Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Webmongs! In a show of MASSIVE DEFIANCE I am today saying XXXX XXX (use your nous and creativity to establish exactly which expletive I am masking behind those cunning Xs) to my workload and instead channeling all my energies into bringing you some stuff off the web. You hear that, The Man? YOU HEAR THAT???? Eh? Oh.

It appears that The Man couldn’t give a flying one about my defiance, knowing as he does that the battle may be mine but the war is almost certainly set to be his.  I hate you, The Man.

Strangely enough, The Man’s ambivalence to my defiance is pretty analogue to my feelings about the new toy for grown-ups which has been launched today (as an aside, may I just quote the ever-wonderful Saul Williams here and reference the conspiracy-theorists’ anti-Apple belief…”no one seems to recognize the symbols come to life / The bitten apple on the screen, and Jesus had a wife…”…JUST SAYING, is all) – for a full, unexpurgated viewpoint click here (WARNING – BAD WORDS).

For those of you, though, who are fully intending to line Steve Jobs’ pockets even further and sit about stroking your new i-pets to the appreciative breathy moans of your i-onanist colleagues, can I suggest that you all get the Scrabble app, which is the best thing I’ve yet seen on the iPad. Apart, actually, from a demo of the Telegraph’s forthcoming app, which looks very shiny indeed (it won’t actually make reading the news any better, but it will make it prettier – and that’s what counts, eh? I despair, I really do).

Anyway, enough bitter misanthropy. Or maybe not; we’ll see how we go.

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Below are a few digital musings from events over the past week or so. Specifically, these include an organisation who want you to access their content but can’t entice you; another who wants to access the content of others but can’t; and one company who probably wishes the ability for anyone to create online content wasn’t quite so easy…

Firstly, to News International, who this week launched their new, soon-to-be hidden behind a paywall, Times and Sunday Times websites (and an iPad version of The Times today). The response to the design of these sites has been positive amongst media peers, though as the tweet below shows, some people are already abandoning the paper’s website before the paywall even kicks in:

Someone else also pointed out that compared to other media sources, the cost of buying a hole year of The Times doesn’t necessarily stack up:

There are of course arguments against both these points – James Harding, editor of The Times, made some pretty robust efforts on the Today programme for example. However, a quick (and wholly unrepresentative) straw poll amongst friends outside of the office yesterday quickly confirmed two things:

1. Knowledge of the paywall launch is patchy at best

2. The majority of people aren’t going to pay for it and will simply go to other media sources (a fact confirmed by a survey in the FT on Wednesday)

Point two echoes the view of many in the industry, though the first point might disappoint News International somewhat. Either way, the decision has been made and the clock is ticking.

Secondly, I was at a networking event last week and got talking all things social media with a senior PR from a financial services company. Inevitably, the conservation turned to Twitter at one point and it was then that the PR revealed how he had been trying to convince his employer of the need to have access to Twitter and other social media at work for well over a year without success.

We then discussed how this was effectively preventing him from doing a large chunk of his job on a daily basis. Surely if any sector needs to monitor online conversations then it’s the financial sector given events over the past two years?

Finally, BP, which as well as tackling an ongoing environmental crisis, now have a new problem in for the form of a Twitter doppleganger. A friend first pointed this out to me on Monday lunchtime, at which point @BPGlobalPR had around 7,000 followers. Fast forward to this morning, and that tally has spiralled to over 70,000. The feed is also attracting increasing coverage from traditional media with CNET describing the posts yesterday as “comedy black gold”

So far, BP has appeared fairly relaxed about this development, concentrating solely on stopping the leak instead. Despite this initial stance it’s going to be interesting to see if they change tack at all over the coming days, particularly if the latest containment efforts suffer any further setbacks or the content changes in tone or substance.

It’s Spring. Even in London, where it seems the lion doesn’t ever give way to the lamb. Which is an added reason I am so psyched to be going to the Cannes Lions Festival next month.

Winning a Lion is the holy grail of the annual crusade to Cannes. But creatives and clients alike flock to selected seminars in order to bring back some useful inspiration in addition to rosé colored memories.

For the H&K seminar, we wanted to contribute something that would literally get the delegates up off their seats. So we invited Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere to help us get interactive IRL. His work has inspired me (and many others) for years. It will be even more amazing to be a part of it.

