Talking Point

Newsjacking and why pimping someone else's ride isn't as easy as it seems

By Craig Regan

“Newsjacking” is a colourful American PR term that means hijacking a breaking news story and inserting your own angle. In the Australian context, many try and few succeed and here are the reasons:

Despite what they might tell you, most Australian PR consultancies aren’t very nimble or responsive. Awakening at dawn and diving into the media to find out what news is breaking isn’t second nature unless you’ve worked as a political press secretary or journalist.

Once a rival story is running in the mass media, it’s almost certainly too late to seize the moment unless you jump ahead of the agenda and define where the issue’s going.

Even at the breaking stage, your story has to be more than good to change the news agenda. It must be newer, more unusual or a bigger game-changer than what’s already out there. That’s a judgement call based on experience and some gut feel.

If a client thinks their angle is the greatest story since 9-11 and it’s not, you need to have an honest relationship that lets you tell them it’s not. The same applies if buying into an issue isn’t a good idea.

Your PR company needs to know its way around the media. It’s no good firing out an email to an over-crowded or unattended in-box. Talking to someone senior on the newsdesk is imperative.

Newsrooms are chaotic places. A phone will ring out or be answered by a reporter’s neighbour who has no idea where their colleague is. That’s no time to be passive – it’s time to go up the line or find a roundsperson on their mobile.

Social media can be a useful tool here but it's no good tweeting if no-one's following. 

Lastly, the client needs to be prepared. Can they talk to the angle if journalists pick up on the angle and come calling? If they’re part of a large local company or multinational do they have authority to act without sign-off from someone else? Pre-agreed messages make all the difference.

It’s not as easy as inventing a colourful term.

Picture credit: Beyond PR blog

Love me, love my vending machine

By Craig Regan

In advertising they’re called Lovemarks and they’re defined as brands that consumers adore “beyond reason”. The theory is based on twin drivers of love and respect and goes like this…

Products don’t command love or respect. Fads attract love, but without respect they’re just a passing infatuation. Brands attract respect. On the other hand, Lovemarks command both respect and love.

Lovemarks are based on a holy trinity of mystery, sensuality, and intimacy. I’ll stop there before I’m driven to put on a sack cloth, hold hands with colleagues and sing kum-ba-ya.

Facebook is an iconic brand. Apple’s another obvious lovemark. In the USA, so is big retailer JC Penney. All these brands have their detractors but they also command vast amounts of love and respect among millions of people.

Coke’s been right up there as an iconic name for a very long time so it’s fascinating to see the brand-consumer relationship being played out in public on the University of Singapore campus this week.

Coke installed a vending machine emblazoned with the slogan “Hug Me”. If you do, you’re rewarded with a free can of the sickly soft drink. It's all in the video below with some footage tacked on of a cool interactive customer interface.

 

You can’t help but feel that a tactic like this might be the Next Big Thing for Australia’s politicians to restore their flagging relationship with voters. “Hi, I’m Julia or Tony – hug me,” has a certain ring to it.

With augmented reality, there's a whole lotta Shakur going on

 

The live rapper is on the left.

 

By Craig Regan

Yo - listen up: Dead American rap stars may soon be coming to a stage near you.

One of the biggest hits/creepiest moments of last weekend at Coachella, the world’s biggest music festival, was an appearance by Tupac Shakur who joined recent Australian visitor Snoop Dogg on "Come With Me”, "Hail Mary" and "Gangsta Party."

This was a surprise to almost everyone at this show in the middle of the Californian desert because Tupac died in a hail of bullets 15 years ago.

The appearance was at night so there’s no blaming sunstroke.

Another Tupac song, “"I Wonder if Heaven Got a Ghetto", went unperformed.

Tupac got the virtual gig on the strength of being a computer generated image. You can watch the video here. It’s a stunning example of augmented reality, where a live view of a physical, real-world environment is supplemented by computer-generated sensory input.

It’s one of the fastest-developing new media frontiers and has the potential to take news and entertainment off our TV flat screens and onto a coffee table or living room floor, in 3D.

