Welcome to the Escape Blog

Bits and pieces you may have missed this week:

• The role of citizen journalism in modern democracy - An essay from the BBC’s Helen Boaden
• We’re all blogging now - blogging without the technology
• Social media will not kill PR, but it does expose industry weakness
• Sun Microsystems axes 6,000 staff, digs PR hole, jumps in - how not to publicise redundancies
• CEOs take on Social Media (Business Week)
• Close to you? - more from the beeb on social media and journalism
• Times Online to combine with Sky News
• The online FT should be pink with embarrassment over its redesign (Guardian)

Missed anything?

I have finally restored my pride in being an American. And this in part thanks to the technology and media used in Barack Obama’s historic campaign and by its brilliant campaigners (including me!). For the first time, we can truly see the impact social media has had on an American election, with thousands of blog posts, messages and comments being made on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and many other social networking mediums. This is something that Mr. Obama’s campaigners clearly saw and that Mr. McCain’s campaign was missing.

Mr. McCain was too traditional, and ignored the pockets of young voters who were ready and willing to make history by choosing not to reach them. Interestingly, young voters are usually not very reliable and historically known to skip voting for a nice day in. This time it was different; young voters showed up in droves to really make a difference to the outcome of the election. All the while, they were influencing their wide networks to follow their lead, and having extensive dialogues where they argued for one candidate or another. The 2008 election has proved that it is no longer enough to target the traditional media, it is important to speak to each and every single person through mediums that they are likely to pay attention to. The internet has officially become a powerful campaign tool.

Social media has also been used to follow the results of the election. Many people were posting the results on Myspace and Twitter as they came in, and early celebrations for Mr. Obama’s victory were happening on the blogosphere. Traditional news outlets were hesitant in calling it a victory for the Democrats, so it was impossible to follow the election on television. I had to turn to blogs to calm my anxiety, and see that Mr. Obama was indeed far ahead of his opponent.  

Obviously it is not just social media that influenced the outcome of the election. The main theme of Mr. Obama’s campaign was change, as many Americans were simply tired of witnessing their country becoming a world pariah, held back by conservative policies that instead of keeping the United States as a country people respected, made its policies and ideals challenged throughout the world.

Most importantly, it was great to see that on the 40^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s death, America was finally ready to elect its first black president. This is a very proud moment for me, because it shows that the extensive history of segregation is finally behind the Americans, and that Dr. King’s dream is finally becoming a reality. The USA is a country filled with diversity, and made all the richer for it, so what better way of celebrating this than making Mr. Obama its Commander-in-Chief?

PS: I also feel it is appropriate to include a quick guide to how the Electoral College works so as to clear any confusion anyone might have.

The Electoral College is made of elected representatives who officially and formally select the US President and Vice President. It may surprise you to know that despite all talk that Mr. Obama has won, the Electoral College will not officially cast its vote until the 15^th of December. The American voter casts their vote for the electors, and although the electors can vote for whichever candidate they choose, they make a pledge to vote for a specific candidate (which is how we know at this point that Mr. Obama has won as he has the most pledges, adding to over 270 votes).

The Electoral College has 538 votes, however, to become President, 270 need to be won. Each state has a number of electors matching the number of Senators and Congress representatives. Washington DC, although not a state, is also given a number of electors equal to the number of electors held by the least populous state. If no presidential candidate has the majority votes, the matter is then passed to the House of Representatives.

Do you know what happened to the last PC you got rid of? Whether you took it to be recycled, donated it for reuse or sold it on, there’s a chance its final resting place is actually in a smouldering heap in a developing country.

The WEEE directive, intended to prevent our e-waste from being dumped in landfill sites in the UK, has led to some enterprising law-breakers taking the problem to a whole new level. E-waste cowboys are dumping shipments of trash computer equipment in countries that don’t have the facilities to deal with it:

• Just one in four of these PCs actually work at time of shipping
• The toxic fumes from burning PCs cause health problems
• Children paid to scavenge through dangerous materials

We’ve been working with IT charity Computer Aid International to raise awareness of and hopefully find a solution to this problem with a wide-reaching new campaign and our first government e-petition.

