Bill Gates, where are you?

The search is on to find the next Bill Gates according to a poll carried out by 463 and pollsters Zogby. People polled believe the next Bill Gates has been born so I guess all that remains is to find them. That search is more likely to bear fruit if people look in China or Japan than it will if they look in the US according to the poll.

The poll also asks Americans if they are ready to switch to citizen journalism for their news and while the result was a negative on that, it did reveal that 25% of 18-49 year olds would pick Citizen video for their daily news. Given how new this space is, that's pretty amazing and should worry the major TV news networks.

The full poll can be found on 463's blog at: http://www.463.com/463zogby_poll.html

In 2006

1. Google stock went to $500 much to the delight of realtors in Santa Clara County
2. Dick Cheney accidentally shoots a friend in the face and moves into the background politically
3. Google buys YouTube for $1.65Bn
4. Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced his retirement from Microsoft an the stock goes up
5. Al Gore became a movie star and may have finally shifted American sentiment on environmental issues
6. Toyota starts to sell more cars than Ford (see number 5)
7. Donald Rumsfeld steps down after months of pressure
8. The DJIA reached a record high
9. Blog and wikis became mainstream and old media continued to decline
10. WSJ announced major redesign as readership drops (see number 9)
11. HP gives a lesson in how not to handle a boardroom crisis
12. Oil prices start and end the year roughly unchanged but in between boy did they go on a roller coaster ride

What's reality?

Lord Bell, Chairman of Chime is credited with the saying: “perception is reality.” I’m wondering if we now need to shift that to: “Google is reality.” I’m being a touch facetious here but I just had a call from someone who is trying to get a reference on a person who works for one of the large technology businesses (a very large one in fact). They had tried to look them up on Google and found nothing. What was interesting was their view was that if this person didn’t show up on Google they can’t be that important. It is worth noting they were doing the research for a friend so it could be they had their name spelled wrongly. I actually found myself feeling sorry for this person and have reached out to several other people to see if they know of anyone with a name like this that works at the unnamed company. I wonder at what point will people start to add Google search links routinely to their CVs/resumes? For the record this person probably isn't that important.

Customers and color

It seems that if you want customers to like your latest piece of consumer technology then you should paint it white. At least that seems to be the case with customers shopping at Circuit City for the new Microsoft Zune. I just did a search on this new product because I was curious to see how easy it was to get one. I own several iPods so I'm not likely to buy one. What stood out when the availability results came back on the Circuit City site was the customer ratings for this product varied by color. Highest was white with a rating of 4.8 out of 5, while brown scored only 4 out of 5. Black, meanwhile, did slightly better at 4.4. To reiterate the point, these are the SAME products in different colors, yet the rating varies quite considerably. For the record, I looked on the same site at iPod ratings, regardless of color the Nano scored 4.4. Am I the only one that thinks this is odd?


CLASS%20-%20GAMES&cm_ite=135146%20PURCHASED%20KEYWORD-ZUNE&cm_keycode=338347">http://www.circuitcity.com//ssm/MP3-Players-iPods/sem/rpsm/catOid/-12952/Ntk/All/Ntt/zune/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do?WT.mc_n=338347&WT.mc_t=U&cm_ven=PAID%20SEARCH&cm_cat=ADVERTISING.COM&cm_pla=CATEGORY%20-%20GAMES%20&%20TOYS->CLASS%20-%20GAMES&cm_ite=135146%20PURCHASED%20KEYWORD-ZUNE&cm_keycode=338347

The emotional side of PR

I found myself being a PR person’s nightmare this week. To put it another way, I found myself refusing to believe (or at least not wanting to believe) a news story even though it was being covered by a number of pretty credible news outlets such as the FT, WSJ and Economist. The story was about the US dollar’s rather precipitous drop against other leading currencies. Now I didn’t want to believe it for a few reasons. First, because I run a business that reports in sterling and a fall in the dollar is just downright annoying. That said we use various currency products from banks to mitigate that problem. The second reason, is that I live in the US and I didn’t like the assertion that the US economy was actually weaker than the European economies. In truth I’m still not sure I follow the logic used by the Economist on this story but that’s not really the point of the entry.

My point here is that if someone has both a rational (runs a business that can be technically affected by a change) and an emotional (lives in the country that is said to be doing poorly) reason not to want to believe a story, it can be awfully hard to change their opinion. The emotional reason is the toughest to shift just because it’s so… emotional. In this instance I want to believe in the American economy for a host of reasons, not least that I have kids and I want them to grow up somewhere where they’ll get a good education and rewarding career. If the US economy has the kind of cancer that the Economist argues, then I should move my kids to France tomorrow where they will at least get great schooling. See my point? It’s awfully easy to get drawn away from the story and in to your own world. This reminded me that for PR people trying to fight issues on behalf of their clients that a good consideration of the emotional impact of a story may well go a long way towards finding a solution.

