Hill+Knowlton Strategies

“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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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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Guess who’s back? NO, IT IS NOT EMINEM! IT IS ME! (Though in fairness our level of musical / performing talent is comparable) Stop gawping at the back – I AM NOT DEAD! I wish that there was some sort of exciting reason for Web Curios’ long absence – an enthralling, Willy Fog-esque journey, an unexpected temporary career change, an unforeseen visit to chokey…but no, nothing so thrilling. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, Web Curios’ existence was momentarily uncertain – but now I am most definitely here. I think.

Anyway, there’s a lot to catch up on. Some people’s phones got hacked and everyone got VERY ANGRY; the most powerful man in the world turned 50; my new favourite rapper released a mixtape; I went to Boston and saw none of it (but did get to fly business class and thus received a pair of complimentary pyjamas – THANKS VIRGIN –  which was well worth the £3,000 that the flights apparently cost); oh, God, loads of things.

None of that matters, though. What does matter is that you immediately click on this link and donate money to stop people dying of starvation in Somalia. Thanks.

Frankly nothing that you’re going to read from hereon in matters one iota compared to the above, but it’s probably going to be marginally more cheering. Read on, and make your Friday afternoon of wageslavery marginally less soul-crushingly worthless than it might otherwise be.

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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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Contrary to what you may have feared, I AM NOT DEAD! Put away your wreaths, unveil your faces and break out the bunting, for Web Curios is BACK (I just tried doing a Google Image search for Web Curios – beautifully, several of the initial results are pictures of The Man. Hello, The Man!). Admittedly it’s only back for a week, as I am on HOLIDAY next Friday, but frankly you should be grateful for whatever you’re given at this stage.

In my absence, webmongs, I have seen things of which you can only dream. I have seen Slough and a Tesco’s so large that approaching it is like that opening bit in the first Star Wars film with the massive spaceship that goes on and on and on and (Slough FACT: there’s a pun in Slough town centre called the Wernham Hogg, named after the fictional company in The Office (which was of course set in Slough); I can’t work out whether this is a brilliant piece of self-satirisation or actually one of the saddest things ever, though I know which way I intuitively lean). I have been to Barcelona on a stag party, accompanied (amongst others) by a charming man known as ‘Big Sam’ who was recently cleared of common assault after breaking a man’s jaw on the fotball pitch (needless to say Big Sam and I didn’t really have much in common), where I danced to techno like a teenager and was thrown out of a nightclub (I came back in again 5 minutes later though).  Oh, and I’ve done work as well, some of it actually not that bad.

Obviously, though, this is all utterly immaterial in the face of the world’s continued descent into what appears to be total chaos. Better people than me have written at length about everything that’s been going on over the past month (and worse people – check out this spectacular piece of ad placement from last week’s Metro), but can I suggest that you perhaps donate some money to the relief effort in Japan? Or if you prefer music, maybe buy tickets for this? Oh, and if you’re interested in the geopolitical upheaval sweeping the Middle East and its potential implications for China you could do worse than read this piece by Francis Fukuyama in the Wall Street Journal this week (don’t get smug, though, Franky – you were still totally wrong about the END OF HISTORY thing). Or, if you prefer your commentary a little more raw, there are few people more on the money about conflict than The War Nerd.

Oh, and one last thing before I wang on about the internet and cats and stuff. I was reminded this week about the way in which Facebook is used as a tribute site when people die, particularly in the case of the young. This is, of course, perfectly fine. As someone who relatively recently had to administer the page of someone young who died, though, can I please point out that WHAT YOU WRITE MATTERS. I don’t mean to come across as stuffy (HEAVEN FORFEND) but I’m not entirely convinced that the term ‘RIP’ benefits from an exclamation mark (hey, kids, punctuation changes emphasis. You idiots) or indeed that a sad smiley is an adequate response to death. Just saying, like.

Ahem. Oh, and one last thing – Web Curios this week contains no Rebecca Black whatsoever. You can thank me in the comments.

One of a series of posters designed to commemorate the Fukushima earthquake. Click for more.

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It has been a week of RAGE on the internet. Rage and hate, webmongs. Not, though, coming from me (well, no more than is usual) – this time it’s been everyone else getting all unnecessary about things. And then, and is the wont of the internet, behaving like a toddler with ADHD and completetely forgetting about the thing that made them so angry in the first place and moving on to the next shiny new toy. I don’t necessarily agree with the whole ‘the internet is making you stupid’ movement – you know what? we were doing just fine at being stupid before this stuff turned up – but it’s certainly helping us regress, behaviourally, like few other things.

