Companies’ revenues at risk through not understanding Gen Y

Companies are having trouble keeping up with Generation Y consumers, according to a recent article on Silicon.com.

This is a worrying fact for some companies as it is these Gen Y consumers that are increasingly setting the technology agenda and becoming a vital audience to reach in determining which products and services will succeed in the tech space.

Gen Y consists of 18- to 28-year-olds who are leading the way in technology adoption and are the most internet-savvy group, spending more time online than they do watching television.

Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research said Generation Y is the audience companies are most struggling to understand - a key issue due to their importance for future revenue growth.

Gen Xers (aged 29 to 42) also use technology extensively but more when it intersects with a personal need or fulfils a desire. “Generation X uses technology when it supports a lifestyle need whereas tech is embedded into everything Gen Yers do making them the first "native online population.”

These “digital natives” often haven’t experienced life without the internet, mobile phones and other relatively new technologies and therefore need to be addressed as such. For example, they will be comfortable with a variety of technological terms and won’t need a new concept to be explained in as much details as Gen Xers would.

Another example comes from a client event that we recently attended. The room was a mix of Gen Y and Gen X media commentators and there was big difference in how they both subscribe to the media. Broadly, Gen Y graze and read whatever grabs their attention. Gen X subscribes to chosen feeds which they go back to over and over. What does that spell for PR and how it needs to feed this grazing and this subscription habit? I think we’re all still learning.

With this in mind, it is important that companies get advice on how to understand this new breed of tech-savvy consumers. Otherwise, it will be the Gen Yers revenue that grows while companies that fail to address this issue will see their own revenues drop.

Cross-posted to the Hotwire Interactive blog.

Senior PR executive admits to blog misconduct

Hotwire recently blogged about a recent change to UK media law that makes a certain practice of ‘fake blogging’ against the law. What used to be just a faux pas is now more than just that. In plain English, the law means that organisations should not pretend to be consumers.

To prove just how relevant this issue is, an article appeared on the front page of the US edition of PR Week, describing an incident where New-York based agency 5W Public Relations acknowledged that a senior executive was involved in misconduct by impersonating a client when leaving a comment on a blog.

The incident arose when 5W Senior Vice President, Juda Engelmayer, left comments under a client’s name on the Failed Messiah blog. The comments were then traced back to the IP address of Engelmayer, showing how people who undertake this now illegal practice are leaving themselves open to be caught.

The CEO of 5W, Ronn Torossian, said that they had instituted internal measures to ensure this cannot happen again: “A senior staff member failed to be transparent in dealing with client matters,” Torossian said. “He has taken full responsibility.”

For further reading on this, check the BBC’s take on the law and read the PR Week article.

Cross-posted to the Hotwire Interactive blog.

Journos Should Walk a Mile in Our Shoes...

... and that's exactly what journalist Sally Whittle has been doing.

In a post titled "I'm not cut out for PR", Sally describes her experiences as she takes on the role of a PR for a short while.

"In a slightly odd turn of events, I have been doing some PR and copywriting for a business in recent months (nothing to do with what I cover as a journalist), and I have to say: journalists suck."

She pitches a story idea to one nationals journalist who rather snootily sent a reply saying: "That's not a story." Next, she pitched the story to a hack who told her that her story was rubbish, but then came back saying her editor liked it, and could Sally write up 800 words for her to customise slightly, which then ran in a paper under the journalists byline. Another journalist asked Sally to arrange an interview with her client but also to schedule calls with two or three of its competitors, and also provided a list of statistics, facts and figures she'd require for the article.

It makes for very refreshing reading for all the PR practitioners out there who are fed up of all the bad mouthing that hacks give the PR industry. Now the tables are turned, I'm sure it makes unpleasant reading for those same journalists.

As Linda says in the comments:

"Shout out that PRs are tossers and you get a Mexican wave of support. Dare to whisper some journalists are tossers and you must be kidding, right? To be honest, I think more and more journalists will be finding out for themselves what's expected of them in a PR/copywriting role - they have to find work to replace all the commissions slipping away..."

But The Wordsmith offers a balanced view, one that has echoes of when a flack is called to defend their profession:

"I think there are good and bad PRs and good and bad hacks. I'd never expect or even ask a PR to set up calls with a clients' rivals or write my copy for me. That's my job. Hacks that lazy ought to be nominated for a Churner Prize."

Sally ends her post by asking "How do you do this stuff for months on end? Seriously, journalists are just REALLY obnoxious."

How do I work in PR for months on end?