There's some technical discussion here (and an explanation why it wasn't a "hologram".)

There’s no word yet if Dead Tupac will take to the road and play venues around the world. This takes Madonna and Milli Vanilli's miming to another level.

Presumably Tupac’s image projection equipment will need a first-class airline seat. At least promoters can rest easy knowing his backstage food, booze and drug requirements will be light on.

 

Kevin Sheedy shines as Eddie McGuire fades to grey

By Michael Grealy

You can tell a lot about a sporting club from the way it markets itself for new members. Take the Magpies of the AFL, Collingwood Football Club, 120 years old this year.

It brags that it’s the biggest and most famous sporting club in Australia. It’s won 15 premierships. It’s contested 43 grand finals, more than any other club. It’s also lost 26 grand finals (two draws), more than any other club.

Its club song ends embarrassingly with Oh, The Premiership’s A Cakewalk For The Good Old Collingwood. It’s said that Collingwood supporters believe the last words of Advance Australia Fair are Carn the Pies. 

But all this, like pointing out its premiership droughts from 1958 to 1990 and 1990 to 2010 is nitpicking. Where Collingwood excels is rabid cradle to grave supporters, a record membership base of almost 73,000 and a financially astute club management led by Eddie McGuire that, like AC/DC, is strongly Back in (the) Black.

For 2012, it introduced a clever piece of membership marketing that draws on Collingwood’s reputation as the club other clubs love to hate. “It’s Us Against Them. Now is the time to decide. Are you with us?” the ad asks as new coach Nathan Buckley, ‘side by side’ with his players, faces the opposition hordes like William Wallace and his army in Braveheart.

Collingwood’s masterful ad has fine heritage. The voice-over is by Jack Thompson (They hate the sight of black and white that fills the battleground; and they hate our army chanting its intimidating sound).

 

Our Jack starred as coach Laurie Holden in the classic 1980 movie The Club, the Bruce Beresford/David Williamson homage to Collingwood and football club intrigues everywhere.

Marketing the Australian Football League’s newest team, the Greater Western Sydney Giants, has been a different kettle of fish. There is no tradition. No century of history. An untried team of teenagers based in rugby league heartland.

A confusing name: try GWS and you’ll get Melbourne insurance brokers or a Sydney recruitment company. Or worse. At least, there’s nothing to match the scores of tasteless jokes about Collingwood supporters. Yet.

The marketing saviour for this multi-million dollar AFL investment is one man. Kevin Sheedy. The former plumber, Richmond champion and Essendon super-coach over three decades, he is the voice, the face, the historian, the sage and the stuntman of this new club.

He’s brought his media smarts, his guile and tricks, his play-acting with Eddie McGuire, and above all, his deserved reputation as an innovator of the game and a leader in recruiting indigenous players, to Sydney. GWS membership is 7755. The membership drive features coach Sheedy as much as his largely unknown players.

Sure, the billboards feature rugby league import Israel Folau but, in Western Sydney, he’s hardly a giant alongside Nathan Hindmarsh.

It’s been Kevin Sheedy on the front cover of glossy mags, Sheedy in front of the 80-year-old Harbour Bridge, Sheedy the newspaper columnist and TV guest. And it will be Sheedy who commands the headlines until tomorrow night when they play the club song, described by one wag as backing music for a dancing Boris Yeltsin. 

;

That’s when the youngsters of GWS hit the turf at Sydney Olympic Park against  the ‘Moneyball’ team of the AFL, the mighty Sydney Swans*, with the AFL hoping for a crowd of 40,000. That’s when the nation’s top draft picks play their historic first game and maybe then the GWS marketing can move from the coach to the players’ achievements.

*The writer is a Swans member.

 

Meeting Michael J Fox in the Big Apple

By John Hanrahan

For some, the appeal of visiting the Big Apple is the ritzy restaurants, shows on Broadway or a peek at the New York skyline from atop the Empire State building. But when it comes down to it, your age and personal interests are clearly the deciding factors.

