'Let me take a selfie'

Here in the UK it is Mother's Day today and it would appear that THE QUEEN has jumped on the bandwagon of taking a 'selfie'. The well loved corgi's feature on the back of her iPhone case and other members of the royal family can be seen posing.

Whilst this photo looks convincing, they are indeed FAKE!

The photos were commissioned by NotOnTheHighsStreet.com  and artists Alison Jackson for a light-hearted Mothers Day PR stunt.

There are more pictures and youtube video (below) of the PR stunt.

140 characters twist

Disney released a tweet to announce their latest bi-coastal all night extravaganza on memorial weekend. The company took a new twist on the 140 character limit of tweets by including 140 disney characters shaped into a hashtag (picture below). The tweet told people to 'rock your disney side'. I loved the simple nature yet inventiveness of this tweet and using a trademark of disney (the characters) and humouring it to the twitter tweet limit.  

It will be interesting to see if this tactic will be used by other organisations in the future. 

The Brits get social

So I have just been watching The Brits and I loved their all new idea of getting people to vote for one of the categories through social media platform, Twitter.

James Cordon hosted the event and at the beginning of the night introduced this new way of voting. The category was Best British Video. This included names such as One Direction, Ellie Goulding, Calvin Harris, Naughty Boy and John Newman.

People were given hashtags to use to vote via twitter. An example of one of the hashtags was #BRITsOneDirection. Viewers of the show could vote throughout and this was the last award to be given of the night one all the votes and data had been counted.

It was called 'the social vote' and it created a new element to engaging with the audiences at home without them having to pick up the phone and pay.

This tactic worked really well and there was so many votes on Twitter that it will be interesting to see how this tactic will be adopted in further shows to increase engagement with the 'at-home audience' and online community.

The winners of this award were One Direction.

 

LEGO movie... everything is awesome

I went to go and watch the LEGO movie today and was amazed at the effort that was put in to ensure that the whole experience of watching the film was LEGO orientated. The experience started as I was walking into the theatre. Outside the screen the number had been changed to a LEGO block stating the screen number.

When we went inside the cinema and sat in our seats we noticed that all the adverts were in LEGO. These included companies such as BT, Premier Inn and Confused.com.

Although this was all the effort within the confines of the cinema it left me wondering how far Warner Bros. had gone to get coverage everywhere. So I turned to the online community to see what was happening online. I noticed that the film had a twitter account, a Facebook page and a website.


TWITTER

Lego fan of the week - Followers uploaded pictures of them in LEGO related situations. An example of some winners of Fan of the Week include a boy who got his whole family to dress as LEGO blocks for Halloween and a lady who baked LEGO cake pops.

The chance to build your own LEGO mini figure - a link was provided to a site where you could create your own mini figure.


FACEBOOK

Lego fan of the week - Followers uploaded pictures of them in LEGO related situations.

Sharing the photographs its followers have taken of themselves with the LEGO Movie stands found in cinemas around the country - In cinemas cardboard stands were set up with cutout for peoples faces and LEGO encouraged people to upload these pictures, which they then shared through Facebook.


You can also upload photos on to Instagram using the #LEGOfanoftheweek hash-tag.

Muppets: Most Wanted Trailer

During the Superbowl last night a trailer for The Muppets: Most Wanted featured (as seen below). It was deemed hilarious as it used some of social media’s most used phrases, acronyms and emoticons to pump up the famous puppet gang’s upcoming big screen release.

The same technique was used with a different trailer.


The other trailer showed an apparent real life Twitter spat between users @HotFudge1218 and @Babybean1128.


Whilst this would be classed as advertising it definitely provides for a good story and that is at the heart of any campaign, which in turn can lead to us, as PR practitioners, learning about what makes a good story.


Muppets: Most Wanted is in cinemas March 21st 2014. Superbowl trailer

 Other trailer

Wedobuyanycar.com

Jamie Jones posted a letter on Twitter that he claimed came from car dealership website WeBuyAnyCar.com.


In the letter, they ‘reached the conclusion that you sent your request to simply waste our time’. He had tried to sell them a Little Tikes play car for children.





It received over 28,000 retweets in a day and was widely shared across social media, being picked up by sites like the Mirror. However, the letter was exposed as fake, with the Twitter user that posted it doubling his followers in the fallout of the stunt.


However, the condescending tone of the fake letter posed a PR challenge for WeBuyAnyCar.com. Yet how they dealt with the situation was amazing. They turned criticism around with some humorous responses.





Their tweets were even mentioned in The Metro.

KEEK - Shower Cam

Keek, a new and exciting video blog app for my iPhone. I love watching 40 second clips of people and think it has great potential. Lots of so called celebrities are already using this new craze.
I have found a great example of a member of the "Geordie Shore" cast used the app.
Gary Beadle recognised his target market and their interests and used keek to make video updates in the shower. His fanbase have gone crazy and he is maintaing his image at the same time. He has definitely thought about who he wants to attract and people just can't seem to get enough. This was a brilliant use of social media and understanding his stakeholders.


 http://www.keek.com/!vRyrbab - see Gary's shower cam video here

disneyland paris the magic begins the moment you click here!!

I am in LOVE with everything disney and recently treated my partner for his birthday a trip to disneyland paris.
This got me thinking about PR campaigns run by disneyland paris. Recently with the recession Disneyland Paris hired BETC Euro RSCG to regain custom. 

So they decided to get people to film telling their children they are going to disneyland paris and upload it  and Disney then used this in their advertising campaigns under "The Magic Begins the Moment You Tell Them."

However, the videos are on youtube and the coverage on social media websites has been phenomenal. So I thought I would post some of the best ones I have found.

