Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Small Print: The views expressed in this post are not necessarily those of H&K. Awesomeness may vary depending on the spirit of the observer; awesomeness can go up and down but your house is not at risk.

It’s a grey Tuesday in London town so we’d like to share some things that we think are awesome in the hope that we can spread a little happiness. 

So, from L to R:

Awesome thing #1: Gareth Malone. If you haven’t seen any of Gareth’s TV shows, please please watch them. He is brilliant. This man should be given a weekly TV show – actually, this man should be given a country to run. Truly inspirational.

 Awesome thing #3: Our local grocery emporium has started stocking Christmas goodies. Leaving aside that it’s still September, this is exciting news as we have discovered Cadbury’s Magical Elves. Chocolate with popping candy. Make that magical popping candy. It’s hard to be rageful when your head is popping. Our recommendation: put the whole thing in your mouth at once. One day we might even try two AT THE SAME TIME. Awesome.

The Social Network opens this week. Premiere buzz says this is a big movie. We’ll see lots of renewed debate about who really came up with the concept for Facebook. While intriguing, does it really matter to most of us?

For me, this drama is a reminder of the difference between having ideas and making them happen. Practical skills tend to be lower down the org chart pyramid in communication agencies, but that’s not the case in the tech world. Code is king. Most creatives have a bottom drawer full of rejected concepts. If only I had studied computer science, I might have built a few of my ‘big ideas’ myself. Alas, I never got much farther than the infamous blink tag.

While we wait for the movie to open in the UK, we can watch the clips and the coverage. And wish we had gone to computer camp.

You may have noticed (or you may have been blissfully indifferent to) the fact that Web Curios has been absent for a while. So much has happened! I went to Rome! The visit of an old German man in a bulletproof car led to a rash of increasingly lazy and unfunny paedophile jokes! It was discovered that Bono’s not really making AIDS history, but is instead carrying out really, really crap (not to mention crass) direct marketing campaigns! Pea-headed footballer Stephen Ireland did wonders for the reputation of footballers everyhere by opening the doors of his lovely, tasteful, understated home! Truly, it has been a time of wonder and miracles, and it is a wonder we are not seeing rains of fish or frogs as a harbinger of the coming end times.

Ach, who am I kidding? September’s been a horrible month, webmongs, and I for one can’t wait to see the back of it. All I can say is that I hope the past few weeks of your lives have been better than the past few weeks of mine. Anyway, enough maudlin whinging; I’ve got nothing this week, ‘comedy’ intro-wise, so on with the webrubbish. ‘Enjoy’.

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On Monday, I was invited to attend TEDxLondon at the Science Museum. We were one of 82 satellite events hooked up to TEDxChange New York, where Melinda Gates and other top speakers marked the 10th Anniversary of the eight Millennium Development Goals. Now the MDGs are pretty heavy stuff. So while I was ready to be inspired by the talks, I wasn’t exactly expecting to enjoy them. Even though the event was catered by Jamie.

Hans Rosling, however, made me laugh out loud during his talk about child mortality. That’s a good thing, because it is such a heartbreaking topic. I learned heaps more than I would have from a depressing lecture. Hans uses an endearing personal charm and impish humor — in addition to his data visualizations — to make serious points sink in. It’s the comedy sugar that makes the medicine go down. And joyously celebrates all the progress being made around the world.

Mechai Viravaidya, the next speaker, would be raking in the Gold Lions imho if he did anything as shallow as advertising. He runs one of the largest non-profits in Thailand and is famous for, among other things, promoting family planning through desensitizing contraceptive use. His genius is using an arsenal of inventive and witty tactics to create positive behavior change. Being somewhat in that same business, I can but bow to a master. And stand in awe at all the amazing people who devote their talent to The Future We Make.

Mechai’s restaurant is called Cabbages & Condoms. They’ve got a statue of Tiger Woods made out of condoms. Loving.

For the full event round up, check some other blog posts: here and here, as well as cool pictures of the London venue. Another local TEDx is happening in October. Hope I get to see you there.

It appears that Britain’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Authority, has had enough of bankers discussing merger and acquisition activities with the media. In a paper that they’ve distributed this afternoon they claim that they have:

“identified several articles in the media that contained specific and precise information about corporate transactions before they were formally announced by issuers”

The paper then carries on to say that “media reports were preceded by telephone conversations between insiders on a transaction and journalists”

In other words bankers have been discussing M&A activity with the media, in all probability in an attempt to alter the terms of that activity. Following a year in which we’ve seen high profile deals such as Cadbury/Kraft light the blue touch paper in Whitehall, you can perhaps understand the FSA’s desire to try and get a firmer grip on what it calls “the suspected practice of core insiders strategically leaking inside information”.

Their solution however appears pretty draconian – in a nutshell, firms will now have to route any phonecalls from the media straight to their PR team. Non-PRs meanwhile will have to refuse to talk to media unless a member of their PR team is present (either in person, on the phone or copied into emails).

