Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Launching the world’s first snore absorption room; creating the world’s biggest shave; reinterpreting art with technology; revealing the best place in the UK to bring up a family… As 2011 draws to a close, we take a look back month by month at some H+K Strategies campaigns and work throughout the year.

January: City & Guilds Million Extra

You're hired: Karren Brady+ City & Guilds' Chris Jones

To start the new year, preparations to launch City & Guilds first ever Apprenticeship Summit went underway early on. The aim of the campaign was to help ensure one million Apprenticeship starts by summer 2013.

In January, we commissioned a report to identify the barriers employers face in hiring apprentices with the findings discussed by key political and business leaders at the Summit, hosted by Apprentice star Karren Brady.

Nearly 100 pieces of coverage resulted from this campaign as well as a request from Professor Alison Wolf to receive a copy of the full report after seeing the articles to include in her Government review of 14-19 education.

February: Intel Remastered

Shortlisted for various industry awards, our Technology team created an exciting art campaign- Intel Remastered to showcase the creative application of Intel technology. The project saw 13 modern artists reinterpret iconic masterpieces using digital technology and techniques.

Pushing the boundaries of art and creating one of the most talked about art events on the year, the stories and inspiration behind classics such as Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ and Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ were retold and presented to a digital-savvy audience.

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The terrible scenes in Japan have rightly dominated the media landscape over the weekend, but I thought it was worth highlighting this piece from Saturday’s (12th March)  Financial Times, by Alastair Campbell on London’s role as PR Capital of the World.

Alastair argues (full version here) that London can rightly be regarded as the international centre of reputational management, due partly to its geographical location, but also due to the maturity (I use the term in its broadest sense) of the British press and media landscape. His remarks come in response, in part, to recent accusations that some British PR firms apparently do little more than help despots from around the world buff up their images (which of course is nonsense).

Alastair also goes on, quite rightly, to highlight the role social media is playing in developing a new dimension to the role of international communications – as social networks and therefore new communication relationships become more widespread, it is harder for central governments to simply shut down this comms process. The events in Egypt and Libya are of course the most recent examples of this.

I’ll leave you to read AC’s comments in full, though offer this final thought. If PR companies help their clients (whether they be overseas governments or not) understand the nature of the 21st century communications landscape, and the need for multi-dimensional engagement with all of their audiences, and demonstrate that, actually, transparency is the way to go forward, isn’t that a good thing?

The answer of course, is no, it didn’t, although some mainstream commentators are getting a little excited about it. There’s no doubt that new media and digital channels like Twitter and Facebook certainly played an incredibly influential role in the events in Tunisia and in the downfall of President Mubarak, but a little perspective is probably needed.  

Social media is invaluable as it offers a new spectrum of platforms, or channels, for communication with either local, regional or global networks. Not easily shut down and offering immediacy transparency and exchanges of information, it allows an easy flow of information, both good and bad.

Charlie Beckett, Director of the POLIS think tank at the LSE offers some words of wisdom on the subject here. He argues that when looking at the Middle East, social media could actually now be a really useful indicator, or even predictor, of political change. He also rejects the causal link arguing real important pre-conditions for any revolution will always be socio-economic.  

Mr Twitter himself, Biz Stone, also argues that social media plays a supporting role but not a starring one. “How a revolution comes to be is a mystery to me. It’s important to credit the brave people that take chances to stand up to regimes. They’re the star. What I like to think of services like Twitter and other services is that it’s a kind of supporting role.”

As I write this piece, Colonel Gaddafi is now refusing to stand down in a defiant speech being shown live on Libyan state television (shown in UK thanks to the BBC!).  So let the social networks in Tripoli play their role – but just please don’t call your next born ‘Facebook’.

This is actually Daisy Sheppard under the guise of Jonathan, many thanks this week for our contributor’s Me, Dave Chambers, Ross Gillam, Ed Jones & Nick Woods…

This week there was the unsurprising announcement that top Uni’s intend to charge top fees, interest rates are STILL at 0.5%, Osborne’s Project Merlin, the return of RBS Six Nations & H&K were trending with their digital insights at #SMWLDN. 

The stakes were raised… It came as no surprise this week that Cambridge University will be charging students the maximum tuition fees of £9k a year. Viewing higher fees as a measure of academic excellence is already the norm in the US and in the UK public school system and it was this position that Cambridge took in defence of its plans arguing anything less than the maximum would be ‘fiscally irresponsible.’