One recent visitor to America’s biggest city certainly wasn’t overwhelmed despite the fact she was about to meet one of the world’s most famous movie and TV stars and appear with him on a television story.

Oh no, for 10 year old Zoe Campbell It wasn’t meeting celebrity movie and TV star, Michael J. Fox, or appearing on television, that turned out to be best thing about going to New York. It was meeting another kid.

Zoe flew to New York with her father, Clyde Campbell, Sydney businessman and founder of the Shake It Up Parkinson Disease Foundation, to be part of Channel Seven’s Sunday Night program. It will feature an interview with Fox (who has Parkinson's) and the work Shake It Up is doing in Australia to find a cure. 

Clyde was diagnosed with the disease a couple of years ago and set up the Foundation, to partner with Michael J. Fox in a global medical research effort.

The real fun for Zoe was meeting one of Fox’s four children, Esme, who was the same age as her. Clyde told me when Seven’s reporter, Rahni Sadler, introduced her to Michael, Zoe was able to name Back to the Future as one of his films because she’d just seen it on the plane going over.

Michael J Fox, Zoe and dad Clyde.

Zoe and Esme got on like old mates and had a lot of fun together while dad and Michael talked about more serious things. 

Seven’s program airs this Sunday night (18 March).

The research work by the Shake It Up Foundation in Australia to find a cure takes its next big step after Sunday, calling for Parkinson’s Disease patients to be part of a global research program.

The Shake It Up Foundation, together with Macquarie Neurology at Macquarie University in Sydney, is ready to accept enquiries from Monday from patients with recent diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease into the Australian medical research trials.

More detail about the study is on the MJFF and Macqaurie Neurology websites. You can learn more about Shake It Up and make a donation here.

 

 

Questioning Kony doesn't make you a baby killer

By Craig Regan

Unless you’ve been living under Uluru you’d know that a relatively low-profile, not-for-profit called Invisible Children is running a campaign to lift awareness of a murderous Ugandan warlord using YouTube as its main vehicle.

Now, this blog was going to be a Kony Free Zone but it’s an important public affairs and communications issue, so resistance seems futile.

The YouTube figures alone are amazing - 72 million “viewings” of the documentary in six days. It’s a long video by online standards which makes you wonder how many of those hits were for the full 30 minutes.

Facebook “likes” have rained down like Sydney’s dysfunctional wet weather. Links to the video, news articles and blogs have been passed around faster than a ticking package in a Middle Eastern market.

In communications terms, you can track the life cycle of almost every public affairs issue.

Given the right elements, media seize on a cause and drive its profile before a backlash sets in and its legitimacy is questioned.

For social media, simply increase the speed of the process many times over.

Weekend commentary expressed amazement that after initially embracing the Stop Kony campaign, so many people were questioning it.

To which you have to say: it’s the Internet, stupid.

Why not question something that rose from obscurity and seek evidence?  If you do, it doesn’t automatically follow that you support evil tribal gangsters.   

Invisible Children haveachieved one of their objectives of building broad awareness of their cause, even if most people are still light-on for detail. They've harnessed emotion and they've made millions of people feel empowered.

In public affairs, however, you need to go beyond bald metrics and look for results.

If the end game is stopping Kony by any means possible, the neutral but mildly supportive reaction from the US Government suggests a solution like that is already in the works.  

The question will be that if Kony is terminated “with extreme prejudice” will it be because millions of people clicked on a link on the Internet or because US covert operatives have been on the ground in Uganda for a long time?

If and when it happens, the scramble for the moral high ground will be frantic. 

 

Laotian tourism deaths an exercise in poor issues management

By Stephanie Furler

There has been a torrent of media articles following the recent deaths of Australians in Laos and the near death of another. Much of this negative publicity calls for fresh regulations in the local tourism industry and prosecutions of people breaking the already existing (and fairly lenient) rules.

In case you missed it, the deaths have stemmed from “tubing”. This involves sitting in tyre tubes while floating down the Mekong River and stopping along the way to drink (excessively) at makeshift bars.