As the FSA puts it, this directive will relate to handling any “inside information” which they state includes “corporate transactions, trading updates and regular financial information”. In other words, pretty much any financial data that a company holds.

Strong stuff, but the real question is, will it actually work? Already, the announcement has provoked a mixture of sarcasm and derision from journalists on Twitter – witness the Telegraph’s Louise Armitstead and Breakingviews’ Peter Thal Larsen:

As my colleague Jonathan has just pointed out, one thing this likely will  mean though is that City PR agencies increasingly find themselves ‘gatekeeping’ on the FSA’s behalf…

It’s not often I see something on Facebook, Twitter or some other social networking site that I feel compelled to blog about.  But I write this as a forty year old and it made me think about what advice I would give.  Most is in fact covered off in the 340+ comments on the Coolhunters Facebook page. Just scroll down to the comment:  For those who are 30+, What advice would you give to your 20-year-old self? and read some of the comments… now standing at 350 comments and rising!  Reading the many responses made me laugh as I had heard them before in when I was in my 20’s and I thought, bah! I have loads of time before I have to worry about all that!  The rat race that we call the life we are living can be fraught with many worries and diversions but all of us have a duty to enjoy the time we have here be us 20+, 30+ or 40+… and more!  Be that simply looking up (instead of down at your feet) as you walk along to work. Smile and say good morning to someone you don’t know… and always tell the people around that you love that you do, because one day that opportunity might not be there.  Or maybe just something as simple as breaking a habit and doing something today that you have thought about but never got around to doing. Read the rest of this entry »

International Talk like a Pirate Day is fun. But you can blabber t’ yer mates in Pirate lingo anytime on Facebook. I be likin’ the Pirate setting under languages. Ok, it doesn’t actually translate your posts, just the interface language. A bit of silliness to remind us that FB is about yer mates. Just adjust ye riggin’s in account setting. Follow Cap’n Slappy, Co-Founder International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and #ITLAPD too. All together: Arrrr!

Cross-posted on Brand Street

A tweet that stood out for me yesterday on my (too infrequent) trawl of the microblogging site, was one that criticised the defacing of Barclays branded ’Boris Bikes’, but at the same time celebrated the creativity of the vandals because of their efforts to ape the look of the genuine Barclays brand (I’ve included a picture below and apologise in advance for those that may be offended by the language). For me this highlighted nicely the potential pitfalls of overtly branding in an urban environment and of supporting a good cause that aims to ‘belong’ to the community.

The original tweet

Defacing public property is unfortunately not a new thing and also very costly to society, but it is something that when done with the right degree of wit, style or even artistic merit, can engender appreciation among those that witness it, as the tweet that started this post suggests. This is in part I suspect because the community feels the need to indoctrinate any new public schemes and literally mark them in a way that assimilates them with the community.

In some ways I feel Barclays overt branding has to some extent encouraged those would be vandals out there, probably in no small part because of the general antipathy that many people in the UK feel towards banks as a result of the risky behaviours that required government bailouts and the significant difference between average pay and the bonus payments enjoyed by bankers in the Capital. I can’t help but feel that more subtle branding might have been more palatable.

It was a bold move by Barclays to support a public scheme such as this. It is a scheme that I wholeheartedly support as a keen cyclist and a person who believes in publicly/privately funded schemes that encourage more healthy  lifestyles. I do hope that episodes like this do not put Barclays or other potential sponsors of public schemes off.

I have yet to see any response from Barclays or Transport for London (TFL) to this vandalism, but hopefully the offending lettering will just be quietly removed. On the very same day that I saw the tweet I also happened across an article in the Evening Standard in which Barclays and TFL were supporting London Fashion Week with limited edition designer bikes, which I think is a great way to support tourism and the community of London in a fun and quirky way. Here’s hoping this is just the start of a more civilised assimilation of the Barclays Boris Bike.

The Offending Twitpic

Previously on Hank… Dedicated readers will have seen Mr Smith’s thoughts on Muir’s Two Laws of the Internet. To paraphrase:  have good content and don’t be a ****. This also works well for life in general. (If you’re going to prioritise,  I’d go with the second one.)

It turns out that it’s equally true for corporate social responsibility (CSR)/ corporate philanthropy/ blah blah… whatever term floats your boat. If you’re going to take the impact of your organisation on our planet and its people seriously, then do it properly. It’s not about seeing an increase in sales, getting your staff to stay a bit longer, or making sure you have influential friends in case things do get tricky …  it’s not even about good PR (although, if you do it right, all of these could be yours). What it is about is identifying issues that resonate with your organisation - whether because of the resources your business uses or the impact you have on particular communities – and committing to making a difference and finding solutions.  If you don’t do this, any good you might have accidentally done will be washed away in the torrent of criticism you will rightfully receive for being self-serving, self-aggrandising and short-termist. And because of the joys of social media, everyone will find out a lot quicker.

Muir’s Two Laws of the Universe – not just the internet.