To put this thought in to perspective, if I were the US government right now and I wanted to counter the arguments being made, I’d focus on the great talent this country is producing in all sorts of areas AND the talent this country still attracts. It is after all people that make up economies and with great people you can have great economies. And who are these great people that I refer to? Well my kids of course!

Is Big Tech Back?

If you told people Google’s stock price had risen 25% in the past quarter nobody would be that shocked. But if you told them pretty well all the major tech stocks had had equally good quarters it may take some believing. However, when I just checked, the facts are that the following stocks rose by the following percentages:

Dell 10% (yes Dell, the one that is said to be struggling to find new growth and with that annoying battery problem)
Microsoft 15% (the one that has been criticized for delays of Vista and whose Chairman retired)
IBM 20% (I can’t actually think of a reason why ITS stock would suffer – truly)
Intel 24% (the one that is being challenged by AMD)
Oracle 25% (the one that has run out of companies to buy)
HP 25% (the one with the dysfunctional board)
Apple 32% (hasn’t everyone bought an iPod by now?)
Cisco 34% (the company that was the dot com darling but pundits said had had its day – clearly wrong)

Indeed the NASDAQ Computer index is up 18% in the last quarter. That means if you’d invested in pretty well any tech stock you should have done pretty well in the last three months. Now I know, the tech industry has been producing some good numbers (Cisco certainly has) but in truth they’ve been producing good growth for a while. I wonder what made the markets wake up?

Blogs versus news

You may think I’m getting obsessed with Google News these days. I assure you I’m not but I did think it was quite revealing that when I searched on ‘Edelman Walmart blog’ I got twelve news responses. When I used the site to search for blogs with the same criteria I got 1,458 responses. That means for every news item there were over 120 blog mentions. Going back to my HP item the ratio was more like 1.5 blog mentions to each news item. I guess this shows how the blogging world works.

Has HP taken control?

It seems HP may finally have a handle on its pretexting crisis. A quick search on Google News shows there have only been twenty six news items in the last week. Given the pace that news was pouring out a few weeks ago (nine an hour) this is quite a change. It is worth noting that there hasn’t been another big tech story of similar importance, so one can only assume that either HP has managed to put a lid on things or the media (and public) has simply moved on.

Text 100 to tell the Truth

The inevitable truth that is. Today Text 100 is launching its Clean Tech Practice which will aim to help organizations in the areas of energy efficiency and renewable power. The team already has some good client experience with people like: PARC, Philips, GE Wind Energy, Altran, npower renewables, National Physical Laboratory (NPL), TOTAL, Envirowise and Whirlpool. I also note their release talks about how much VC spending is going into this scetor. There is no doubt that fear of global warming has put some heat (pardon the pun) into the sector...

Gootube?

So the Wall Street Journal piece today saying that Google is in talks to buy You Tube has understandably got quite a lot fo attention. A few things pop out here. First if You Tube does sell then Google really is the most logical buyer. Google's cutlure and business model is ideal. The other potential suitors seem less of a fit andf have already put forward alternatives. I'm referring to the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo!. I guess the question is will they sell? If you were a founder would you cash in now? The same questions were clearly in the minds of the Skype guys. In their case eBay paid $2.3Bn for the business. At that price I think it was likely an easy decision. You Tube is apparently being offered $1.6Bn. This seems relatively cheap to me (the emphasis being on the word 'relatively'). Truth is the numbers at this level are not tied to sales or profits they are tied to 'how much can you justify to investors.' It is very clear that You Tube is a high growth company in a high growth area. On that score if this deal were to open up a rapidly growing $10Bn market for Google then a price of between one and two billion dollars doesn't sound that bad. Does it?

HP crisis keeps on rolling

Two weeks ago I posted a piece on this corporate drama and of course today has been another eventful day what with the resignation of their General Counsel. Anyway when I wrote my last piece a Google News search on 'HP and pretexting' brought up around 4000 news hits. Two weeks later that number has jumped to just over 7000. That's an average of over 200 new stories a day or roughly 9 new stories per hour. HP will be relieved to know it still lags well behind the Iraq War which is generating 100s of posts an hour on a good (bad) day.