Are you going to Cannes? We need your help. Please rsvp to our event on Facebook, follow me or H&K on Twitter, or simply show up on Tuesday 22 June at 11am in Debussy where Charlie will prep us for action.

Like any social application that gets better and better the more people use it, our mission in Cannes will need all our friends to make it huge. Having the biggest concentration of creative extroverts in the world mashed up with Charlie’s inventive direction is guaranteed to produce some fun.

For now, here’s a couple of Improv Everywhere classics to hold us until June.

Anyone paying close attention to developments in the energy industry in recent months couldn’t have escaped the excitement over shale gas. Even the FT’s Gideon Rachman is writing about it (see yesterday’s FT). Shale gas, for those of you who don’t know, is natural gas trapped in shale – a type of sedimentary rock. Until recent years shale gas remained inaccessible – we simply lacked the technology to extract gas from the shale rock. Now, thanks to a hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’) process, gas can be extracted relatively easily. Due to the breakthrough in drilling technology, shale gas has enabled the US to become the largest global gas producer overtaking Russia. With shale fields found across the US and Europe and with energy policymakers around the world looking for new sources of energy, the future of shale gas looks rosy.

Or is it?  After all, the energy industry has seen more new dawns than virtually any other sector of the economy. The recent past has told us that different types of energy can fall out of fashion almost as quickly as consumer goods. Moreover, there are concerns over the extent to which the extraction of shale gas causes damage to the environment, particularly to the water table. In short, questions remain.

it is clear, however, that gas shale is here to stay – the huge investments made by the energy majors suggest that it will have a significant impact on global gas supplies for decades to come. Shale gas will have a particular impact on the European energy landscape. ConocoPhillips, the third-largest energy company in the US, recently announced (14 May) that it will start drilling for shale gas with its partner Lane Energy Poland Sp. z.o.o. in Poland next month. Poland is judged to be extremely well-placed to benefit from shale gas with huge potential reserves.

Our recent work with Nord Stream and other major energy companies has highlighted to us the complexities of providing safe and reliable energy for the EU’s 500 million+ consumers. It’s a cliché but with environmental concerns paramount – see the latest moves by the European Commission to reduce CO² emissions by 2020 – Europe’s energy future truly stands at a crossroads. With the advent of shale gas, there may be more energy on the way but the market may have got a lot more complex.

Hey! Look! I’m back. It’s been a long time, webmongs, and I’ve missed you. You especially (but you less so). In last week’s sadly abandoned draft of webcurios (IT screwups and vile, filthy work intervened) I spent a few lines wittering on about how we were now – let’s travel back in time 7 days and see EXACTLY what I was thinking….

*insert wavy flashback lines here*

Everything is blue. Apart from those bits that are yellow. Yes, webmongs, we (well, those of us living in Dave’s Britain – it’s his country, now, and we should be grateful that he’s letting us stay in it. For the moment. Until all the background checks are complete) are having to come to terms with a society in which things are STRANGE and DIFFERENT, and where this image is now permanently burnt onto my retinas:

Just imagine their wedding night. IMAGINE.

*repeat wavy flashback lines as we return to the present*

Wow, I feel like Sam Beckett. No, not that one. This one. He’s loads better (parenthetically, how much would I like Sam to come along and take over my life for a few days right now? OH BOY).

Anyway, a week is a short time in politics, and, frankly, The Cleggeron is passe – ALL HAIL OUR ONE-EYED OLYMPIAN OVERLORDS:

On reflection, Wenlock appears to be excreting rainbows in this image

Now, in the interests of full disclosure I need to point out that my lovable employers are one of the agencies contracted by 2012. Having said that, we had nothing to do with the mascots, so I feel fairly able to speak frankly on them. I think they’re brilliant, in part due to their uncanny resemblance to this long-forgotten purple despot from videogames past:

Less cuddly, on balance

As you’d expect, reaction to the mascots has been…mixed – regardless of your opinion, though, this photoshop thread on B3ta is genius – check it out.

Anyway, I’m absolutely buggered for time this week so enough of this frippery and onwards with the links and ting.

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Thanks to fun apps like My Tweet 16, all our fledgling tweets can be uncovered. As the countdown to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival begins, I was reminded of mine.

