Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Since I started at H+K nearly two years ago, in addition to being part the Tech team, I have been part for H+K’s Analyst Relations team.  For those not familiar with the term ‘Analyst Relations’ (or perhaps just unsure as to what it actually entails), it is a kind of strategic communications and marketing activity in which vendors and organisations communicate with industry or research analysts.

Though it covers many industries, Analyst Relations (AR) is most predominant in the ICT sector.  Having the background of working in the Tech team at H+K has definitely been of benefit to me in my AR work, and has helped me form the opinion that not only is AR a worthwhile activity, it is a must for ICT companies.

There are a lot of analysts and analysts firms out there. Making sure you target the right one for your company is crucial.

The kind of strategic communication activity that companies can implement as an AR program includes conducting briefing sessions, as well as providing on-going consulting to assist analysts with any research requests they may.  The core function of this activity is to remain consistently top-of-mind for analysts when they are writing industry reports or forecasting market share, conducting customer briefings, or as mentioned, providing comment to media.  It also serves a purpose in terms of helping a company to differentiate itself from the competition, become more visible, and crucially, sell its products and services.

In many ways, AR activities can also become worthwhile PR activity – after all, an analyst providing third party endorsement for a vendor’s products and services to a journalist writing an article for the likes of The Australian Financial Review or CIO magazine can only be valuable PR for a brand, right?

So, for me it’s not a question of whether AR is more or less important than PR – they should be equally important to a company’s overall corporate strategy and vision.  Both activities complement each other, and the nature of each activity means that there will be a time when they overlap.  With that in mind, I’ve listed below a few points to consider when a company is contemplating putting together an AR program.  I think these points should be vital in forming the basis of an effective AR program:

1. Find the right analysts for the vendor: identifying appropriate analysts for a company forms the basis of an effective AR program.  Knowing which analysts cover the industry or market sector is essential; reading their bios, areas of research, and recent research reports is a good way of getting to know who to target.

2. Research is key: in addition to researching for the right analysts, it is important to regularly check analyst blogs and read their reports, in addition to reading regular industry media articles, so as to keep up-to-date on industry activity.

3. Consistent updates: if your company would like to remain top-of-mind for analysts, it is absolutely imperative to regularly schedule briefing sessions or updates with analysts.  This doesn’t have to be as much as one briefing per month (in fact, most analysts will not have the time to do this), but certainly one key briefing session per quarter is recommended.

Smartphones – we can’t live without them. It’s been shown that people these days are literally in love with their iPhones. I’m guilty of this myself – the other day I left home without my iPhone. It felt like I had left without a limb, like part of me was missing.

Nielsen has recently released interesting results of a survey that looks at global trends in tablet and smartphone use while watching TV. Although it doesn’t include Australia, the results show that “88 per cent of tablet owners and 86 percent of smartphone owners said they used their device while watching TV at least once during a 30-day period”. While people were mostly checking emails during commercials, a lot of device users seem to engage with TV content, either by looking up information or taking up a call-to-action from advertisement.

I haven’t got a tablet, but I always find myself using my iPhone when watching television. Programs such as Q&A also encourage the digital conversation to flow on over Twitter, featuring tweeted opinions of viewers tuned in. Television used to be a restricted medium where viewers were only reached via advertisement. Smartphones and tablets have now changed the game – a new two-way channel of communication has been opened up between businesses and consumers. Viewers can be called to action and immediately act on this. Businesses can now directly engage with a huge audience, all while the consumer is in the comfort of their own sitting room. As smart TVs become more standard in every home, it will be fascinating to see how this channel will evolve.

I’d be interested to hear some opinions on whether businesses are taking advantage of this evolving channel and if so, which you think are doing it right?

As a technology focused PR and AR practitioner I am constantly intrigued by the changing dynamics of the tech sector and the influencers that can make or break the next big technology solution.  So it was with a lot of interest that I poured through Gartner’s latest report – Cool Vendors in Asia/Pacific 2012. The report includes those vendors that have caught Gartner’s interest over the past year because of their innovative or intriguing technologies or solutions.

What was interesting in this year’s report was that of the 60 vendors highlighted, Australia after India has the largest concentration of cool vendors. The third in place is China. Yet, despite the presence of so many cool vendors, only 11 of the vendors profiled are headquartered within the APAC region – of which three are based in mature economies – two in Australia and one in Japan with the remaining eight based out of India.If eight of the cool vendors are from India, we are definitely seeing a change from the oh so passé images of the country being a major call centre support base! In the same report, Gartner profiled the changing role of India from traditionally being based on programming talent to that of software innovator.

