Talking Point

Now local government is telling you what to eat

 By Craig Regan

Australian local government is fascinating to watch. Touted as truly representative of community sentiment, it’s actually the least accountable form of government. You’ll know this is an irrefutable fact if you’ve ever lodged a complaint. Don’t get me started on its ability to be petty when it comes to controlling what people want to do with their own property.

This story about Ashfield mayor Lyall Kennedy being pulled into line for his opposition to a court’s approval of 24 trading for a local fast food outlet probably poses more questions than it answers.

What was the conduct that was inappropriate? The report probably attracts only qualified legal privilege so we may never know but one comment in the story by the good mayor stands out.

''It is not essential for people have access to hamburgers at three in the morning,'' he said.

Not essential, but is Mayor Kennedy qualified to comment about the carb-loading needs of shift workers? What about people heading off on holiday at an ungodly hour who need to feed their kids? How about junk food addicts?

Would his attitude be different towards early morning kebabs or hot dogs?

It’s enough to give you heartburn. 

 

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

Why Puerto Rico's good news idea is doomed

By Craig Regan

In a variation on the “build it and they will come” theme, a radio station in Puerto Rico wants to turn around the island’s rampant murder rate by not reporting bad news.

Starting next Tuesday, the program "Noticias OK," will only report good news as a way to minimise violence on the streets.

The program’s host says "the distribution of news with a positive focus will be a balm that will improve the quality of life on the island".

The one-hour show will include segments called "Aplausos,” which will recognise people helping their communities, and "Musica OK," which will only play songs with positive messages. That rules out playing Led Zeppelin records backwards to reveal all those subliminal Satanic blatherings.

“Noticas OK” is basing its plan on market research with just 100 people in low-income communities.

Plenty of people have tried to launch good news media outlets in the past and have failed miserably. News, by definition, is something that changes the status quo.

The old saying in journalism: “If it bleeds, it leads” means the most dramatic news is what’s most prominently reported.

Puerto Rico recorded a record 1,136 homicides in 2011. Between 1980 and 2005 the average annual homicide rate was 19 per 100,000 people.

What's a hipster worth? About $33, it seems

By Craig Regan

The Urban Dictionary defines “hipsters” as “a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter”.

Tight jeans, thick-rimmed glasses, shaggy or androgynous haircuts are a trademark of this mainly white grouping. Hipsters yearn to be “effortlessly cool”. The label has its origins in the jazz scene of the 1940s and in the ‘50s and ‘60s you might have called them “Bohemians” or “beatnicks”.

Why does this matter to a blog that’s about PR and media? It’s about Facebook buying Instagram.

Instagram is a free smartphone app that applies a filter to a user’s photo to make it look vintage, shadowy or a faded pastel colour. Yes, it’s that useful.

Instagram is like an extension of an arm for a hipster, smartphones being a pre-existing part of the same limb.

Many people are wondering why Facebook would pay a billion bucks for a company with no discernible revenue stream and barely more than a dozen employees. A company that still hasn’t worked out how to moneytize its service.

It’s about engagement.

Instagram has 31 million users. They upload an estimated five million photos a day. All of those users have email addresses and have given away snippets of information to use this free service.

In a digital economy information equals money.

You still have to wonder if Instagram users are somehow a premium commodity.

Thirty-one million people is a substantial customer base to build on in anyone’s language, but a back of the envelope calculation puts the value of each of those users at a tad over $33 each.

Even the dialect of Facebook - where they regularly deal in numbers with strings of multiple zeroes - that's a massive chunk of change to reach pretentious tossers in thick-rimmed glasses and ironic slogan T-shirts. 

The Shire: No smoke without ire

By Craig Regan

What’s inducing that queasy feeling? The revelation that Network TEN is making a reality TV show called “The Shire” or the sneering comments from latte-sipping journalists who couldn’t find their way out of Sydney’s inner-west with a seeing-eye dog and a GPS?

“Reality TV” is an oxymoron. There’s nothing “real” about it. What goes to air is selectively-edited lowlights, cut in a way to bring out the worst in us.

A declaration of interest: I lived in the Sutherland Shire for 20 years. I’ve swum at Cronulla Beach. I’ve shopped at Miranda Fair and I’ve sat on the hill at Shark Park. I didn’t go to the Australia Day riots - but I know someone who helped start them. On the advice of police and following death threats, he was last heard of living in Melbourne with a shaved head and under an assumed name.

I don’t have an emotional connection to The Shire and recognise that some people who were born there will die there without ever feeling a need to cross the Georges River.

The Shire is an up-market version of Sydney’s Northern Beaches – like Manly-Warringah it’s an insular peninsular but without the bush ticks.

The Shire’s coastal end shares the same characteristics of most urbanised beach suburbs with a high transient population. The inland parts are middle class suburbia dotted with older houses and more recently built McMansions.

Four-in-ten people who live in The Shire also work there. Eighty percent of the locals are Australian-born. There are fewer Chinese as a proportion of population than anywhere else in Sydney and it’s generally an ageing and conservative area. 

So what’s in it for reality TV?

Big audiences. It’s OK to hate The Shire. It’s not elitist and it’s not like deriding lower socio-economic areas like Sydney’s south-west. Having a football team that’s never won a premiership is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s Lara Bingle, the stereotypical blonde Shire girl. Ricky Pointing also calls the area home - but let’s gloss over that.

Filming someone making a fool of themselves in Cronulla Mall after the pub shuts is like filming interviews with Mid-Western Americans and leaving in only the idiotic statements. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

When the local mayor - fittingly, a former fashion catwalk veteran- starts threatening legal action and says she’ll barricade roads into the area, you know the producers are going to have plenty of material to work with.