Not the usual beast!

You know a trend has gone mainstream when someone dedicates a film or event to it – and Vintage at Goodwood (VAG), a new festival launched last week is one of these.   While vintage-themed events are nothing new to the Chichester site – Goodwood Revival, a celebration of classic cars has been running since 1998. VAG, curated by Wayne Hemingway of Red or Dead fame (apparently investing a 7 figure sum of his own money), has positioned itself as ‘a celebration of five decades British cool from the 1940s-1980s,’ incorporating everything from food, film, music, design and fashion.   The recession has certainly fuelled popularity for what used to be known as second hand clothing. You only have to look at the emergence of vintage-themed businesses and websites to see that this really is a way of life for some people – and a great money spinner. And we can’t underestimate the influence TV series like Mad Men have on us.   So with my hair backcombed within and inch of its life and donning the compulsory vintage dress and sunnies, my friends and I descended on Goodwood- and we loved every second of it.   This really is good old fashioned fun. We entered the site via a fairy lit forest, through a kitsch looking entrance and straight into the Vintage High Street which had the same attention to detail you would find on a film set, complete with vintage cars ‘parked up’ beside shops.   There was a beauty salon to help you complete your look and while we made our way down the clean, wood chipped lanes, a line of ladies dressed in vintage bathing costumes strutted past. To achieve glamour in the middle of a field could be a challenge, but everything came across with style. I didn’t see one piece of litter all day – perhaps punters had more respect for this well thought out environment and took on the manners of a bygone era. However, there was a rumour circulating that Hemingway employed a stealth team of collectors to keep everything looking pristine.   The format provided the perfect opportunity for brands to get involved. Retailers whose executions were most effective were those with a clear link to their heritage. Most impressive was John Lewis who recreated their 1950s haberdashery where you could learn to stitch and pick up a vintage dress pattern. Others included Dr Martens, IWC, Fortnum and Mason and Kenwood. Hemmingway predicts that the high street area with double in size next year as brands clamber to get involved and showcase their take on the vintage trend to consumers. With the hype following this year’s event I don’t doubt his predictions, particularly as many brands may have been a bit cautious to invest in a new festival this year.   The organiser’s online interaction with attendees was well thought out. A free app was available to download via their website featuring the full line-up and a lovely map so we didn’t miss a thing. The Facebook profile was also really well managed with regular updates and the community provided real supported, particularly when we wanted to know vital information such as whether to bring wellies or not.   Entertainment was also true to the theme - we had an absolute blast at the Tanqueray Torch Club. Manned by a maître d’ in a white tuxedo we were escorted to a table where we enjoyed gin cocktails as we watched the various tea dances, while Roller Disco and a top line-up including Motown legends Martha and the Vandellas completed the night.   This is my kind of festival and I can’t WAIT for next year!

Another day, another post about the Old Spice campaign. It would be amiss of any social media or indeed PR company to not take notice of something like this, not just to marvel at its genius but also to take a few pointers.   If you have been living under a rock for the last few months, here is a recap. Old Spice launched their new campaign in February of this year, staring ‘The man your man could smell like’ Isaiah Mustafa. The advert is funny, the content is funny and social media helped bring it to the masses; at the last count the first advert attracted 19 million views across all platforms.   With the advert being such a huge success, not only in the US but the UK and Europe too, they needed to do something bigger to keep the buzz going, and with that they created another advert and started communicating with the ever-growing fans. Not through DMs, @replies or an employee; Isaiah started responding directly to the YouTube comments, Tweets, Yahoo Answers and blog posts about him in over 180 videos hosted through the Old Spice YouTube channel and sent out via Twitter. Some of the videos were clearly created before the social media divulge but he was working quickly, with nearly all the videos being posted in a 3-day period.   What happened next is definitely something for the social media history books. The internet went mad with the buzz about the Old Spice videos, in the  3 day period, there were nearly 200,000 tweets relating to Old Spice. To guarantee maximum exposure, the brand had ensured that a predominant amount of the bespoke videos were directed at the big hitters on Twitter; Ashton Kutcher, Perez Hilton, Biz Stone, Ellen Degeneres and Gizmodo to name just a few. They even managed to create a suggested but non-direct response to ‘4chan’, the message board thankful for Lolcats and Rickrolling, and those guys hate everyone!   But, and this is important, they didn’t forget the little guy. They responded to comments from the average tweeter as well, making it accessible for all, including everyone in the joke and ensuring people become personally invested in the brand. This is often the crux of a successful campaign, whether it is considered social media or not, making everyone a part of it enables it to reach a wider audience, ensuring more people talk about it.   No-one could have expected such a phenomenal response, especially one that happened so quickly in real time. ReadWriteWeb acquired a direct quote from Iain Tait, of Wieden + Kennedy, the marketing agency behind the campaign.   "We're looking at who has written those comments, what their influence is and what comments have the most potential for helping us create new content. The social media guys and script writers are collaborating to make that call in real time. We have people shooting and we're editing it as it happens."   But one of the main reasons it worked so well was its infectious humour and element of fun.   And just as soon as it began, it was over. After 3 days and nearly 200 videos, Isaiah brought the sad news that the end had arrived with his goodbye video;   Without a shadow of a doubt, the Old Spice campaign was a landslide success; they got everyone talking about the brand (online and offline), they were able to promote their new-look branding, gain thousands of new followers on Twitter and sales of their products nearly doubled. But above all, they made people laugh with a couple of funny videos, and really isn’t that what social media should be all about? Providing users with something that you would want to share with your friends.   And for those of you thinking of creating your own viral video, I’ll leave you with this thought ‘Brands don’t make viral videos, users make videos viral’ – Dan Greenberg, Sharethought