Reading up about India’s growing IT influence, also brings to light the often repeated question of why despite its maturity, Australia still somewhat lagging behind on the technology innovation bandwagon? Various media and analyst insights suggestions range from the lack of collaboration between businesses, the government and technologies to not enough local funding and investment to nurture homegrown technology talent.Whatever the debate – which will no doubt continue – it is promising that Australia has embarked on an attempt to get it right. Whether it is funding from venture capital firms like OneVentures and UniSeed (btw, thanks goes to 1 May article in SMH’s ITPro “Teaching start-ups the new cool kid” for flagging these names) or best practice partnerships with neighbouring countries.

When it comes to countries, this can clearly be seen with the case of Australia’s partnership with India.  Apart from the usual trade partnerships it is the technology partnerships that hold my current interest.With this year’s CeBIT Sydney featuring a sizable Indian presence (see last week’s Australian IT’s “CeBIT chance for some Indian giving”) and being officially opened by a senior Indian government official, a lot of eyes will definitely be on the Indian contingency.

What I am keen to see happen is what insights can a mature economy like Australia take from India when it comes to harnessing homegrown technology talent and what it puts into action.

Tech was not my first choice, or even my second. When I first met with my advisor here in Sydney, technology was the only department I said I’d prefer to stay away from. Other than that one request, I had no other restrictions for my internship placement.

I’m writing this in my final days as an intern at H+K’s tech team so based on my opening comments, you can only imagine how surprised I was when I arrived on my first day only to be introduced to the department that I’d be working with for the next seven weeks. Nevertheless, there was no going back. Not only was I in a foreign country, but I was also in a department I had never even considered. It was going to be an interesting semester.

“Ally! That report is late and your client is getting antsy. You just lost $1,000 off your budget!” joked a familiar voice over the pod. The voice was one of my teammates, from whom managing my time – and accountability – came to be an everyday occurrence; one that now, I will surely miss. With the technology industry moving at such a fast pace, one of the biggest and most valuable lessons I have learnt as an intern in the last seven weeks is that we, as PR representatives for our clients, have to move even faster.

I came to love the ever-changing tech industry and the intellectual challenges it came with it. Learning to adapt your game plan every day depending on the news flow from both journalists and your clients can be an obstacle in this field and it was interesting to watch these plans unfold. My team was brilliant when tackling these challenges and they were always willing to teach me how they did it, which I truly appreciate. Even when I was confused by some of the tech jargon I would always hear the reassuring response of, “there are no stupid questions,” followed promptly with an explanation.

The tech team at H+K has not only helped shape my skills and career path, but also my opinion of the technology and PR industries. I’ve actually come to like tech and I certainly won’t find myself frowning on the opportunity to work in this field if it came up again. Either way, my time at H+K has taught me that PR is where I want to be and now I hope to find myself dealing with all of the ups and downs that come with this industry someday in the future.

The IT Journalism Awards – commonly known as ‘The Lizzies’– is the night of nights for the IT media community in Australia; a night to recognise excellence in IT media and journalism and to have a few cheeky drinks with friends and peers.

An evening of fun and frivolity, this year The Lizzies drew an even bigger crowd than usual – or at least that’s what it felt like, with tables packed in tightly to Doltone House, Sydney.

There was of course the usual ‘best dressed’ award, scooped by Nic Healy who looked dashing in a red snake skin full length coat and cravat. Best dressed woman went to Claire Reilly who was pretty in pink.

But on to the important business of the night and the sought after Gold Lizzies were taken out by the team at CNET for best title as well as gaming journalist, Tracey Lien who won the award for best journalist. It’s the first time a gaming journo has taken out the award in ten years. You can find a full list of the winners and a more detailed account of the awards night on the MediaConnect site here.

Before we sign off, we can’t leave you hanging without a snap of the H+K Strategies tech team who attended the event – taken by the usual red carpet paparazzi on arrival! From left to right – Dana O’Neill, Helen Reiher and Nick Johnson.

The term ‘cloud computing’ has certainly shown itself to be a tech buzzword over the couple of years. Whilst the concept has undoubtedly led organisations to learn more about the benefits it can bring, there are still relatively few businesses that are actually putting it into practice and indeed reaping the rewards.

