day. With tens of thousands of travellers stranded in Australia – and world-wide – the Australian aviation industry is in chaos. Well, all but one airline.

Virgin Australia has coolly stepped up to the challenge of filling the void left by Qantas’ grounded flights. Amazingly, Virgin Australia isn’t being seen as one company capitalising on the misfortune of another, rather as a knight in shining armour. How did they manage this feat?

Well, for starters, they aren’t charging the exorbitant fees that they could. Virgin Australia isn’t cashing in on people’s desperation by shooting prices through the roof. In fact, they are offering a 20% discount on VA saver fares to Qantas-stranded passengers. So far, this offer has been taken up by over 22,000 stranded Qantas passengers.

Secondly, Virgin Australia is doing the vast majority of heavy lifting, in terms of picking up the slack. So far, Jetstar has added one extra daily flight, and Strategic Airlines is also putting on an extra flight. In comparison, Virgin Australia added an extra 4,500 seats on Sunday the 30th of October, with an extra 40,000 seats added over the next couple of months to help cope. As a Virgin Australia spokeswoman said of the extra services:

These actions have secured Virgin Australia unparalleled positive coverage across all major Australian and international media outlets. The flow-on effect of Virgin’s actions throughout this debacle has also seen their shares jump to a 10-month high, whilst Qantas’ share price has gone through tough times.

The most interesting aspect of this is that Virgin Australia hasn’t been reaching out to media to communicate all of this. Instead, updates and announcements (such as the reduced fares for stranded passengers) have been released via Facebook and Twitter. Virgin Australia has actively been engaging with its customers via direct channels, allowing timely and tailored responses.

This calm, professional, crisis-control tone that Virgin Australia has employed across all its communications has inspired trust in the brand that was once seen as the cheeky underdog. Now positioned as a challenger brand for Qantas, it is important for Virgin Australia to encourage trial. A lot of Qantas passengers who would not have tried the revised, revamped Virgin Australia are now going to be exposed to it, and potentially move their allegiances permanently.

This situation has highlighted the importance of businesses being upfront and reactive to the market. Virgin Australia did not just sit back and let stranded passengers come to them; nor did it hike its prices up to make the most of the situation. Instead, it lent a helping hand to those in need, without neglecting the needs of its existing passengers. By actively engaging with media and consumers, Virgin Australia’s reputation has been solidified in the Australian public’s mind as a trustworthy, helpful brand.

As PR professionals, we will usually work on at least one not-for-profit (NFP) client in our careers – whether it’s a pro bono client, part pro-bono, or one who has managed to scrape together a small budget for a campaign that you need to help them maximise.

NFPs are faced with the same organisational and communication challenges as for-profits but usually with far fewer resources. So how can the PR profession assist NFPs to achieve their goals?

Making blanket observations and recommendations for this sector is challenging, as was demonstrated at the PR Directions 2011 panel discussion Pulling a rabbit out of a hat – learning tricks from the not-for-profit sector where the moderator was very quickly put in his place when he asked whether NFPs are fuelled by passion, rather than talent.

The panel, which included representatives from NFPs with missions ranging from providing breast care nurses to providing microfinance to women living in poverty in the Asia Pacific, demonstrated their organisations have both passion and talent in bucket loads. According to Kylea Tink, CEO of the McGrath Foundation, NFPs are “not plagued by passionate, untalented people”. Salaries are competitive and there are extraordinary opportunities for young people starting out in communications or marketing careers.

Also, senior staff with incredible experience are moving into the NFP sector from the corporate or political worlds and bringing their strategic thinking and business nous with them. Think 2011 Australian of the Year Simon McKeon, World Vision’s Tim Costello, Naomi Steer of the UNHCR and Al Gore.

The NFP sector is highly competitive. They’re also operating in a communications landscape which quickly and constantly changes; look at how swiftly organisations like Get Up! and Avaaz have grown, starting online then making a splash in mainstream media.