I like to think that PR is a great industry to work in, that I'm great at my job, that my peers in PR are great at doing theirs, and that it is a very exciting place to be in right now. And there's no amount of obnoxious journalists that will change that for me.

Convince CIPR to Offer Online Event Booking

The CIPR needs to update their event booking process so that people can book online. Amanda Rose has been complaining about this for months, as months is how long it took for the CIPR to cash a cheque from Amanda from an CIPR event that took place over 3 months ago

At the moment, if you want to book an event or training course with CIPR, you must send a physical cheque more than a week in advance, which is a bit rubbish. Does anyone actually own a cheque book anymore?

Amanda has started a petition that says the CIPR should integrate an online booking system for their events, a system such as Eventbrite. It's a friendly jab in the ribs for the CIPR and a quiet word in their ear that recommends them to "Say no to writing cheques and hello to 2008."

CIPR members and PR enthusiasts who like the events and training put on by CIPR, but are embarrassed with the archaic system that is still in place to book, should be the first to sign up. By signing the petition, you are telling CIPR that there is a more efficient to offer ticketing for their events. So what are you waiting for? Sign the petition here!

Mobile Monday - "Enabling Location in Applications"

I popped down to MoMo London (Mobile Monday London) last night, which was held at the CBI Conference Center in Centre Point Tower.

Titled “Enabling Location in Applications”, the evening was sponsored by Skyhook Wireless. Whereas the last MoMo London featured a high-level panel discussion on current mobile trends from a media and marketing perspective, this event was more of a show and tell.

The people presenting their ideas were:

• Ted Morgan – Skyhook Wireless
• Ben Ward – Yahoo! Brickhouse
  
• Charles Wiles - Google Gears
• Andrew Scott – Rummble
• Justin Davis - BuddyPing
• Mark White - Locatrix

There were also some special guests in the from of various representatives of MoMo from around the world, including Germany, Estonia, Sweden, Spain, Boston, Italy and New York.

Below are the notes I took from the evening:

Ted Morgan – CEO, Skyhook Wireless

Intro to Skyhook Wireless:

• Provides the Wifi for Apple iPhone - restaurant finding, social network apps, location apps, geo tagging

• What Skyhook does:

- Brought global wifi system to market
- Compresses individual wifi sources into one channel to pinpoint your location
- 16 million access points mapped in Europe
- Reaches 130 million people in Europe
- 200 full time scannersHybrid Location – XPS – combined wifi, gps, 3G

• Delivers consumer ready location:

- Better accuracy
- Better availability
- Better Speed

• Cross platform, mobile and web
• Cheaper and easier to work with
• Growing worldwide developer community
• App Partners:

- BuddyPing
- Locle
- AOL Instant Messenger
- Rummble
- Eye-Fi
- Trapster

• Location enabled browsing
• W3C working group
• Standard API for websites to request location
• Mobile and web
• Browser developers and content sites
• Loki toolbar experience
• Loki for iPhone 2.0
• Organises content sites with location info - e.g. Google Maps, Qype – and uploads your location info to those websites
• Currently, websites can't find your location
• Soon, you can update your location on various sites, e.g. Facebook

Ben Ward – Yahoo! Brickhouse Team, London Representative

Ben presented his team's work with Fire Eagle

• Most location aware apps base on a fairly simple premise where one app gets the location of the user then the same app uses that location
• Better model is where a single service gets that location but then shares it with a range of other apps to use that location
• Fire Eagle sits in the middle – anyone can let it know where they are, then Fire Eagle tells the location apps where they are
• Tom Taylor - www.iamnear.net
• Click the Fire Eagle link
• Then grant permission to Fire Eagle to use the service as much as you want, e.g. exact location or just postcode
• iamnear.net then able to use Fire Eagle to tell you where nearest services – like banks, pubs, etc – are
• User has ability to hide themselves from sites and services authorised to use Fire Eagle
• Process of developing Fire Eagle:

- Get your api key
- Authenticate with user
- Make API calls to Fire Eagle

• 3 ways of updating:

- User based
- Lookup or update – London, UK or London, Canada?
- Within or recent – within a range or been in a range recently

• More ideas for uses of Fire Eagle:

- nabaztag
- Ambient Orb
- PacManhattan.com
- Last.fm: Location of where a track was scrobbled, e.g. Brian Eno in London City Airport

• Fire Eagle helps you:

- Control your data & privacy
- Easily build location services
- Share your location online

Charles Wiles - Product Manager, Google Gears

• Writing a rich mobile app across a wide range of mobile devices is an impossibly difficult challenge today
• The web is the platform, but mobile web apps suck!
• Gears makes apps fast, fluid and location aware
• It's fast, fluid and location aware
• Gears is much more than offline
• First new api will be the Geolocation API, which gives developers easy access to user location
• The Location api provides a common interface to location
• One-Shot and Repeated Position Updates
• Ability to get last known position cheaply

Matt Womer – W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

Matt briefly spoke about the work that W3C is doing to create a standardised geolocation API. They want an API that doesn't need a plug-in and has one way of presenting information to the browser.