With a cosmic bit of serendipity, my first trip to this holy ground was last year when H&K brought Biz Stone to our seminar. We held the first ever Tweetup at Cannes. Biz answered live tweets from the audience and how he describes Twitter is worth reviewing. Here are a couple of clips but the whole seminar is on our YouTube channel. Enjoy and stay tuned as we start to talk about what adventures this year’s seminar will bring.

What is Twitter?

The benefits of Twitter to companies

On Wednesday this week, as is traditional when a new Parliament is elected, all the new MPs gathered on the steps of Westminster Hall for their welcome photo. Alongside the usual intrigue about the likely rising stars and ministers-in-waiting, there are two statistics from this new class which are of particularly interest.

Firstly, the sheer number in the photo. There will be a staggering 232 new MPs in the House of Commons as a result of the fallout of the expenses scandal and significant change in voting at the election. That means that over a third of the chamber will spend the first few months trying to grasp the intricacies and workings of Parliament at the same time as making crucial decisions for the country on tackling the budget deficit (and trying to make a name for themselves).

Secondly, of those 232 new MPs, 10% have a background in financial services and one in eight has previously worked as a private sector consultant. This compares to only 5% and one in twenty-five respectively when New Labour took power in 1997 according to The Guardian.

Why is this significant? On the one hand, this is a good thing. The injection of new blood in the Commons will serve as a catalyst for new ideas and give momentum to the crucial debates facing the chamber in the next twelve months. The change in personnel may also begin (though only begin) to heal the rift between Parliament and the public, with many of those tainted by the expenses scandal now relieved of their posts.

On the other hand though, the ‘rise of the executive MP’ (as The Sunday Times labelled it at the weekend) denies the Commons of some of the variety of expertise it enjoyed previously. While the argument that an increase in the number of financial experts will help the reform of the financial services sector is valid, the influx of these experts and their colleagues from the consulting and business worlds has resulted in the loss of many experts in other fields. Given financial services reform isn’t the only pressing item on the agenda, this could present a problem once we get into the nitty gritty of reform in other areas.

In light of this then, might it be worthwhile reconsidering the long-proposed plans for an elected House of Lords? Traditionally, the upper chamber has reinforced and in many cases gone beyond the expertise of the Commons in specific policy areas. Its role in the detailed scrutiny of complex legislation will therefore be as important as ever during this parliament.

If the second chamber becomes wholly elected though, is there a danger that it will also face a similar rise of ‘executive Lords’ with similarly constituted professional backgrounds and hence the potential loss of wider expertise? Will we see the current, appointed experts replaced by professional politicians seeking to gain a foothold in Westminster via the second chamber?

It is certainly an interesting question, although as the FT reported today, reform of the Lords is far from the top of the new Prime Minister’s mind at present, despite a commitment by the coalition to examine the issue during their five year term. The current structure of financial compensation offered to Lords would also be a likely barrier to this scenario (as might be the nagging feeling that an elected Lords could be equally or more legitimate than the Commons).

Nevertheless, it may be worthwhile looking again at the arguments for and against a fully elected second chamber.

The iconography of 1997 has set the standard for all political parties.

Tony Blair asking the carefully coordinated crowd of Labour supporters and the Royal festival Hall at 5 am on the morning after the ’97 landslide and saying “A new day has dawned has it not.” Him walking down Downing Street shaking hands with a similarly coordinated group of supporters waving Union jacks.

The problem with those who have tried to emulate that is that they haven’t quite ever had the landslide behind it. In the Scottish election in 2007, Alex Salmond landed by helicopter on a lawn in Edinburgh on a bright, sunny afternoon. He was only one seat ahead of Labour and had no majority.

And so this week, David Cameron didn’t want his prime ministership to be remembered for the speech he made on a dark, and unseasonally nippy night when he walked through the door of Number Ten for the first time.

And so to the rose garden and his love-in with Nick Clegg on a sunny afternoon. Tone was everything.

Yes, the two could not have been closer. But has their iconic moment set a bar that they will struggle to reach in the months and years ahead?

The two standing behind lecturns was reminiscent of the tv debates – except in this round one of the contestants had been voted off and there were two politicians not three.

The bonhomie was remarkable. The body language warm. But the promise of new politics?

Tony Blair’s stated aim of being ‘whiter than white’ came to haunt him, first with the Bernie Ecclestone affair, then the Iraq War, then ‘cash for honours’. Of course , subsequent events discredited those words.