“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we do it” – Erik Qualman. When my 71 year old father-in-law brought up ‘social media’ as the topic for an after dinner discussion, it drummed home yet again just how MASSIVE a deal it is.Anyone in our industry knows how much of an impact social media has had on our day-to-day work.  Now, I’m old enough that the arrival of email saved me getting paper cuts from stuffing press releases into envelopes and I thought that was a pretty epic step forward…nope, small fry!  The advent of social media is more comparable to the industrial revolution and has been such a huge force on the PR and marketing industry, everyone in it has had to sit up, take note and in some cases train-up quick!We’ve all seen a decline in the number of print consumer lifestyle mags and papers we can target as PRs and a shift to more and more of them existing solely online.  Erik Qualman says that consumers no longer search out news, it finds them and we will no longer search out products and services, they will find us via social media.  Now, I’m not sure that the ‘searching’ element will ever disappear, as we all need to go shopping now and then, whether high street or online, but the point has merit.  Clever companies will be using social media to (subtly) push products to a community they consider their target market.  Those that are really clever can sometimes use the impetus of a social media ‘groundswell’ to dictate what the traditional media report – we constantly see the media’s news agenda reporting on something that’s been such an online phenomenon, they simply can’t ignore it.  Those of us that can figure out how to do this in a positive light will strike gold. Another nugget of info from Qualman was that 50% of mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook and we should all think about what that would mean for bad customer experiences?  There are apparently 200,000,000 blogs out there – 85% of the UK population now online and 60% of those actually read and trust what’s written.  A whopping 78% of us trust peer recommendations and, perhaps unsurprisingly, only 14 % of us trust advertising.So, the big question on everyone’s lips in our industry now is “which discipline, if any, should ‘drive’ social media?” – is it the PRs, media buyers, marketing agencies, ad agencies, digital agencies?  WHO?  Clearly, if I had to, I’d opt for PR as it has always been about creating stories and eliciting a response. Therefore the conversational, dialogue and third party endorsement elements of social media are closer to public relations than any other discipline. And we’ve also been doing it for so much longer than many.  Either way, it’s clear that the days of advertising leading and channel-based communications following are numbered.  It’s evident that a cross-fertilisation of disciplines is paramount to make this work for our clients.  What I know we’re really enjoying now is being more involved in the development stages of a client’s communications plan, so that we can ensure from the outset that PR has a relevant fit and role alongside any ad creative or company ethos, rather than the old days where we’re given a pre-determined theme to a brief and told to run with it. To end with a final Qualman quote: “Social media is not a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.”   Now, the hard part for all those brands and agencies out there – getting it right…!For those who haven’t seen it, watch Qualman's YouTube video here