Content gets a longer tail

There has been quite a lively debate about the ‘Long Tail’ since Chris Anderson first wrote his article in Wired back in 2004. In today’s Wall Street Journal a couple of news items caught my eye that provide tools for content to wag their own long tail. And where there’s content there is usually something PR people should pay attention to. Specifically the news stories were: Cisco’s move to create a B2B video messaging service; and a piece by Lee Gomes that talked about how companies like LiveOffice are enabling people to store podcasts of just about any conference call they hold. In both these cases companies (well people actually) can find a permanent home for content that would ordinarily have died a death pretty quickly. This is potentially interesting for the PR industry in that it creates some further resources to help editors and analysts but also tools that can communicate directly with communities or individuals. No longer will people have to dig around in the store room for that old footage of their CEO talking about… whatever he was talking about, or the tape of their CFO explaining the way they are going to reorganize the business. Of course it also means that the opinions we put forward are going to be there for all to see and hear for many a year to come AND they'll be easy to find...but that’s no bad thing. Is it?

HP lurches from one crisis to the next

Like many PR people I've been wondering why the crisis gurus have not been able to get the HP board under control. Surely the board doesn't want the entire saga to be played out in the media? Right now though, every move of this mess seems to be getting air time in one media outlet or another (Google news has about 4000 news stories on the topic already). Having said that this seems to have been a recurring issue for HP - remember the whole Walter Hewlett saga?

Going back to the current problems, if the media circus continues and it shows no sign of stopping yet, then the very man that appears to have turned the business around (Mark Hurd) could be the one to pay the biggest price. Patricia Dunn meanwhile could end up with a cozy non-executive seat (I'm curious as to why she's being allowed to stay on btw).

I can't blame HP's internal team for this situation. Company boards are notoriously tough to deal with and will rarely take good counsel even when offered. That said, when matters escalate as they have here, they usually listen to some crisis management expert. For HP's sake I only hope someone is able to take control soon or the blood on the carpet may start to get thicker.

Financial Dynamics Takes a Different Path

The news that Financial Dynamics was being acquired was hardly the world's biggest surprise. Indeed there'd been speculation in the trade media about a deal for some time. What was unusual was the buyer: management consulting firm, FTI and of course that $260m price tag. This news should be welcomed by those in our sector as it shows other industries value the PR world. It also shows that the PR world isn't necessarily destined to be owned by WPP et al. Indeed the deal shows that there is an alternative out there to the 'integrated marketing' message being touted by the large agency groups. That alternative would seem to be based more on integrating a company's ability to reach specific communities – where communications is just a part of the process. At the heart of this new approach would seem to lay the need for 'focus' or specialization. Few would argue that FD was a pretty focused business and it would seem their skill in helping companies manage their profiles in financial circles is to be married to FTI's skill in helping firms solve commercial problems and set strategy. Combined they should be able to offer businesses a way to strategically review their business, undergo the changes that review proposes and manage the communication of that change to the world. Put another way what FTI gets through this deal is the chance to squeeze every last consulting dollar out of some pretty large engagements. It certainly has logic on its side. If they pull this off it could herald a new wave of M&A activity for the PR sector – presuming of course that agencies remain sector focused AND remain connected at the highest levels within their client base.

Best UK PR Consultancy to Work For?

The Holmes Report in the UK has just published its 'Best consultancy to work for' list. I have to congratulate Rainier PR for winning for the second year running. However, it does raise an interesting question: does this list actually mean anything? I ask this not be rude to the winners or to Paul Holmes but because none of the top twenty are the top agencies in the UK. Now if this list was a predictor of which agencies would become the top agencies then again I can see its value but it doesn't seem to play that role either. Of course it could be that it shows that if you want to work for a good employer or if you are a client that wants to hire an agency that treats its staff well then this list will act as a good guide. However, again this either shows that not many clients care about how staff are treated (or these agencies would be growing like crazy) OR that staff don't care how they are treated (or these agencies would have a waiting list for jobs). The one common link in the list would seem to be that the agencies listed are all small or medium sized firms. Either this means these types of firms are better places to work (seems logical) or the bigger firms just didn't engage. Of course it could be that these winning agencies are good at getting staff to say what great employers they are. Given two of my agencies (August.One and Bite which are both wonderful places to work!!) are in the top 20 I hope you see that I raise these questions out of genuine interest and not because 'we didn't win.'

Online news consumption is all about sports...

I hadn't looked at this in a while but Akamai has been tracking how many people access online news for some time now. It paints an interesting picture of online news consumption. For example the vast majority of the news hits are US driven. So much so that other regions don't really impact the end results. Sadly the vast majority of news this nation consumes seems to be sports related. Indeed out of the top ten news days they've recorded seven were sports related (the world cup being a huge factor it seems). The other three? Two were related to terrorism and the other to Katrina.

If you look a little closer you'll see that of the roughly 3m news hits today, 2.6m were in the US, 300K were in Europe and the remaining 100K were spread around the rest of the world. That seems amazing to me and perhaps explains why concerns about the death of print media don't seem to be taken as seriously outside the US. At first glance I wondered if the consumption outside the US were abnormally low today but the Akamai system actually shows whether this a high, normal or low news day and while it is a moderately high day in the US it is at worst normal in all the other regions.