Unfortunately, the last three presentations were sans text and were either clever presentations using only pictures or live demonstrations of the technology, so I didn't get a chance to write them up. But do have a look at all of their websites as they're doing some interesting stuff:

Andrew Scott – Rummble
Justin Davis - BuddyPing
Mark White - Locatrix

If Andrew, Justin, or Mark happens to come across this post, then I'd be happy to put your presentations up here.

Overall, it was another great MoMo London. Afterwards I got to meet Paul Walsh (Segalo and BIMA), Chris Kettle (my247.mobi) and James Parton (O2 Litmus).

• What did everyone who was there think was the most interesting idea presented?
  
• For those who want there, what do you think about the future of location-based apps based on the work that these people are doing?
• Are there potential revenue streams for these services?
• Are they even out to make money?
• What do you think is the future of location-based apps?

UPDATE:
James from mjelly has also written up his notes from the evening, which you can view here.

How to make a frog from a business card

Surviving in a tough market

Hopefully you'll excuse the shameless plugging (as Dom puts it), but Hotwire was featured in the pages of this weekend's Financial Times as an example of a PR agency that survived in tough market conditions.

Kristin Syltevik, CEO of Hotwire, founded the agency in the middle of the Dot Com bubble bursting, but has somehow managed to come through this and build the agency into one of the fastest growing tech PR agencies in Europe.

With recent events and the state of the economy in mind, Kristin's advice is valuable for those PR agencies looking to weather the financial storm. The interview was also featured in a free podcast that you can listen to here, or you can buy the full length version here.

Here's a run down of her tips on how to survive in a tough market:

• The most important aspect of service provision is measurement - How can you prove that you are providing value for money?
• The next most important aspect is having industry knowledge
• Small organisations should always ask the client if they can let them have some dedicated office space which can become a sales focus for other departments (under appropriate circumstances, of course)
• Hire only the best - the main differentiator for service companies is the quality of their staff, which should be emphasised in all product literature and on the website

Kristin also says that if there was just one particular personal attribute she looks for when hiring people it is eagerness. In PR, as in all other service industries, you should be eager to please, eager to listen and eager to prove your value.

This last bit of advice is especially important given that Hotwire is currently hiring. Below is the official job advert and if you're interested in the position then please get in touch with either myself or Katy, whose details are below:

Programme Manager and Programme Director opportunities – London

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team. Superb client service is top priority for us - and we aim to recruit bright, proactive people with the potential to develop rapidly and be future leaders of the business. We were recently voted International Consultancy of the Year at last autumn’s PR Week awards and won the award for Best Technology PR Campaign. We have an ethos of developing people fast and involving all team members in new business and challenging client situations. Our culture is about delivering results and developing great careers – we are driven but we enjoy ourselves too!

If you are looking for a new opportunity and would like to be part of one of the fastest growing technology agencies in Europe, please email your CV and a covering letter to Katy Burgess at katy (dot) burgess (at) hotwirepr (dot) com. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Question of Privacy on Twitter

My colleague Drew tagged me in a post on his blog, asking what's best - to be public or private on Twitter?

Drew choose public because he feels that it's better at connecting you with other people. And that's the main reason he uses Twitter. Good things tend to happen when you connect.

As for me, my Twitter feed is set to public. I agree with Drew that when it comes to connecting with people (which is arguably what Twitter is best used for) public is the way to go. I am now in contact with a lot more people due to being on Twitter, and the service has improved both my business and social lives.

I have tried my account on private, but got tired of filtering through the requests to follow me. I find it much better to let whoever wants to follow me and let Twitter send me an email to let me know when someone does. I can then check their profile at my convenience and if I feel like following them back I will. And that's an important point - even if people follow me I don't have to follow them back, which is especially useful given the rise of spam bots on Twitter recently.

It is important to remember though that whatever I put out on my Twitter stream of consciousness are things that I'm happy for all of my followers to see. If I did have highly personal or sensitive conversations, then I would set my account to private. But then again, people can direct message each other if things are more appropriate that way, then there's even the options (as crazy as they may seem) of email and phone conversations.

It will be interesting to hear what the others tagged on Drew's post think. But what about you? Is your Twitter acoount set to public or private? Why did you choose one or the other?

