To devise a corporate social responsibility programme for SA’s leading Internet Service Provider that engaged existing as well as potential consumers and which could be amplified through publicity.
Solution:
Atmosphere conceptualised and implemented the MWEB Big Stationery Drive to communicate the importance that MWEB placed on education by suggesting a partnership with a retailer to create a real-world presence. Donations of stationery and books were made to under-privileged rural schools via a charity identified by Atmosphere. The strategy included media relations such as releases, photo-stories and celebrity endorsement.
Results:
A partnership was secured with Pick ‘n Pay stores throughout the country. Shoppers were urged to make a stationery donation via in-store MWEB Big Black Boxes. A total of R100 000 was raised from monetary donations while 16 000 pieces of stationery were collected in the MWEB Big Black Boxes – enough to sustain 40 under-privileged schools for an entire year. 25 pieces of publicity were secured in community, regional and national newspapers as well as online and radio. Atmosphere was awarded a PRISM Award from the PR Institute of South Africa for this campaign.

Solution
Atmosphere Communications developed a high impact, multi-dimensional communications programme to publicize the trial and MWEB’s capabilities around WiMAX. The programme included:
•    hosting one-on-one meetings with key opinion formers;
•    running a competition to provide WiMAX connectivity in Soweto using the Soweto community media;
•    setting up partnership agreements to provide WiMAX connectivity to an existing NGO, tuXlab, at St Martins Secondary School in Orlando West;
•    and negotiating a partnership with University of Johannesburg Soweto Campus to provide WiMAX connectivity to a computer lab on campus.

Atmosphere used the positive endorsement from trialists to generate publicity for MWEB’s trial.

Results
The success of Atmosphere’s media relations, industry affairs, CSI and reputation management campaign has resulted in MWEB becoming the authority on WiMAX, even without a commercial product.

Atmosphere has positioned MWEB as a leader in providing wireless Internet in Soweto, improving the lives of residents and small business owners and making a strong case for MWEB to be awarded a commercial licence.

Landmark coverage was achieved on TV, radio, in print and online – a total of 96 pieces of on-message coverage from April to December 2007, valued at R3.9 million. Atmosphere was awarded a Gold Prism award for this campaign.

Golds:
Two gold PRISMS and the Prisa PRISM GOLD AWARD on behalf of Sanlam Investment Management (SIM). The first was in the financial services and investor relations category for the Investor Confidence Index run monthly by SIM. The second SIM gold went to the media relations campaign for repositioning the company as a third party asset manager – this campaign also scooped the overall campaign award and will automatically be entered into the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) Golden World awards taking place in October.

Silver:

The agency’s silver awards included the corporate communication campaign for kulula.com’s new business strategy, the launch of a new product for Silverstar Casino in Gauteng, a media relations campaign for Bio-Oil manufacturer Union-Swiss, and in the financial services category, Sanlam Employee Benefits’ pension fund symposium.

Bronze:

For Atmosphere’s dedicated work on consumer clients, the agency scooped three bronze awards in the categories of public relations on a shoestring for Fitflop, e-public relations and social media for the ghd Style Lounge, and consumer public relations for an existing product for the Baileys Trunk Show.

Meanwhile we’ve been hard at work getting 2009 up and running. We’ve some really interesting campaigns in the pipeline (despite the recession) so looking forward to getting them live.

Dan

We’ve had this conversation many times before in private, allow me to take it public: You and I both believe that in this hyper-digital, post-Cluetrain world of ours, the PR industry has a huge opportunity, simply by taking huge chunks of business away from what was traditionally the domain of the large advertising agencies. I’m thinking the work Edelman did for Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty would be a good example of this. Care to elaborate on the business model?

Everything these days is work in progress. Customers and stakeholders know that about the companies and brands that are part of their life, and yet many of those companies still seem to over-use the mass communication vehicles of the industrial age, presenting a perfect ‘image’ or a ‘lifestyle’ and looking for aspiration or approval. So much advertising, direct marketing and promotion (and some PR to be fair) is a one-way street and that just does not fit the world I see around me. PR, or good PR at least, was always about things like relationship, influence and dialogue (in the old days focused more on the elite few maybe, but now with the many as well) and so PR now has an even more central role in helping companies align with stakeholders and customers by properly engaging with them. Thankfully many firms and brands are seeing this and many PR people (in agencies and in-house) are embracing this new mandate and the responsibility that comes with it. Every day the false certainties peddled by the old-school advertising agencies look more and more out of place and time.

