Sometimes playing a straight bat to questions from the media just doesn’t work…

Don’t believe me? Check out this example of pugnacious journalism from Irish broadcaster Vincent Browne vs an ECB spokesperson.

This video has been added to my ‘Worst Media Interviews of All Time‘ blog post, which is worth a look for a seven equally cringe-worthy efforts.

Of course, these are bad interviews from the point of view of the spokesperson. One could argue the journalist does rather well.

More hyperlink goodness from your most cherished Manchester PR agency.

• Kevin Rose has launched Oink, a service which I think really should just be a function of Foursquare
• New feature makes Google+ more relevant for PRs
• 10 reasons why PR matters.  Some old chestnuts in here but always worth a reminder
• Thinking about a social media department?  Don’t bother, it doesn’t exist in isolation.
• In my humble opinion PR can bring a lot to good web design
• Daily Mail’s clarifications and corrections section just gets larger each week.  This is what the kids call a ROFL
• Google launches gmail app with glitches.  World goes mad
• United launch its own social network because our 660million fans can’t all come from Manchester

Managing your reputation online is a key skill as businesses become more social and personal privacy declines.

When faced with a reputational issue, public relations professionals are of course a good place to turn.

I originally set up my first blog because I couldn’t be found online (my name is too common), but after creating the blog I was front page of Google.  With this increased visibility comes a responsibility to clean up after yourself and protect your reputation, and since then I have helped countless brands clean up their search results or project the right type of image.

As this infographic below shows, an occasional Google search of your name is no longer just for the narcissist.

These are seven of the worst media interviews of all time. (I’ve recently edited this post to add the seventh).

As a public relations professional I often organise media training and these videos are classic examples of what can go wrong and why preparation counts.

I’d love any suggestions for videos to add to this post. Feel free to suggest some in the comments.

Video 1: dress appropriately for media interviews

Video 2: when surprised by a journalist buy time in a more sophisitcated way than this…

Video 3: no comment is not an option in the face of a crisis

Video 4: never go on head to head with Paxman

Video 5: if you are going to make up a PR story, at least be prepared with well thought through responses

Video 6: be very careful when dealing with difficult subjects

Video 7: at least try to answer the question

(hat tip to Graham Lancaster for three of these videos)

Reddit

Reddit is one of the biggest social news sites on the internet. If a story is up-voted on Reddit the resulting interest and site traffic is huge. Don’t believe me? Well here are some stats.

Given the site’s influence, you’d think that use of Reddit would be a priority for the public relations industry?

So why then are there so few PR people reading and contributing to the PR sub Reddit? Twitter is crawling with public relations people, literally teeming with us, the blogosphere is packed with consultants, but when it comes to Reddit… nothing.

Is the problem because of the sub Reddit’s lack of profile? The sub Reddit has been tweeted about and questions have been asked about its use on Quora, yet feedback has been zero.

Could the lack of use be because:
1. PR people don’t know that the sub Reddit exists
2. They are all using Digg (!)
3. The industry doesn’t see any value in social news sites (!!)

I’m baffled, so this is a call to action: “use the sub Reddit.” Read the Reddiquette and don’t be a spammer.

Is Steve Jobs trying to protect Apple’s public relations image by deflecting negative PR attention towards himself?

As public relations crises go, Apple’s iPhone 4 launch is up there in second place behind BP’s oil leak.

The product launch has been besieged by negative press and PR coverage regarding the product’s aerial and connection.

Recently, many bloggers have focused on an email from Steve Jobs, in which he emailed a customer and allegedly said that the phone worked perfectly well and claimed customers are holding the handsets incorrectly.

Steve Jobs has a track record of replying to people personally by email, as illustrated by this Steve Jobs’ blog. As you can see, often his emails are short and terse.

Now, the latest public relations issue is revolving around whether these emails were real or fake.

This made me ask myself the question: is this email exchange an intentional PR tactic-come-stunt by Apple? It sounds like a crazy PR strategy to cook up a stink for your brand in this way. Or does it?

Are people now talking about the incredible failings of Apple’s New Product Development team, or is the focus on the crazy public relations style of Steve Jobs? Or, put more accurately, is Steve Jobs deflecting some of the negative attention away from the brand?

Engadget, Erictric, Gawker, 9 to 5 Mac, Mobility Site, Electronista, Gizmodo, everythingiCafe and Techcrunch have all published the email story. What is more, Steve Jobs’ email is the number two story on Techmeme and a top ten story on aggregator Popurls.com.

There are other famous examples of this tactic working to great effect. Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, is also expert at this type of crisis management.