The real problem is that the government has brought in an ambitious directive to bring the UK’s e-waste stream under control, but has little resource dedicated to policing it – with enough support, our petition can help bring about a change to this.

So do your homework before taking the first disposal option available for your obsolete computer equipment and join our campaign for action against this toxic trade by signing the petition here.

I was away last week so this post contains two weeks-worth of interesting bits and pieces from around the web!

• Two pieces of start-up credit crunch reaction. Firstly, a very honest video post from Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur on the day he was forced to sack 1/3 of his staff. Elsewhere, Jason Calacanis with his musings on the financial situation and how start-ups can take measures to boost survival
• Eric Huggers has taken over the reins as director of Future Media and Technology at the BBC and gives a first interview to the Guardian
• An interesting debate [read the comments] on Twitter and how it should be used from Charles Arthur
• A post examining how social media is beginning to change the way journalists report the news
• As a proud new iPhone owner, this innovative product caught the eye and will surely be a must-have for many gadget enthusiasts as the cold winter arrives…

Missed anything…?

The blogosphere and twittersphere has been murmuring today about an article on Wired written by Valleywag’s (Silicon Valley’s notorious gossip website) Paul Boutin.

In the article, Boutin claims that blogging is dead:

“Scroll down Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and you’ll find personal sites have been shoved aside by professional ones. Most are essentially online magazines: The Huffington Post. Engadget. TreeHugger. A stand-alone commentator can’t keep up with a team of pro writers cranking out up to 30 posts a day.”

I’ve written on this topic before [Boutin cites the Calacanis drama too]. And I think - again - Boutin is missing the point. Sure, media organisations, professional journalists and even ‘professional bloggers’ have jumped on blogging bandwagon and are now churning out posts all over the place, but that in itself does not diminish the power of blogs and ‘amateur’ bloggers. [The use of ‘professional’ and ‘amateur’ is clunky because of  connotations associated, but I think you get the point]

Of course, when there were fewer blogs and fewer bloggers, it was easier for bloggers to be heard on a wider scale, but was this a good thing?

Now, I am a big fan of Twitter, but Twitter, Facebook et al work in different ways. Brevity is often good, but I rarely find myself musing on a 140 character Tweet in the same way I would on a thought-provoking blog post.

Blogging works best when the writer is focusing on a particular niche that they are passionate and knowledgeable about. And when you discover a network of bloggers discussing a niche that is of interest to you, then that can be very powerful and exciting. Professional bloggers are not as interested in ‘niche’ because the area of influence is not big enough.

We shouldn’t be naive enough to think that blogging (or at least ‘amateur’ blogging) will be around for ever or that is it even yet hitting mainstream, but I [still] don’t think it is dead or dying!

picture credit

Debby and Sarah-Anne

Originally uploaded by DebbyP

Our resident blogger, Danny, is on holiday this week, which forces me to finally pop my blogging cherry - I’ve been meaning to taken my first steps into the blogosphere for a long time, but something has been stopping me. As PRs we are experts at advising clients how to handle themselves in the media, from the safety of our surburban sanctuary, but when it comes to putting ourselves in the limelight through press interviews or blogging it can be very unnerving. Anyway hey ho - they say once you’ve started you can’t stop so let’s see!

The event was brilliantly organised and executed by Action for Children and kindly hosted by Ernst and Young. In the earlier part of the evening, we did appallingly in the quiz - I’d like to think we were smart enough to win, had the whole team taken part, but unfortunately Sarah-Anne and I “don’t do quizzes” and had much more fun catching up with our old Banner chums and posing for silly photos (see above) - all in the name of charity of course!

While we technically spent the whole night outside, I have to admit that most of us didn’t do a whole lot of sleeping. Rather we enjoyed the more social element of the proceedings and the stunning views of Tower Bridge lit up on a clear Autumn night. Clear, is not a word to best describe how our heads felt after just a few short hours sleep however, and after a quick bacon sarnie at 6am we all headed home to curl up and recover in our beds, which admittedly took most of the weekend.