In an interview before I started at Brando I tried to differentiate between PR and advertising by talking about the two in monetary terms – advertising is paid for and PR is free. So there’s no money involved in PR? No. Well how do PR agencies make a profit? The agency charges a fee, but the editorial coverage is generated at no cost. So PR is all about generating editorial coverage? Yes. I didn’t hear from her again. She had a point. Having worked at Brando for nearly two years, I’m now well aware that generating editorial coverage is just a small part of what we do. A PR veteran recently used a neat metaphor to explain his view on the matter. He asked me to imagine a coffee shop next to a busy market. On a really cold afternoon, the owner pours out twenty cups of hot coffee, and hands them out to the stallholders. He asked me if I thought this was good PR? I said yes. One of the reasons I found the initial question so difficult, is that we’re dealing with a subject that is fundamentally difficult to quantify – ‘Public Relations’. The term ‘Public’ itself has no real meaning, as it’s impossible to look at the population as a solitary unit. We cannot develop a ‘relationship’ with the ‘public’ as a whole, and need to acknowledge its diversity in order to have any impact on the consumer. This is why we use segmentation – targeting specific media homes and thus specific audiences with specific products. Even this can be difficult; no one likes to be pooled into a generic category. The word ‘Relations’ is equally tricky. From our own life experience, we know that all good relationships are based on trust. This is why journalism has always been so closely linked with PR - editorial coverage pre-possesses that magic element of trust. But before our product or message ends up on the pages of a glossy magazine or trendy blog, we have to build up a relationship with the journalist. This side of PR is incredibly complex, involving multi-layered connections between PRs and journalists, journalists and consumers, and (ultimately) consumers and brands. And it’s not just the term itself that I find problematic. With every campaign, there are endless KPI’s and AVE’s and ROI’s (any other industry abbreviation I’ve missed out?) which mean we’re constantly placing numerical value on the coverage we generate. I understand why we have to do this – we need to prove our worth. And these facts and figures are generally very useful. But I still have trouble putting a price on something as human and complicated as a relationship. I think it’s important to remember the meaning behind the madness. We’re here to create a feeling of positivity about a brand within the public eye, and it’s not all about column inches and star ratings. As an agency, we’ve hosted countless events connecting directly with the consumer. Human to human interaction creates an infinitely more positive impression of a brand, and gives us back the essence of what we’re all about - building relationships. I still haven’t found my singular polished PR sentence. But I don’t think it matters. PR is all about newness - stepping outside the boundaries, redefining preconceived ideas and doing away with definitions. It's an industry that's constantly trying to think outside the box, so I think it's fair that we don't allow ourselves to be boxed in with a dictionary-style definition. And who wants to work in a box?      

So, another weekend and another festival, as this summer’s money-making music machine rolls on and on. Last weekend, the Barclaycard Wireless Festival descended on Hyde Park for a three day musical extravaganza. On Friday, the festival was kicked off by Pink, Temper Trap, Gossip, Plan B and the Ting Tings. Saturday was all about Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliot, 2ManyDJs, Pendulum and LCD Soundsystem. The festival drew to a close on sold-out Sunday with a headline performance by Jay-Z, supported by Lily Allen, Friendly Fires, Slash and Chipmunk to name but a few of the artists rocking it over the weekend On Saturday and Sunday, I was lucky enough to be invited to DJ on the Barclaycard VIP double-decker bus and was given access all areas, so here’s the inside track – Highlights: It was all about Jay-Z day. The Jigga Man raised the musical bar with a majestic performance (even though he kept the crowd waiting for an age). Aside from Snoop Dogg and Friendly Fires, most of the acts had failed to move the crowd. Hip-Hop royalty, Jay-Z, with celebrity entourage in tow including Beyonce, Madonna and Amy Winehouse Lowlights: Missy Elliot – Not only did she rock up on stage late, but her performance was cut short. This may have been a result of her unfortunate choice of outfit and the negative crowd reaction that ensued (bottled off stage, nearly causing a riot)…head to toe Adidas German tracksuits are not a good look, post England’s World Cup exit And what about the brands who join us in the festival fields every year to tempt us with their wares? Aside from the Barclaycard Unwind areas (one public, one VIP), the Pepsi Max stage, which showcased some fantastic acts, but was hard to find and the EA Games truck (19 gaming stations with 70” tournament screen and Get in the Game Virtual, that remained rammed throughout), other brand activity left a lot to be desired and provided attendees with little added value. Vodafone’s presence was heavy on branding but low on experience or interaction, focusing solely on promoting their VIP campaign. Tuborg kept things basic with lo-fi bars and little else but I guess the experience was in the drinking on such a hot weekend. And Vodka Kick tried, but, in my opinion, failed to deliver an impactful consumer experience with their ramshackle beach bar. On a personal note, it was lovely bumping into friends of Brando campaigns past…the gorgeous Poppy Delevingne, Jaime Winstone, Lisa Snowdon and Jennifer Metcalfe. So on to the next festival. Here’s hoping the sunny weather holds. DJ slots most welcome!