I guess the end could really be in sight for print media at this rate. As long, that is, as they make sure they offer good sports news!

Link: http://www.akamai.com/en/html/industry/nui/news/index.html

Economist discusses death in the family

I need to thank Drew B for pointing to the Economist article on the death of newspapers. As ever the Economist does a good job of educating its readers on the big issues. I'd like to see this piece followed up on though as it really only serves as an introduction to the topic. Nevertheless it's worth a quick read.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7830218

Client conflict

I hear on rumor mill that the Council of PR is about to come out with a new statement on the thorny issue of handling client conflict. Like me, it seems some at the Council feel PR agencies are judged by inconsistent standards at best. Now it seems some agencies do a better job on conflict than others. Take Edelman who works with both Adobe and Microsoft. Indeed Edelman seems able to manage this level of conflict for a number of big brands. I take my hat off to them for their nerve and their ability to convince clients that these conflicts are OK. Indeed I write this not to be critical of Edelman's approach. Instead I just wish there were some clear standards on what was deemed an acceptable way of managing conflicting clients. Perhaps this is what the Council needs to work on? I think a strong statement on conflict is an excellent start but I'd also encourage them to develop (if they have not already) some clear guidelines on the ways conflict should be handled. This should extend to the construction of teams; the way information is received and stored and so on.

Of course if you look at the professional advisors used by most large firms such as law firms, accountancy practices, management consultancies etc they nearly all have conflicts. These firms don't have the same issues it seems. Is this because they are hired by different people in the business? Is it because they have a history of doing it? Is it because they are considered a profession? Whatever the answer it's clear that these advisors are held to a different standard. While that may be a touch frustrating for PR people, it's a fact and one we need to accept. However, it is also something we can do something about. As I say I'm pleased the Council of PR has taken up this issue. I only hope that the topic gets significant attention in the PR media and in other circles so that clients can be better educated on how conflict can be managed successfully.

What does the Pew Study really show?

I just read Nick Carr's blog on the state of Online News following the Pew Study that came out this week. To cut a fine story short he effectively says that while people have moved to getting their news online they are not necessarily:

a) consuming more news - indeed he suggests that the decline in traditional media consumption is being matched to a degree in the online world
b) about to kill off traditional media - his view from the Pew study is that while this media is declining it is more often than not read by those that consume online news. In other words it will only really die off if everyone stops reading news altogether which seems unlikely.

His piece ends by saying that: "The report is not good news for newspapers, but it does show that the reports of their imminent death have been exaggerated. The real division is not between the audience for online news and the audience for traditional news - they are the same audience. The real division is between the people who are interested in the news and the people who couldn't care less. In fact, it looks very much like online news media are now merging with traditional news media, as the two come together in a symbiotic relationship to serve the same set of customers. They are not competing with each other so much as they are competing together against nonconsumption."

I would contend, as I pointed out yesterday in my piece about YouTube, that what the world wants is for the Internet to enable a whole new way to get content. What Online news outlets have done so far is simply 'automate' the delivery of content. Perhaps this is why after an initial surge in viewing of online news it too is starting to flatten off and potentially decline. My contention is that this is because there is a distinct lack of innovation taking place in online media (what a generalization I know). Maybe this is what the Pew study is really showing...

YouTubification - is this what the media needs?

I have to say I’m a big fan of YouTube. What is clever about this site from my point of view is not that there is great content on there (which there is) but the way it keeps you clicking and digging deeper. It makes me wonder if what they’ve created here is a better model for the media now that the Internet has become the common way to access news and information. If you go on the site to see a specific piece of content when you are done you will immediately be presented with other related content you may enjoy. In other words it redraws the content around your search. If you compare this to most news sites it seem light years ahead. Take Google News as an example; on the news site you can view a news story but then when you click the back button (which is your only way of being returned to Google News) you are presented with the same headlines despite the choice you made. This is pretty well the model of all news sites. In essence they have buckets of content that stay in the same place regardless of what you do as a user. Imagine however a news site that once you clicked on a news item, then reselected the content on its homepage based on the choice you just made. So for example you click on a news item about United Airlines returning to profit (which is a miracle in my opinion but that’s whole other story). Once you clicked on the news at the side would be other travel related news items, item by the same journalist from the last few days, previous articles on the topic etc etc. When you returned to the homepage the content would also be slightly different. The closet I’ve seen to this is on BBC's site where they have links called ‘related articles.’ These links tend to be pretty straightforward though. From where I sit a YouTubification of the media has to be the way forward if they want to keep our attention.

Oh and while I'm at it, anyone care to guess how long it is before someone like Google buys YouTube?