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As the net grew more social, smart companies took ‘humanize the brand’ off the PowerPoint slides and into action. The Community Manager job has become so much a tangible icon of the changes in corporate communication that 24 January has been anointed Community Manager Appreciation Day. They can be high powered famous or everyday people, but as a topic the buzz keeps building (even as command centers become the new new thing).

Like all people on the front lines, CMs do best when supported by a full team behind the scenes. (With experienced backup in case of crisis.) Technology scouts and creative content strategists are added to classic brand managers. Old friend David Jones talked about this here. Ideally, the CMs should have really big ears. I think major brands are just starting to realize what a treasure chest of insight active listening opens up.

Monday morning means a lot of things to me (not all of them bad!), one of which is the chance to read Lucy Kellaway’s excellent ‘On work’ column in the Financial Times.

This week she focused on the use of Twitter by senior management as a communication tool with their customers. More specifically she looked at the use of Twitter by the UK head of Starbucks, Darcy Willson-Rymer.

Her argument was that the regular use of the feed by Willson-Rymer showed how “social networking is making management focus on the wrong things” and that personally responding to hundreds of tweets was “listening gone mad”. This argument was based on three points:

1. That the manager should focus on the problem at hand rather than responding to a digital complaint about it

2. That she doubted the fact that someone with 80,000 followers tweeting about the issue would change customer behaviour

3. That issuing the “traditional formula” customer service response via Twitter rendered it “even more hollow than usual”, especially when responding to conversations not aimed directly at the Starbucks Twitter account

The article certainly raises a number of interesting points for debate, but the one I want to focus on is this – has social media changed the role of senior management?

In my opinion the answer is fundamentally no. However, that’s not to say it hasn’t added a new dimension for senior management to consider.

Managers (and CEOs particularly) have a large and complex role, but one aspect of this role is undoubtedly to be the public (and publicly accountable) face of their companies.

So if they are the public face, then does that mean that these managers should spend their days answering the Twittersphere musings on their company? Again, no, because as Kellaway points out that would be a misuse of resources and prevent them from doing other aspects of their job.

That’s not to say management should be afraid to dip their toe into the water however, and on this front Willson-Rymer’s efforts are to be applauded.

The ongoing issue of executive pay (highlighted again today), and the subsequent feeling that senior management may have lost touch with both their workforce and their customers, continues to dog businesses – easy target for the media that it is.

Managers at several large retailers (Marc Bolland and Tesco’s Laurie McIlwee among them) often speak enthusiastically of their efforts to spend regular days on the trading floor in an effort to combat this issue.

The question is, why should spending an hour or so of your day interacting with customers on Twitter be any different?

Earlier today, I spoke to Catherine Cross, Head of Media Training at H&K, on last night’s Election debate and the performance of the three party leaders. Here are Catherine’s thoughts…

Next up in our series of Pecha Kucha / Ignite presentations from Demystifying Digital is our own Brendan Hodgson. He reminds us that for every action there is often a reaction. And the speed and impact of digital and social media provides both opportunities and challenges for corporate reputation management and crisis comms. Brendan’s advice: Don’t Panic (just be prepared).

Do you remember when you were at school and you would come in on a Monday after a haircut dreading the inevitable pisstaking from your classmates? I’ve been reminded of that this week. Anyone would think I had come into work having sprouted horns (not entirely unreasonable; remind me to tell you the story of when I sold my soul to Satan in exchange for good exam results one day), but no, all it is is that I now have short hair. For those of you who don’t know me, I now look like this:

Me, with a friend, yesterday

Whereas before I looked more like this:

Yahoo Serious. Younger readers will have no idea who this is. FIE ON YOU, YOUNGER READERS.

Anyway, enough of this crap. On with the web-related crap instead.

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I was thinking about how brands act online and some still get it horribly wrong, many get it beautifully right. But, what have a learnt from their endeavours – here are five points on how brands need to act to get it right in the social media space:

1. 1. Give it away: Whatever you are creating, building or designing, give it away for free. If the community has been involved it’s as much theirs as it is yours.
2. 2. Relinquish control: You have limited control over the space anyway and the community thrives on freedom. Don’t be dictatorial or the community will turn its back on you.
3. 3. Sack the lawyers: Unless your lawyers can act at the speed of conversation then don’t get them involved. Guess what, Twitter doesn’t work when every tweet has to be approved. By the time you get to post anything the topic is old news and the community has moved on.
4. 4. Be flexible: Things change – social media changes all the time, constantly incredibly quickly. You need to change with it and you won’t be able to if your campaign path is set in stone.
5. 5. Get out of the way: The community is there to have fun and engage with one another – if you’re not going to facilitate that then get out of the way. If you don’t, you’ll be run over.