It all sounds fine - until ridiculously cheap and sometimes free home-brewed whisky is mixed into the equation. 

It’s then that backpackers start jumping from rickety two-storey towers and swinging from ropes into shallow, rocky water below.

   

So what can we take from these deaths from a PR perspective?

Tourism is Laos’ fastest-growing industry but there has been no public comment from the Lao National Tourism Administration, addressing the fatalities or the international backlash. 

Granted, it is a very strict Communist country and its values and way of life are different, but if this situation was applied to a business or government organisation in the Western World, the time to go public would have been a month ago. 

In some situations a “no-comment” policy works – but this isn’t one of them.

Businesses need to constantly assess their position when an issue becomes a public concern. Timely and appropriate comments can reassure the public and ensure that someone else doesn’t fill a news vacuum.

It is unlikely that any of the regulations being called for in Laos will be implemented, so it’s important for the Tourism Administration to work with international government agencies and media to educate tourists about the dangers of tubing.

The need for personal responsibility is a something that many journalists fail to mention in their stories and is a key message that the Tourism Administration should be pushing.

The only information on the Administration’s site that remotely resembles a warning about excessive behaviour (after much searching) is in comic form.

No mention of tubing. 

It is important that organisations tailor messages to their key audiences and clearly in this case, the message needs to be louder, broader and maybe delivered with less levity.

A carefree, unregulated holiday destination is an appealing prospect for many Australians, but if the negative publicity continues, tourists may be deterred from visiting Laos.

Stronger messages, better issues management and awareness campaigns are essential to keep this industry thriving.  

 

Creative video another way of pushing HR cred

By Craig Regan

At Lighthouse Communications Group, we spend a lot of time helping clients show why they’re a great place to work.

Everyone wants to be an “employer of choice” because it means a company can attract the best talent.

Sometimes even good companies can struggle to cut through the clutter and make their voice heard.

That’s why we love this recruitment video from Twitter. It speaks to the platform which is all about directly communicating, but leans heavily on the fun factor. View it here.  

 

The App that can be your digital tombstone

By Craig Regan

Want to leave a digital trace of yourself on the Web using social media when you kick the bucket? As they say in the advertising world: “There’s an app for that.”

If I Die  lets you to post a video message to all your Facebook friends after you shuffle off this mortal coil. Shades of Pauline Hanson’s infamous leaked message from the grave in that and more than just a little morbid.

Download the app, upload a parting message or video and nominate three Facebook friends as “trustees”. They need to confirm your demise and you’re good to go.

You have to wonder if the marketing gurus behind this thought about calling the app When I Die, just to add some inevitability to their message and promote a stronger call to action. 

That’s one app that might have come in handy for relatives of the NSW hospital patients in this story. Hospital took 765 days to write a referral letter by which time the patient had died. The family of another deceased received a $70 bill after 535 days.

If you want to say goodbye posthumously, watch the Ifidie promo videos here. There’s even a Southpark version. 

 

Canberra clash a gift for media watchers

By Craig Regan

The Australia Day melee in Canberra is the gift that keeps on giving for PR and political junkies. Gillard media adviser Troy Hodges did what any political operative must – he took a bullet for his boss.

This isn’t suggesting the PM was a party to the chain of misinformation that provoked activists to lay siege to The Lobby restaurant. It’s just an observation that the public and media storm determined that a head had to roll. Hodges committed hari kari.

Many people would be unaware that political advisers from both sides routinely tip media to unfolding stories with the intention of reportage favouring their side. It's the way the game is played and  sometimes this extends to events of public disorder.

In this case, Hodges pushed the envelope by indirectly inflaming a protest at an event where his boss was in attendance. If the protest hadn’t been so ugly nobody would have noticed and Hodges wouldn’t be looking for a job.

TV loves colour and movement and the footage of Julia Gillard being keel-hauled into her Commonwealth car will be a defining moment of her leadership.

It will be filed next to Mark Latham’s bonecrusher campaign handshake...

 

...and John Howard’s  inglorious no ball: