Hill+Knowlton Strategies

We need some UK shoppers who are in market now for a research project we are doing. Can you help?

Share your journey as you look for your next smartphone.
Receive ≈£130 ($200) towards the purchase

We are looking for people between 18-45 who:
• Are about to purchase a new smartphone, but have no clear brand affiliation or preference
• Use the Internet to conduct product research prior to purchase
• Can document their shopping journey over 2-4 weeks, including post purchase

Is this you? Just email our Caroline Bourdeau right now.

If selected, you’ll need to share your search for the right smartphone on your social spaces of choice (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) Plus, you’ll get access to a secure site where you can post a live diary of your experience in researching information and seeking advice. We’ll provide guidelines, but it is pretty easy to do.

Our staff isn’t eligible, but please share with your friends.

Why me...one of the questions you'll be asked

If you’ve been thinking about applying to Hill & Knowlton’s graduate scheme but not sure where to start or what we’re looking for, here are some top tips from our current crop of H&K grads, Chris, Daisy and Becca on what makes a successful grad applicant:

1. Read widely and understand your industry

PR is a broad discipline and spans many sectors, including consumer packaged goods, technology, healthcare, retail & leisure, financial & professional services just to name a few. It’s important like any other job to familiarise yourself with the industry and the sectors involved. A good starting point is to pick up with a copy of PR Week and read about the latest news and campaigns and increase your media consumption to see how brands and companies are being talked about in the press.

2. Digital ‘do’

There’s no denying that digital is important these days. Most campaigns have some form of digital element involved so it’s important to have an understanding of how Facebook, Twitter and blogger campaigns work. Research around successful digital campaigns and come armed with examples of digital work you’ve seen and liked. Even better, try and think about why they’ve worked (or haven’t) and what you would do to differently.

Also, if you’re not on Twitter already, it’s always worth opening an account and try to understand how it works.

3. Be prepared

Take a look at H&K’s website to see our recent campaigns, the brands we look after and community manage to familiarise yourself with the work we do. You can also find us on Twitter, HANK and vimeo to give you a better idea of what it’s like working at H&K towers.

4. Be a team player

We work in a collaborative environment, be it cross-sector or across different markets. If you do get invited to the assessment day, remember to pace yourself, listen to others contributions and don’t try and dominate with your own. It is difficult to ignore the fact that you are essentially competing against all other people on the day, but those who take that attitude into the team task are doomed to failure. Be prepared to work together to shine as a team.

Remember no idea is a bad idea during a brainstorm. Look to build upon or take inspiration from other ideas rather than dismissing them, and make sure all feedback is constructive rather than critical.

5. And finally…

Don’t be afraid to eat as many sandwiches as you want at lunch on the day of the assessment. Your lack of fear in taking the last egg and cress could give you a competitive edge due to increased energy levels in the second half of the day.

Good luck!

Follow the grads on:

@chrissssmith

@daisysheps

@juange18

@liyywln

“Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness; close bosom friend of the maturing sun…” – or that’s what Keats said. Personally speaking, I think Keats can do one, as can September and Autumn in general. Everything smells of wet dog and regret, it’s cold and miserable and it’s now just the long, slow trudge towards another season of crass mass-consumerism and endless, interminable, incomprehensible perfume adverts (NB – anyone who works in advertising who reads this, please feel free to explain to me why perfume advertising is so oblique, as I have literally no idea).

Think, then, of this edition of Web Curios as the lightbox to your SAD, the plaster to your axewound (for future reference, an unpleasant conjunction of words to Google), the United Nations to your genocide. I’m here to help. To that end, here are some recommendations for awesome stuff you can do in London over the next few months (NB – that last link is one of the best things I’ve seen in years, very much recommended. Oh, and for an interesting take on Libya, you could do worse than read this). In the real world! NOT ON THE INTERNET! Crazy but true.

But for now it’s still all about the internet. Well, on this particular blog it is, anyway. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do (though I’d prefer it if you didn’t; I’m needy, and low-to-moderate traffic figures are all that’s standing between me and a P45).

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I’m excited to be here at our office in Copenhagen polishing my presentation for tomorrow. This is our third full day D2 conference of 2011 following on the London event in June. We are blessed to once again have top shelf speakers from Facebook, Google Mobile, TNS, Wikipedia and especially welcome a new addition: Google+. In an input survey we are doing with our clients to structure the next conference, we had more clients asking to learn about Google+ than any other platform.

Follow #HKD2 for snippets from the day. We will be posting some of the presentations afterward. My short but sweet talk below to get the ball rolling. It explains what we mean by Demystifying Digital; feel free toping me if you want the voice over.

Oh dear, I fear I may be committing to a long, ongoing series here. But as a well-known webmong always tells me, it’s good to blog on an issue and keep going at it. That’s why, after July’s top tips for Powerpoint, this week we bring you our top tips on how best to engage with bloggers.

Blogs and bloggers are a key channel. Some are extremely well read, some of them reach exactly the audience that you want/need. Most of them however are not professional, and many may not have encountered us PRs before. With this in mind, here are our tips – with thanks to Candace, Daisy, Becca, Matt and Joey.