And of course, new governments have to be ambitious. But as the first question they received from Channel Four’s Political Editor Gary Gibbons pointed out, they sounded as though this coalition government was a new dawn they had both sought rather than a difficult solution to an awkward situation.

Had I been advising in Number Ten, I would have suggested a different tone.

The public finances are in a parlous state. Radical action will have to be taken and it will be painful. In those circumstances – and with a hung parliament – the two leaders needed to bury their differences and come up with a credible stable plan in the national interest.

The message should have been that this will be tough, but that they jointly have resolve to see it through.

Instead the overriding message was that this is a new politics, a new era and that there was no difference between them.

It is a difficult message for the public to understand. A few weeks ago Nick Clegg said that David Cameron formed coalitions with ‘nutters’ in the European Parliament. Now they are best mates.

The public verdict on May 6 was unclear – other than they didn’t want Gordon Brown’s Labour Party in government.

I am not sure they voted for a ‘new politics’. I am not sure they would have believed anyone who said that was the plan.

Cleggmania vanished as quickly as it appeared. Cameron couldn’t seal the deal with the public even with his dire threats of a hung parliament.

The Prime Minister admitted that it will be possible to find splits between individual LibDem and Tory MPs.

The decision he and his advisers must have taken ahead of the press conference was that the impact of those splits would be negated by this appearance of being united. I fear they may be enhanced by the contrast of the press conference and spats to come.

Grit and determination might have been better. Two men doing their best for a nation in difficult times in a difficult political situation.

An election result which neither of them desired, they now say has led to a conclusion they have both long desired. Mmmm. Careful now, or new politics will look like old spin.

Lets see how this iconic press conference looks in six months time.

Nick Clegg’s hope was for a ‘hung’ or ‘balanced’ Parliament so that he could lead the LibDems into government.

He got his wish – but he didn’t wish for this.

Having lost seats rather than make the gains which ‘Cleggmania’ briefly offered, he is a weakened leader and each of the options in front of him potentially offer the end of his career.

Option 1: If Clegg joins with the Tories thousands of LibDem supporters and voters will be devastated. His hands will be soiled with the cuts the Tories have to make. And if any deal does not involve electoral reform – and it is difficult to see how one could – he will be seen as a man who sold his principles for a ministerial car and little else.

Option 2: If Clegg shores up Labour – even without Gordon Brown – he will be seen as the man who revived an administration which the public had rejected. And there would be no guarantee that in those circumstances a referendum on PR wouldn’t be seen instead as a referendum on what would be bound to be an unpopular government.

Option 3: But if Clegg decides to do a deal with no one the LibDems will be seen as not having the spine for government.

The deal with the Tories is the likeliest at the moment. But whether LibDem and Tory backbenchers can keep their discipline for very long is very doubtful.

Another election within months seems a certainty at the moment. And going into that, Clegg’s hands are unlikely to look as clean as they once did.

As the general election dies down and the parties pause and take stock (for a while at least), I thought I’d give my thoughts on why each party failed to really target the people…

I don’t know about you, but all this draconian, propaganda riddled mudslinging between political parties of recent weeks has left a bad taste in my mouth. The Conservatives may be inching their way in to power as I type, but there’s part of me that wonders whether their success lies within their campaigning efforts or whether it was just pure luck…

For some reason, the political parties in the UK still think a generalist approach to marketing will pay off. How, when you’re up against competitors with practically the same arguments to you, are you meant to get your voice heard above the commotion with a ‘one size fits all’ approach? 

In a society where even a Supermarket can tell me what I fancy for dinner and have it delivered to my house before even I know what I want, I was frankly appalled by the generalist approach most parties went about their campaigning. I’m a 24 year old, dare I admit it, first time voter – a potential goldmine for any party that wants to harbour long-time supporters… but where was that nugget of information that would have made a difference to my life?

Yes, I totally see that there’s a need to appeal to the masses – let’s be honest, an election is essentially a popularity contest. But with the increasing level of insight we have into consumer behaviour, perhaps those responsible for creating the leaders’ campaigns should have taken the time to get under our skin a little bit more, rather than take the easy way out and discredit their counterparts. If brands can figure out what we want, why can’t Britain’s politicians?

Well that is my thought on the matter, anyway. Your opinions, as always, are very welcome.