Yup agree! Good PR is about creating public conversations about what a company or brand is/does and so (with some homework and common sense) is naturally suited to the new digital media environment.

Also liked this answer:

What advice would you give to a bright young thing wanting to break into the PR business? More specifically, what advice would you give today, that you wouldn’t have given say, a decade ago? In other words, for a young person just entering the trade, how has the world changed in the last ten years?

Be involved and have a voice. When I got into this business in the early Jurassic period those two things were much more difficult to do. But society has changed and it is easy to express opinions and debate and join with like-minded people to pursue your interests. It does not all have to be online, but obviously much of it is now. And we look for that. Someone who is interested and passionate about something and who contributes. I still expect new joiners to be passionate about news, culture and politics in the traditional senses too, but what you read through your aggregator and via your community is as important as what you can buy at the news stand (OK not the most original point, but you would be amazed how many people still come to interviews with no views on news and no understanding or participation in social media). One other thing that has struck me about people joining the business now, especially in the US and the UK, is that they are amazingly conservative about their careers. Many look to progress through the ranks in small linear steps, I guess because the business has become so big and so structured. One of the most difficult things is to find people who will take a risk and go live in the Middle East or Moscow or China and I find that so hard to understand having lived and worked outside my country for seven years . . . something which broadened my horizons significantly.

1: We pitched the events to the whats new/fashion news and events pages of Longlead press (magazines with 3-4 months lead time) in advance of the event.

2: We worked with a stylist and photographer to create a transportable pop-up hair salon and self-portrait shooting photo booth. We also sourced venues in Durban, Cape Town and Joburg that were a relatively blank canvas for us to tranform into ghd branded salons.

3: We built a blog style microsite to act as a place for interested consumers to sign-up for the event and find out more about it as well as the latest hair trends and ghd products. Cow Africa helped us put the site together and has acheived around 8000 visits with just under 4000 registrations for the events. We also started a ghd Facebook page which has 587 members as i’m writing this.

4: We approached shortlead media including online, TV, radio and newspapers to profile the event and interview ghd experts about summer hair trends (coverage value is R1 Million+ and rising rapidly) we also invited a select number of media contacts to attend and experience the ghd make over.

5: We selected the winners (some of them were extremely excited check the comments for examples of how obsessive some of them became about winning…

6: On the day of the events we set-up (in about 2 hours) and ran around for about 12 hours making sure everything was working and welcoming media and consumers.

First they were given welcome drinks and snacks:

Then they had make-up done:

And then the ghd make over:

After which the stylists prescribed them some products suitable for their hair type.

Then they got to select some props and take their own photo in our photo booth.

]]> http://atmos.designforweb.co.za/2008/12/17/the-ghd-style-lounge-2/feed/ http://atmos.designforweb.co.za/2008/12/15/public-relations-20-how-pr-professionals-are-staking-their-claim-on-web-20/ http://atmos.designforweb.co.za/2008/12/15/public-relations-20-how-pr-professionals-are-staking-their-claim-on-web-20/#comments Mon, 15 Dec 2008 08:41:17 +0000 admin http://www.atmosblog.com/?p=187 ]]> This just appeared in The Annual:

Having worked at an online PR agency when the web 1.0 bubble burst in the late nineties, and being aware that our industry has a bad reputation for breathlessly hyping issues, I’m wary of hurling another log on the Web 2.0 fire. With that said, I honestly believe that developments in the digital media arena over the last few years are significant to the point that they are changing how PR will be defined and practiced in the very near future.. I’d also add that of all the marketing disciplines, PR certainly has most to gain from Web 2.0 - if we can determine how to use it sensibly.

But what exactly is Web 2.0? Essentially it is a kind of a PR invention in itself. Blogs, podcasts, social networking (Facebook being the most significant example in SA), streaming media (e.g. YouTube videos) are all in fact a neat repackaging of features that have existed since the mid-nineties. The difference today is that these types of application have gone mainstream and the user experience has evolved thanks to broadband and the breakneck evolution of the web. Strip Web 2.0 down to what it basically does, which is sharing content, spreading messages across networks of people and having a conversation with people (e.g. peers whose opinion you value or potential customers) it becomes directly relevant to what Public Relations is supposed to be - that of relating and communicating with the public.