However, we suffered for a good cause (even the drink contributions went to charity) and I’m proud to say that The Wildfire team raised nearly £4,000 which contributed to a massive £320,000 raised by Byte Night so far this year . Well done team and a huge thanks to every one of our clients, colleagues and friends who donated.

It’s never too late to donate. Just visit www.justgiving.com/wildfirepr.

Self-proclaimed marketing-genius Marta Kagan, creator of the brilliant What the f**k is social media and Director of Marketing at Viximo has got the blogosphere chatting again after announcing her plan to blog about “those products/services/brands that agree to donate $100 to Doctors Without Borders.”

It’s an interesting one.

Marta believes that through her blog, she is giving brands access to her online communities on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook:

“I will spend time getting to know your product/company, and then… I’ll blog about it. I’ll Tweet about it. I’ll share it with my friends on Facebook and LinkedIn. I might even send out a good ole fashioned email, if that sort of ‘old school’ communication is warranted.

“In other words, $100 ensures that conversations will be started. They’ll travel. And in the meantime, you’ll be making a tax-deductible contribution to an extremely worthy cause.”

At present the take-up has not been huge. BUT. It is a great example of how online marketing is developing and how getting online communities discussing a brand can be incredibly beneficial… IF YOU TARGET THE RIGHT COMMUNITY!

And that is the key. If your target audience matches the xx number of people in Marta’s community, then $100 is a drop in the ocean.

So, via Twitter, I discovered today that Pizza Hut are apparently rebranding. Further investigation found the FT, who confidently stated:

“Pizza Hut’s UK business is set to throw aside more than 35 years of history today by changing its name to Pasta Hut. In spite of a £17m investment updating many of its restaurants only this year, the group will spend a further £100m over the next six years to revamp its more than 700-strong UK chain, extend the number of outlets and launch a new, expanded menu.”

Not only the FT picked up on this, all the UK’s leading national and trade publications ran the story (mad.co.uk even ran graphs!).

But it just doesn’t seem quite right! Pizza Hut is a globally recognised brand - why change that!

Go to www.pastahut.com and it all becomes even more strange, as the site asks visitors “Do you think we should change our name?”. Seems a bit odd when the announcement has already been made. Even more surprising given that the vote is currently 70-30 against!

Bold rebranding exercise or an even bolder PR and marketing campaign to give the brand a new health conscious edge?

The Times wins the prize:

“To reinforce the point, 30 branches are to be renamed (temporarily) Pasta Hut.”

Good work

picture credit

If you don’t get a reply from the office then it’s because we are all on the street (well, some of us, and most of us are taking our iPhones to check those all important emails…!!).

Yes… that’s right… tonight… (drum-roll) Claire, Debby, Sarah-Anne, Kate and Danny will be sleeping rough near London Bridge in aid of Action for Children as part of Byte Night.

There will be some live twittering going on (follow @katiesol and @DannyWhatmough) and a full run-down complete with photos will be available next week!

In the meantime, there is still time to sponsor us, as you sit in the warmth of your own home watching Little Britain USA and Jonathan Ross!

Visit http://www.justgiving.com/wildfirepr

Thanks so much to all who have given generously so far…

picture credit

Follow our fellow byters here:

http://totalcoverage.co.uk/blog/2008/10/03/tonight-is-byte-night/
http://bytenight.blogspot.com/2008/10/stars-come-out-for-byte-night-theresa.html
http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2008/09/30/byte-night/
http://siliconcomrades.blogspot.com/2008/10/one-day-to-go-one-thousand-pounds.html
http://binaryaddition.blogspot.com/2008/10/byte-night-sleep-out.html

This week’s round-up of interesting blog posts, articles, announcements and more:

• Do you still have a landline? (Guardian) Looking at how the rise of the mobile phone and mobile broadband could spell the end for the traditional landline
• Surrey town is spam capital of Britain (Guardian) Nice bit of coverage for a survey here, and not too far from Surbiton!
• Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web (Wired) Chrome continues to make the headlines and this is a fascinating insight into how it came into being and Google’s plans for the future
• The 25 Most Influential People on the Web (Business Week) Yawn…another list! This one however throws up some interesting inclusion, not just the so-called web-celebrities

Missed anything?