Blogs and Bloggers are a great channel for reaching your audience - but only if you approach a blogger campaign in the right way

1. Most bloggers aren’t professionals – yes, some are dedicated, paid-up writers, and many more monetise their sites. The fact is though, the vast majority blog out of love for their subject. Many are unlikely to have been, or want to be, pestered by PR people incessantly pushing a product or service. Assaulting their senses with marketing-speak is therefore likely to lead to an instant bash of the big read ‘D’ button. Establish a dialogue, explain and justify why you’re writing to them (without the marketing-speak) and don’t push them for an instant decision.

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When Indian captain MS Dhoni fired a delivery from Sri Lankan seamer Kulasekara back over his head for six, it sparked scenes of unbridled joy for more than one billion Indians around the world.

For Adrian Phillips and myself – who spent seven weeks working in the subcontinent – is was the cue for us to return home.

Working in partnership with a small boutique sponsorship agency called Radar on behalf of ICC Cricket World Cup sponsor MoneyGram, our role was to activate their in-stadium sponsorship during the tournament.

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I had an opening riff all worked out for this week, webmongs, but that was before I saw this amazing news story. Poor the confused,  sweaty-palmed masturbators! That aside, though, it’s been a relatively uneventful 4-day week, apart from the British press redeeming itself slightly for Gareth Barry John Terry Ryan Giggs-gate by actually doing some proper investigative journalism – which, inevitably, led to literally nothing changing whatsoever in the no-way-at-all-corrupt HQ of world football; and perhaps from the best story likely to appear in print anywhere in the world in 2011. Oh, and if you were traumatised by goats as a child (and let’s be honest, which of us hasn’t been) then THIS IS YOUR MONTH.

The rest of you, though, for whom it is NOT your month, will simply have to content yourselves with the following collection of webthings. Apart from The Man – for it is always his month.

Alice Was A Lot Less Innocent Than Is Often Presumed

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I really shouldn’t be writing this, you know. I should, instead, be continuing to whore my brain out for The Man – but instead I defy him in order to…er…waste a couple of hours knocking this rubbish out JUST FOR YOU! I expect you all to contribute to the ‘feed and clothe Matt’ fund once the near-inevitable P45 finds its way to my desk.

Perhaps, though, The Man is still basking in the warm, fuzzy, near-post-coital aftermath of THAT WEDDING (or maybe he’s still cleaning up, or possibly reflecting on the appropriateness or otherwise of letting the peons daub a car with their messages of support to the happy couple), or perhaps he’s still singing along triumphantly with most of America (but not, it must be noted, all of America). Perhaps he’s wracked with uncertainty as to the outcome of the AV vote (he’s not. Noone is. Not even this poor git). Maybe he’s at home, polishing his small pewter figurine of John Paul II. MAYBE I WILL GET AWAY WITH IT! Webmongs, I am infused with the slightly shaky feeling that you get after a sudden rush of adrenaline or a couple of grammes of plantfood (speaking of which, this is my favourite response to this week’s BIG NEWS STORY- who says drugs are bad for you?); as a result, this week’s Web Curios will most likely have the slightly sketchy, pasty feel of an NA meeting (but without the relentless, self-absorbed confessionals). I hope you enjoy it as much as I don’t enjoy the inevitable, grinding, post-Curios comedown.

Batman had met his match

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HELLO! This Friday marks what, as far as I’m concerned, is the end of the last working week in April. Next weekend we have death, resurrection and ceremonial chocolate sweats; the weekend afterwards we have a nation descending into drunken, vomitous chaos in the name of a patriotic spirit long-forgotten (oh, and there’s a wedding happening too). As a result of people indulging in this sort of behaviour, it’s unlikely any of us will have got over the jaundice before May at the earliest (NB – Web Curios does not condone excessive drinking unless it’s as an expression of royalist fervour, in which case go for your lives webmongs).

But that is all before us. Here, we look back – back at the week that was on the internet, a week in which people got very upset about a 17 year-old London woman’s *ahem* full and frank discussion of her personal life on a rap freestyle (NB – it really is full and frank and very NSFW); in which, through listening to this man’s voice, I learnt that I occasionally get this; in which I totally failed to get on a plane to Amsterdam to deliver a presentation at a conference (thus incurring a debt to The Man unto the bargain); in which it was proven that £50million does not always guarantee quality;  that it’s entirely possible to make clothes from blow-up dolls; and in which a former boss of mine was bathed, naked, by a strange, bearded man in the name of art. It’s been interesting.

As a result of the imminent HOLIDAY, this week’s Curios is going to be relatively light on work-related stuff. Obviously, though, it’s all still GOLD. ENJOY, DAMN YOU.

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@ThomasCrampton and Sir Martin talking about the state of digital at #streamasia [twitpic]
- @jasonoke

Now, I am partial to Ignite, but this is the can’t miss session at Stream. Like his talk last fall, this isn’t a documentation of all Sir Martin had to say, but rather what his audience here found most worth tweeting (that I was able to capture). So it is a tad agency-centric.

Never a bigger audience or more attention for the post lunch graveyard shift. An hour with Sir Martin.
- @jonnylang

Sir Martin Sorrell on stage @ #streamasia. It’s been a bumper year for WPP.
- @JonathanNguyen

Update: Here’s an offstage interview from the event where Sir Martin talks more about social. Check what he says about PR agencies.

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