Despite everyone talking and learning about cloud computing, the demand for cloud skills is healthy but not overwhelming, and certainly not in sync with the hype — until now. The demand for cloud talent has caught up.

One of Gartner’s top predictions for 2010 was that 20 per cent of companies would have no IT assets by 2012 and that IT staff will either be reduced or re-skilled to meet new requirements. Just over a year on and this month, another Gartner survey of global job postings has revealed that most IT organizations are hiring for the past and for the wrong requirements.

Will cloud computing be to information technology today, what automation was to the assembly line in the ’80s? If so, what happens to those jobs? To the people who used to do them?

It seems to me that there’s no question that two types of staffing shifts will take place: individuals who are working in IT today will need to learn new skills (if they aren’t already), and certain jobs will shift from the enterprise to the cloud service provider.

As Chuck Hollis, CTO of EMC Corporation wrote in his blog post some time back “If you’re an IT leader, you’ve got an interesting challenge on your hands.  You most likely don’t have the right portfolio of end-state roles, skills and processes.  And you are probably lacking the people with skills who can lead the change from present state to future state.”

To this point, I came across a report published by Wanted Analytics which was detailed in an article by Forbes about the demand for cloud computing skills. The report shows an enormous surge of cloud computing-related hiring with more than 2,400 companies posting job ads for candidates with cloud computing skills over a 90-day period. Not surprisingly, San Francisco ranked as the metropolitan area with the highest volume of job ads in that same period.

It could be though, that only a portion of candidates will have deep cloud computing expertise and direct experience with the technology. So does this mean that skills will always be a step behind? As new technologies emerge with openings for lots of jobs, will there always be few qualified candidates who are up to speed?

In fact, a sceptic might even go so far as to say that we may see a situation where job applicants beef up their CVs and add more cloud experience that they realistically have – partly because of demand and partly because cloud jobs will be some of the highest paid in the sector. This will make it tough for employers to pick the right person for the job.

Whilst we’ll see this change start to become very apparent over the next couple of years, cloud computing will undoubtedly be good for the IT industry.

I was recently asked to pull together an analysis of the tech landscape and as we’re now firmly into 2012, have a look at which companies blitzed it in 2011, which went down the toilet and which are perhaps the most admired in the industry.

I was pretty sure that I could name the top five straight off the cuff –not ‘admired’ in the sense of being good to their employees or because they have a good CSR program in place, but admired for their innovation and ultimate business success.

In my search I came across the following article on the CNN site. It’s not a new piece – it was posted in March 2011 – but it still gives a good indication of what people are thinking. No surprise to see that Apple tops the list as the most admired company – not just in tech but more widely.

Whilst a lot of companies that I expected to be in the list are, there were a few that were slightly left field for me such as EMC which came in at number two on the ‘computers’ list and Netflix at number 40 on the wider, top 50 companies list.

I would imagine that we’ll see a similar story in 2012 with the tech big guns topping the list again. However, it will be interesting to see how the likes of Apple fares under some big changes and indeed, how it will be reflected down under.

Apple – MOST ADMIRED
Top 50 rank: 1
Rank in Computers: 1

Why it’s admired
For the fourth straight year, Apple tops Fortune’s Most Admired list. The company’s blistering pace of new product releases has continued to set the bar high for tech companies across the board.

Apple took a stock hit when iconic CEO Steve Jobs announced in January that he’d be taking a second medical leave, two years after receiving a liver transplant during a six-month sabbatical. But Jobs assured the market in the company’s recent earnings report that Apple was still “firing on all cylinders.”

It certainly appears to be. Apple nearly doubled its quarterly profits vs. a year ago. The iPad 2 was introduced in March, marking the second generation of one of Apple’s milestone product successes. And Jobs made a surprise appearance at the launch.

Another huge move by Apple was the announcement this January that the iPhone 4 would be available from Verizon, offering another option to consumers frustrated with dropped calls on AT&T. –By Shelley DuBois

On behalf of the H+K tech team in Sydney, we’d like to welcome you to ‘Techspotting’.  What kind of information can you expect to find here?  We’d like it to be a place where we can share our views and offer perspective on a range of topics such as how communications is keeping pace with an ever expansive online audience or the amazing things that take place across the technology sector every day.  The only thing that moves faster than innovation is the pace at which people talk about it, and we’re eager to contribute to the conversation.

We plan to cover the topics that are relevant to an Australian audience – and we hope you will play a part in shaping the agenda.  Our collective thoughts and opinions are yours for the taking.  We welcome your feedback!