We’d like to think people move into Public Relations because they are passionate about enabling clients to get their side of the story across to their audiences. We’re not there to build websites, shoot videos or hold parties (not to say we won’t, if it meets our clients’ business objectives) but we are there to act as advocates for our clients, enabling them to connect and communicate with influencers that matter to them. So it’s not that the technology of digital media and Web 2.0 is particularly enthralling, but rather it is the sheer number of people online and the new innovative ways in which businesses and brands can interact with them.

And because PR does not have a vested interest in any particular channel or platform, we are perhaps best placed of all the marketing disciplines to make use of the opportunities presented by Web 2.0. The reason for this is that some of the best tools for online communications are either free or very low cost and only require the time and energy to figuring out how it works. For example, Wordpress, a free blogging software, is (in my opinion) far superior to off-the-shelf content management systems that companies pay thousands for to create a blog. YouTube offers free hosting for video and is designed to make that video content found and shared easily. Facebook is a spectacularly useful CRM tool and is also free to use. The only associated costs lie in the development of ideas, bringing these to life and nurturing an audience for these.

While other marketing disciplines might see the free culture of the web as a revenue threat, it is a massive opportunity for PR practitioners as we typically sell our communication skills, and not the platforms we utilise. However, before anyone gets over excited, there are some elements of concern. Do a quick search on PR 2.0 and you’ll probably find a barrage of blog posts heralding the death of PR - wired journalists feel the web has more than enough tools to dig out stories without needing the help of PR people. Examples of this in practice are applicable to a number of international brands: once they launch a product/service in one country, information is instantly available to local journalists who can immediately write about it. The story will be decrepit by the time the local SA launch happens typically days, weeks or months later.
There are also many examples of how quickly bad new and criticism travels online via blogs to the point that it dramatically affects profits. Bloggers are a phenomenon that the PR industry needs to get to grips with and to be honest I think worldwide we’ve done this rather badly. Writing my own blog has really illuminated this as I have been on the receiving end of some dire PR pitches – both local and international. The dilemma is that PR’s assume that bloggers work in the same way, and obey the same rules as journalists. Wrong. Bloggers aren’t being paid to write, they’re doing it out of a mixture of passion and ego so being on the receiving end of a BCC’d press release mailout after a story has already broken is going to result in at best a swift delete, and at worst, a bitchy blog post read by potentially tens of thousands. Blogs have potentially vast influence but require special treatment and an intimate knowledge of what is appropriate to pitch as a story - in other words that old PR mantra of read the publication before you pitch is now even more relevant than ever before.

Perhaps one of the biggest opportunities of Web 2.0 though is for brands and companies to create, or rather become, their own media. Not necessarily as just another corporate website, but rather taking an editorial approach and thinking about what the outside would really like to know about their business or brand and what the best online tool for communicating this should be. Again, determining what is newsworthy from the mass of information that sits within a company is a core PR skill: it doesn’t take a huge leap to figure out how to tell a compellingly story via a blog, podcast (internet radio), a Facebook group or a YouTube video.

Just as in the “traditional” PR domain, there are going to be some companies and agencies that get online PR and some that just get it spectacularly wrong. If as an industry we’re willing to put in the homework and really figure out how to translate our core skills into this new, exciting environment, Web 2.0 holds some great opportunities.

Some quick examples of PR 2.0 in action (all managed by Atmosphere in the last year)

YouTube video blog for Triumph Lingerie.

Microsite/blog for the ghd style lounge and accompanying Facebook group.

Facebook group to launch the Baileys Trunk Show (also one of SA’s first pop-up stores).

By Dan

Following is a selection of some of the more interesting stats from the survey:

• 73.4 percent have attended a meeting of bloggers, or MOB.
• Cape Town and Johannesburg/Pretoria account for more than 75 percent South Africa’s active bloggers.
• Over 40 percent of active bloggers in South Africa have written at least one blog prior to their current one.
• 58 percent of South Africa’s bloggers are married or live together and 46 percent of them have children.

Coverage to date has appeared in/on: The Sunday Times, Weekender, Weekend Argus, Rapport, City Press, 702, Radio 2000, Classic FM, computingza.co.za amongst many others.