NFPs need to find the balance between having a corporate approach/attitude and keeping focussed on their overarching purpose.

So how can we help our NFP clients, and how can NFPs ensure success when engaging agencies?

• Strategic thinking and planning – having a well thought out communications strategy, agreed upon by both the agency and the NFP, will contribute to effectiveness in carrying out communications and achieving stated aims.

• Start small then snowball – Consider starting with a small campaign to achieve some quick wins then snowball from there.

• Know your mission – Knowing exactly what you’re trying to achieve or what question you’re trying to answer, is vital to being able to effectively plan and execute your communications plans.

• Creativity and innovation – organisations that ‘think outside the box’ and look for creative solutions to communications challenges are more likely to succeed. Particularly in the NFP sector where there really aren’t many more colours of ribbons or badges left to sell, keeping issues fresh in the minds of the public is a huge challenge.

• Trust – NFPs need to trust their agencies to provide the best advice, and this might sometimes mean the NFP needs to step outside its comfort zone to execute a creative campaign that achieves cut through. On the flip side, agencies need to remember that getting buy-in to ideas from NFPs, particularly ones with risk-averse boards, may require playing to board members’ strengths and passions.

• Effectively communicate your purpose – People are more likely to accept the idea you’re selling, or donate to your organisation, if they easily understand what it is you do and who you’re helping.

• Transparency and accountability – Most in the NFP sector believe the proposed new accountability measures are a good thing, as people are increasingly inquisitive about how NFPs use their funds. Di Bowles of Good Return, a PNS pro bono client, believes transparency is a major reason their new way of giving is proving popular, as you can log onto goodreturn.org and choose the person you are helping. When donors know exactly where their funds are going, they’re more likely to fork out.

• Use your networks – With NFPs it is all about what you know and who you know. The most successful NFPs build alliances with other organisations with similar purposes or goals, (and extensive mailing lists), which can greatly assist in getting messages out to a wider audience. You’ll never know if you don’t ask.

For the first time in our history, businesses have an opportunity to connect individually and directly with everyone who has a social media account. Not only does this provide a cost-effective way to engage first-hand with large and small groups of people, and individuals; it also provides the opportunity to really personalise communication to meet the specific needs of an individual or group of customers, and involve them throughout the product/service life cycle, from development to retirement.

In the past, the only way this could be achieved was through the use of one or all of the following: sophisticated customer relationship management (CRM) systems, business intelligence, formal market research and focus groups. The aim of using these strategic marketing tools was to ‘get to know the customer’ so that advertising and marketing messages could be structured and targeted towards a specific audience segment.

However, while this approach has proven effective, it is only able to provide a ‘point-in-time’ view of the purchasing intent and information needs of some customers, from a potentially bigger sample group. Further, traditional market research methods require the availability of potential customers, in order to build a picture of the interests, knowledge and needs of each target audience group.

With social media, it doesn’t matter which social media platform a person uses (blog, micro-blog, ‘friending’ sites and photo/video sharing sites); they are more accessible, and are sharing valuable information about their likes, dislikes; their interests and leisure activities, and they are frequently updating this information.
Properly assessed against an organisation’s product or service offer, this information provides valuable insights into how to tailor the positioning and promotion of a product or service to more closely meet the needs of target groups of potential customers.

Not only does social media engagement provide the opportunity to engage individuals and groups directly, and tailor your offer to meet their specific needs and interests; it also provides an unparalleled opportunity to start building a relationship with these potential customers from the very early stages of the development of your offer, through enhancements to the ultimate retirement or replacement of your offer.

Author Alvin Toffler referred to this as the age of the ‘prosumer’ as early as the 1990s, in his book, “Power Shift” in which he talks about the new fusion of producer and consumer, where consumers are involved in producing new products and services, at the point of development. Toffler attributes this ability to involve the consumer in the product they are going to purchase to the de-massification of the media and flexible manufacturing, amongst other trends. Social media provides the ideal tipping point to make personalised engagement and personalised product and service delivery a reality.