Update:

I put the question out on Twitter and received the following replies:

	bigtimbond @benrmatthews Public, baby, it's the only way to be!
	Ronna @benrmatthews My Twitter account is public. If its online its public anyway, so I never say anything online that would embarass me in public

Tapio also asked me to tag a few blogger friends to get canvas their opinion, so I'd like to see what Dominic, Patrick, Andy and Stacy-Marie think.

Twitterers at 2gether08

There is just so much chatter on the Twittersphere this morning that I thought I'd list those twitterers that are here (with the help of our friend Summize.) Hopefully people will start following each other, join in the conversation,and ultimately add to the event.It is also really useful to follow the event on Summize (here)If I've missed anyone out, let me know and I'll add them on!

• benrmatthews (Me!)
• waugaman
• dominiccampbell
• jobsworth
• darraghdoyle
• Nico_Macdonald
• joannejacobs
• martman
• kevglobal
• EverythingHQ
• timaldiss
• lisadevaney
• Dothegreenthing
• kevinmarks
• pjlaurie
• psd
• ClareWhite
• anniemole
• philhawksworth
• russelldavies
• lloyddavis
• jemimakiss
• Stevebridger
• davidwilcox
• paulhenderson
• tom_watson
• tomtaylor
• umairh
• alfie 
• jemstone 
• giz 
• jemimah_knight
• amayfield
• danmcquillan
• Mickfealty
• matlock
• agentgav
• codepo8  
• edmittance

Getting together at 2gether08

At 2gether08 today and I quickly realised that this “unconference” is a bit of a Twitter fest. If you looked at Twitter this morning from 8am-9am, you would've thought that the whole of Twitter was going to 2gther08.

On arrival, my theory was confirmed

After meeting Russell Davies (@russelldavies), Dominic Campbell (@dominiccampbell) and Michael Waugaman (@waugaman) at the entrance, I made my way into the main theatre for the opening session. I sat next to Geoff Laycock (@geofflaycock) and behind Jemima Kiss (@jemimakiss), with Bill Thompson (@billt) up on stage. See what I mean with the Twitter invasion?

After an introduction by Steve from Channel 4 (not sure if he's on Twitter), the opening session got under way.

Umair Haque of Havas Laboratories kicked off with a talk on Constructive Capitalism. He offered us a challenge - to drop our cynicism and start realising that our agenda is rethinking capitalism. We are on the cusp of an economic enlightenment and a corporate renaissance: Our challenge is to drive them forward.

It pained him to say, but companies like Starbucks, Wallmart and Microsoft are changing the way businesses look at the world – they are the the ones who are most powerfully pushing Constructive Capitalism. Haque left his intro without an ending as he is presenting the idea later on in the day. I'm sue many people will be there to see how it ends.

John Naish, Medical Editor at The Guardian and author of the book “Enough”, was next up. The brain has never been faced with the problem of abundance – it has always craved for more. This applies to food, drink, etc, but he wants to talk about information. We are all now avid information consumers and most of our decisions are affected by the information we consume.

This was fine before the information of the internet. Rather than happening within your local range (e.g. 1-2 miles), things that happen on the internet are on a global scale and make us think that this information is important to our lives. Celebrities are the best example – if David Beckham wears a certain brand of underwear, it makes us think that not only do we want to be a famous footballer but to be one we have to also wear that particular brand of underwear.

Never before has humanity had to deal with this problem. It is great to have all of this information, but there is a new challenge with how to deal with it to make it efficient and helpful. The debate therefore revolves around the question of “What's enough for me?” Not only as consumers do we have to decide what is enough, but as producers we have to take responsibility and decide what is enough. It is a term he calls “Info-besity”.

Matthews Taylor from RSA took the stage and entertained us with a short poem:

In Shoreditch town where I was born,

We all eat organic humous and pitta.

We all work as consultants,

And we live our lives on Twitter.

He spoke of a “Social Aspiration Gap “, where people talk about a future they want to be involved in, but don't act in a way to make this happen. This is ether through apathy or through a mass of contradictions, e.g. you want to save the environment but also want to fly to Spain on holiday. We are completely out of touch with the notion of our inner selves – we create an inner voice that doesn't exist (who is the conversation with when you say “I said to myself”?), we don't control the boundary between our inner and outer selves, and we are too optimistic about the future and pessimistic about how we would cope with a catastrophe.

He is interested in what happens when the Social Inspiration Gap and our Western notion about the self, the mythologicalisation of the individual, comes together. When you ask him what the biggest challenge in the world is, the answer is you.