My magic definitely began when I told him as we are both so excited and with just over a week to go I am already packing.

Reputation... two sides to the story

Justin Bieber recently came to the UK and caused quite a stir. but has his reputation remained in tact from the incidents.
Day 1 - He was 2 hours late on for his first show at the o2 arena
Day 2 - He falls ill on stage and goes off stage.
Day 3 - Altercation with the press (video below) and cancels an interview

Then has the cheek to say he does not deserve all this "negative press"and will "not return to the UK". So how is his reputation? I know my view of Justin Bieber has deteriorated and what will it take to recover his image.
Crisis Management? This might take a long time for the recovery of Justin Bieber.
What is Justin Bieber's take on the situation?
 The press have certainly had a great time whilst he has been in the country.

SURPRISE!!!!

David Beckham surprised fans for Team GB.
Rita Ora for Mastercard.
Rihanna for River Island.

The celebrities seem to have taken a new turn and decide to surprise their fans. These stunts have had a phenomenal success. The stunts have been successful due to the human interest that they gain, social media coverage and videos of the stunts going viral.
What celebrities would you like to be surprised by?
What other companies will use this method?

Chelsea FC have a Paddy

Outside the Chelsea Football Club Stadium (Stamford Bridge) the 'bookies' Paddy Power have recently placed a billboard. On the billboard it says "FERNANDO. We’ve got an onion bag you can actually find. It’s in the burger van mate. Get your hair net on". This was an addition to the many jokes about Fernando Torres who has had a poor performance since joining the club after a £50 million deal. 
Apparently, according to the Daily Mail Chelsea have now started legal action against Paddy Power. 
The amount of coverage on social media this picture has received has made it good PR for Paddy Power but for Chelsea is this good PR? 
Is this a good use of advertising or is Chelsea right with not seeing the funny side?

Dulux - the brits

After the brits on Wednesday night Dulux decided to jump on the hype and tweeted about the use of colours Damien Hurst used on his version of the brit award. This was brilliantly implemented and reinforced ideas of Dulux's image they portray. The company have looked at current trends and used these to their advantage as to what to focus. Although not much notice was taken in Dulux's tweet it has identified that they are current and how important it is to have this quality in the world of PR.

Tweet not speak

I just came across this lovely idea for introducing new Public Relations students to Leeds Met University. The students used Twitter to demonstrate the power of social media. The campaign was called #tweetnotspeak. They had to use twitter and the hashtag to communiate in the class rather than talking to each other. Maybe the University of Greenwich will adopt this hands on and creative approach when looking at social media as I know I would have loved an activity like this in lectures.

http://www.leedsmet.ac.uk/news/leeds-met-pr-students-get-creative-with-tweet-not-speak-campaign27112012.htm?type=student

Pink Ponies Case Study

This video highlights how PR, advertising and marketing are all entwined. I LOVE it!!!

Selfridges - no noise campaign

Selfridges no noise campaign video

Recently I went to London with my family and noticed that Selfridge's had started their no noise campaign. They say the aim is to 'celebrate the power of quiet, see the beauty in function and find calming among the crowds'.
I loved this stunt/campaign. The use of so many different public relations elements worked well together. Part of the campaign involved de-branding products such as Heinz baked beans and ketchup to beats by Dr Dre. Not only does this provide publicity for Selfridges but also for all the brands invovled.
The whole campaign intrigued me to think about how powerful branding can be for a consumer and the persuasion and influence it has on consumer choices. Although not all of the branding was completely removed the names were and does this alone create even more of a want by consumers as it will become a 'collectible item' or will the de branding have no affect?
As part of the campaign headspace pods were set up around the shop along with a silence room. This aimed at recreating the idea which Harry Selfridge created in 1909 when the shop first opened. How effective will this be for customers and the business. I loved this idea and creativity of creating not only a normal shopping experience but an original and relaxing shopping experience where consumers feel at ease and can consider buying choices.

I definitely think that January has been Selfridges month with TV programmes and this extraordiary campaign. Generally business' suffer with bad takings in January it will be intersting to see how this PR campaign will affect business for the competition and Selfridges!

Dumb ways to die

I really love this website - it's a brilliant piece of PR. Reminding people to be safe around trains has always been a hard topic to address to the public yet this video manages to give an element of humour to the topic and hopefully will help. The video is family friendly as well so suitable for a wide audience.

Social Media - good or bad?

Is social media really effective PR or is it a 'cop out'. Whilst writing an assignment for university it got me thinking does social media really class as effective PR. For it could be argued that the practitioner is not doing any work and is using the power of social media as a bit of an easy ride in their job. Is this why so many businesses and organisations are obsessed with sites such as Twitter and creating hashtags because someone somewhere can not be bothered to do their job to an acceptable level. Yet, on the other hand is social media that much of an influence on peoples opinions and behaviour that this is the new way forward and this explains the dramatic emphasis with organisations. Personally, I could see the rise of social media in PR falling just as quickly in the future. For every 'good' PR campaign through social media you see one which has gone terribly wrong. For example, the waitrose "I shop at waitrose because..." campaign which could have said to failed miserably.

So will social media last in the PR practice?

Public Relation Apps

I just downloaded a Public Relations app for my iPhone and I think it is so useful to my studies. Already I have been able to apply some of the press releases to my assignments so thought that I would share this with everyone in the hope it can help someone else.
I downloaded PR Web which is brilliant.
I also downloaded PR 101 to develop my vocabulary for my assignments and in lectures generally but I have not used this yet so will post about this later.

The PR 101 app is useful, however, I have not managed to work out all of its features yet. I think I need to play around with it some more but overall I would rate both the apps they have certainly helped me.