Hill+Knowlton Strategies

I am getting excited about our contribution on Protecting Reputation on Tuesday, but am also planning to take advantage of the smörgåsbord of events across London. Which ones are you going to? Tweet me if you’ll be at any of the sessions below.

My dance card starts mid-day Monday with Apps Go Social. This panel discussion will look at the trends in mobile apps, especially the connecting point of social, local and mobile. Timely stuff (and oh, lunch is thrown in — yum).

Wednesday is a big day, kicking off with the ever more mega topic of Facebook. Hosted by agency We Are Social, I’m especially interested in the case study on Tesco Clothing.

That afternoon, a couple of retail sector clients will join me at the Social Sales panel hosted by the wonderful Chinwag. It has a great lineup, with the exploding Groupon as a highlight.

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This month, the cyberworld of interactive professionals splits into two camps. Those with a submission to SXSW, and those without. Because the good folks at SXSW know that nothing builds August buzz around a March conference more than blogger to blogger voting, they build in the need for potential speakers to promote their own panel idea. So we tweet, bleat, blog and beg.

Sure, other people are super bored with these pleas for votes. Whatevers. With 2395 panels to choose from, it is almost impossible to find a great topic without a direct link. Less than 20% will be chosen and user votes count for 30% of the decision.

Do you have a submission? Let me know. And please share any other panels you think are awesome. In my native land, committed people of all political persuasions know that a compelling platform can’t win without a huge get out the vote (GOTV) push. Annoying? Maybe. Effective? I hope so..!

I wake up and one of the first things I usually check is Facebook to see who has done what and when around the world in the past 7hrs while I’ve been sleeping. I have an eclectic mix of friends including my partner, close friends, family, ex-partners work colleagues and just a smattering of friends-of-friends. Then there are my fan pages… ok, the pages ‘I Like’ I think they are called now, which include such a mix of music, drag queens from Ru Paul’s famous ‘Ru Paul’s Drag Race’, shops, magazines (like ValenciaCity), restaurants, cool pages (like CoolHunter) and travel!…. I don’t have thousands of friends, just the people I actually know, or have met. I’m a bit fastidious about my security settings and only allow my friends and network (Hill & Knowlton of course) to view my updates and uploaded pictures.

Then I worry about tweeting…. OMG! What can I possibly say in 140 characters that will be of interest to my pitiful 97 followers who have read my 1,113 tweets… or increase my sad following?  (The stress increases one hundred fold when tweeting on behalf of the agency!)  In fact I cheat a little and link my personal Foursquare and Facebook accounts to my twitter account so that there is at least an update a day! Even if it is only suggesting where I am eating, drinking or working out! … are you still with me? Sound familiar?

Then there is my LinkedIn account (which again I have linked to the wider H&K LinkedIn network). Should I link to my twitter and Facebook accounts so that my 131 immediate connections linked to my network of 5,048 connections get updated as and when I eat or work out? But then I would have to be a tad more professional in my wording and try to use casual text speak a little less that is acceptable on Facebook. Would they be interested? I doubt it. And then there is Dopplr for tracking my travelling. Should I link this to Facebook and Twitter too or does my Worldmate account that I think I have linked to my LinkedIn account do that already!? Read the rest of this entry »

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.

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

We do quite a few events for clients here at H&K. But the two day D2 conference is the biggest I have ever been involved with. Both for the power of the speakers on the agenda, and the wonderful range of clients and guests attending. I am not really nervous, because we have done so much prep, but I do hope my part goes well. I get to follow the opening keynote from Sir Martin Sorrell. Ok, so maybe I *am* a little nervous.

You should follow #HKD2 and @HK_London to see more content as it gets posted from the event.