Some manufacturers took up this challenge in the 1990s with the rise of electronic commerce by offering consumers the ability to personalise their new car purchase (Ford), or be presented with possible book purchases based on what they had previously purchased, and based on personal recommendations from other consumers (Amazon).

Much of this personalised marketing was done before the advance in cookies, click stream filtering and web mining that we have now; and certainly before the rise of social media use. Previous personalisation efforts have lacked the ability to engage in real-time, and have lacked the ability to engage on a more meaningful level, which has been made possible with social media because of the amount and frequency of information that consumers share about themselves.

However, I wonder if, despite all the advances with social media and its use in business and personal life whether we are taking full advantage of the amount of information and instantaneous feedback it provides. Are we stuck in a mass marketing rut where we are simply using social media to broadcast a largely ‘one-size-fits-all’ message to both a broader and narrower group of people?

Is the only difference the fact that we are communicating more frequently and doing it online, or are we truly engaging with our customers and tailoring our products and services to more closely meet their needs? To what degree to we truly understand their needs?

Using social media in concert with other meaningful communication channels provides an efficient way to bring brands and institutions closer to their customers. This can be as simple as adding and promoting an active feedback channel to your website and responding regularly to the requests you receive; researching and providing comments to existing discussion forums online; or creating a blog, Facebook fan page or Twitter feed (and promoting this through other communication channels) as the basis for further discussions about a particular topic or innovation.

An understanding of human behaviour is also useful to understanding how to present and share information about your online discussion so that it captures the interest of the individuals with whom your want to engage. This combined with social media insights and your traditional marketing intelligence data provides a potent combination in forming a picture of what your customers really want to hear and what suggestions they can offer for improvements to your product or service to make it more desirable and more competitive.

Yesterday, 13 October 2011, was a big day in Canberra.

It was the day hundreds of people from around Australia joined up to Fight Dementia.

Led by Alzheimer’s Australia, this is an ambitious national push that we’re very proud to be part of, providing campaign leadership and continuing support through an innovative pro-bono consultancy model.

Fight Dementia began with a good-ol’ fashioned rally at Parliament House led by Alzheimer’s Australia president, Ita Buttrose – who acknowledged yesterday that until that time she had never participated in a protest march (her exact words: “I was a protest march virgin”).

Fight Dementia asks the Commonwealth to re-invest $500 million over five years in information, research and infrastructure to support what is described as “the 21^st century epidemic”.

Dementia activists heard from Ita Buttrose; Alzheimer’s Australia CEO, Glenn Rees; Federal Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler; Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Sharon Grierson – the Co-Convenor of Parliamentary Friends of Dementia – who spoke to a crowd of carers, health professionals, MPs and their staff.

This was my first-ever march, it was also my first Ita Buttrose encounter; a great moment.

I love working for causes; it’s what I get most passionate about, and this one took the cake. The best for me and other Porter Noveli Melbourne colleagues was being part of a team of people empowered to create social change.

As marchers shouted slogans and carers and sufferers told their stories camera crews circled, photographers snapped, and when the interviews stopped, journos got out their phones to capture their individual moments with Ita.

I was proud it was us, the joint Alzheimer’s Australia-Porter Novelli team that got those journos and network crews there;  that it was us coordinating the messaging and the talent; managing the interviews; hassling the pollies – and leading a social media content feed that spurred #fightdementia to trend Australia-wide.

With our heads down and concentrating on the job, it was only at day’s end that we realised what had been achieved, and how while other marketing services suppliers make big news of the work they do for clients, one down side of PR is that we’re never the heroes – that status belongs to our clients.

This post is to say a simple thank you to the event team and all participants, congratulations to Alzheimer’s Australia, and to urge any reader to join us in Fight Dementia’s next phase by joining the fight at: http://www.facebook.com/fightdementia

The numbers: 136 media clips Australia-wide and a TweetReach of almost 30,000.

This is Porter Novelli Melbourne at work, with support from Clemenger Group Limited.