Anyway, so Tuesday saw everyone (well, every single media tool in London, at least) getting REALLY REALLY IRATE at a video made by PHD Worldwide in what would appear to be an attempt at self-promotion. If you’re reading this then you are probably one of the London media tools who’s already seen said video, but on the offchance you haven’t, you can watch it here. It’s undeniably cringey – stage-school kids spouting a whole load of mediaguff about THE FUTURE and how brands will need to market to them in NEW and EXCITING and DYNAMIC ways if they are to capture the attention of the POWER CONSUMERS of the future – and certainly deserves a bit of ribbing. It probably didn’t, though, merit the frightening level of vitriol directed at it online.  Just a thought – was some of the anger directed at PHD (who, it must be said, dealt with the whole thing very graciously and with a sense of humour) possibly borne of self-recognition? Ask yourselves, media tools of London, have you never used terms like that when trying to shill your services? Was the reason that so many people were moved to such staggering levels of bile that they saw themselves in it? It’s one thing to come the big social media guru in a client meeting when you’re met by the blank-eyed, slack-jawed stares of incomprehension that immediately precede the opening of chequebooks by the terminally confused; it’s quite another to be confronted by the horror of the words you regularly use when they’re coming from the mouths of children. Just saying, like.

BUT! We all swiftly forgot about that on Wednesday, when we met Binkie. The original Telegraph article’s been removed, presumably to spare the poor girl any further humiliation, but the damage has been done. By Wednesday afternoon she was trending in London, people were full of IRE at her privilege and background and nickname and wealth, and kind-hearted people on Twitter had dug out her Facebook profile, found out where the wedding was happening and were talking about how ‘fun’ it would be to gatecrash it with White Lightning (an aside: I have just discovered they no longer make White Lightning. Teenage Matt is saddened by this) and how they wanted various calamities to befall her.

Look, I know this is all ‘harmless fun & games‘, and heaven forfend that I be puritanical and preachy about this sort of thing, but it does make me sort-of-agree with Milo Yiannopoulos and this article he wrote in the very same Telegraph earlier this week (aside from the ‘lefty’ rubbish). Remember the Two Laws of the Internet? Well this is all about the second one. Never forget Wheaton’s Law. It should be easy; if it’s not, perhaps you might want to consider sterilising yourself.

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I’m not as angry as I was last week. This is all relative, of course; I am still full of (entirely justified) rage at the industry in which I work; the sort of impotent rage that will achieve nothing other than slightly raised blood pressure and the heightened probability of an aneurysm before the age of 50. This week the rage has been mostly caused by people’s seemingly unthinking insistence on using the words ‘influencer’ (NB – note to readers: If you are ever being presented to and someone uses that image in a presentation, you have EVERY RIGHT to spit in their face and call them a clueless shyster. No really, you do) and ‘engagement’ in completely arbitrary fashion. CAN YOU DEFINE THE TERMS YOU ARE USING? OH NO, THAT’S RIGHT, YOU CAN’T, BECAUSE YOU ARE JUST THROWING THEM INTO YOUR SENTENCES LIKE THE BUZZWORDS DU JOUR THAT THEY FUNDAMENTALLY ARE.

*Ahem*

Look, I know that there’s nothing wrong with the words ‘influencer’ and ‘engagement’ per se; I just get really, really upset when they are used so casually. If you can’t define what an ‘influencer’ is with any degree of credibility (and here’s the rub – in terms of the online world people really struggle, which is why Klout and Tweetlevel are ultimately pointless, masturbatory exercises (at the moment, at least)), then don’t use the term; if by ‘engagement’ you mean ‘talking to people’ then just say ‘talking to people’ and bask in the knowledge that people won’t think you’re anywhere near as much of a social media tool.

Christ alive, I was calm before I started writing this and now I am all het up and unnecessary. I am going to take a moment to attain the state of zenlike calm that I normally bask in when writing Web Curios – join me in contemplation of this beautiful image, and we’ll continue after the jump.

Fill in the blanks yourself. It doesn't get any less disturbing.

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I’m not in a good mood today. This blog might reflect this. Apologies in advance and all that. Oh, and to the three people who read this who aren’t somehow involved in advertising / marketing / PR / etc, feel free to skip down to where the first picture is, as the next few paragraphs will probably mean very little to you. I mean, feel free to read them if you want – my prose, after all, is captivating – but don’t expect to get too much out of it other than a feeling of slightly grubby disappointment.

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