When his team is in trouble, he will pick a crazy fight with a referee, another club manager etc, just to take the heat off the team. Just read a few of these perfectly executed PR and press sound bites if you don’t believe me.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this was what Tony Hayward at BP was trying to do in the US (but badly). Most CEOs have shares in the business, and the last thing they want to see is their investment being hit.

If push comes to shove, a CEO can get another job fairly easily. Of greater importance to them is the value of the business and the return to their shareholders.

It is very easy to measure PR sentiment and other public relations objectives, like public opinion and a move like this can be carefully stage managed.

A large corporate like Apple can control their PR communications in many ways and a brave CEO won’t mind taking a bullet for the corporation, as long as it’s not a terminal blow.

It seems only yesterday since I was writing about news curation tools….

In fact it was yesterday when I wrote this post, but thanks to a helpful comment on the blog I have now found Newscred, a curation tool which allows users to build fairly bespoke news pages to read and share with the world.

My Newscred page is available here. The content selected can be tailored towards geographical areas and while the search parameters are a little strange, it would be picky to say that this isn’t a great new addition to the curation repertoire.

I work in public relations and until recently used a Blackberry, however for the PR professional, there is no better device than the iPhone for bringing together Web 2.0 technology. Here is my list of killer apps. I’m hoping by writing this that others will recommend apps that I’ve missed. Please suggest others by way of comments.

WordPress – I’m writing this post via the WordPress app from my bed while my three week old baby sleeps on top of me. You can write, tag, upload photos and approve comments. It’s pretty damn fine actually.

Google Analytics – this is on here by default as I actually hate Google Analytics, but I can’t find a better tool for measuring traffic while out and about.

Delicious, Instapaper and Evernote – Delicious for archiving and retriving useful stuff and Instapaper for filing stuff to read later. Evernote allows you to archive anything and tag it so it can be found later. Useful!

Sky+ – for recording Man Utd. Obviously. Or perhaps client coverage.

Guardian, Telegraph, Sky News, The MEN, Thomson Reuters, Digg, Reddit – for keeping up to date.

Foursquare – I disagreed on Twitter with Robert Scoble on the potential for Foursquare. I just don’t see it as a B2B tool. However it is not to say that I don’t find it useful, especially the tips section which helps me gain insights about local restaurants etc.

Dropbox – storage in the cloud. You can keep anything here. This app is so useful that I might pay and upgrade so I have 100gb storage.

Stickybits – one day someone will use this app for the purposes of brandalism and you PR people will be glad that you know about it. At the moment though Stickybits is a not much more than untapped potential and a social media curiousity. Fun though!

Polarize and Quadcam – so you are blogging on the go and want a photo for your post. An iPhone photo can be pretty poor quality but you can spruce them up no end with these little beauties.

Ustream – I have 3gs envy. With
The 3gs device and Ustream you can broadcast directly from your iPhone.

Tweetie 2 – again, pretty much the definitive Twitter app. There are lots of blogs on this app, so I’ll move on.

Facebook, Google, Flickr, Youtube etc – again standard but essential stuff.

So people, what have I missed?

Stickybits logo

PUBLIC RELATIONS AND SOCIAL MEDIA – There is a new social media tool called Stickybits, which I think could be big and has implications for both B2C and B2B PR and marketing – along with anyone who likes messing around with the interweb.

The premise is that you can attach videos, music, text, PDFs, Zips or anything to a given barcode. The idea sounds a bit bizarre at first until you consider when, how and by whom it can be used. Stickybits is currently receiving lots of hype on the blogs and also in the mainstream media with the LA Times among others writing about the service.

B2B PR and Marketing
Imagine you are an office products manufacturer and you want people to be able to access your product manual, a message from your Managing Director, good reviews about your product, feedback from other consumers or, well, pretty much anything. All this content can be attached to a barcode. No longer does a consumer need to turn to the internet and make a search about your brand. Instead this can all be shared via your barcode.

B2C PR and Marketing
Again, much like B2B, user generated content can be attached to your brand. This could be brand ambassadors or fans of your product waxing lyrical. Or, more likely, this could be activists making complaints about your products and services, or campaigning against you. Imagine if a complaint was the first thing that a customer finds when researching your brand? Not ideal!

Importantly, the first person who scans your product has veto over what else can be uploaded against your product. Imagine if this person is someone with a vendetta against your products. Simply put, someone else would have control of your brand’s presence.

Here is an example that I created for a Beer called Red Angus, so you can see the kind of content that can be attached to a bar code. (Excuse the use of my son in the video, any excuse to show off Armand. The content is somewhat daft too, but a guy has to have fun when blogging hey?)

As well as attaching content to existing code, you can print your own barcodes and stick them on anything. Here is an example barcode which can then be printed off and attached to anything. Their bar codes look like this:

There are some interesting examples of what to do with Stickybits here on their wiki.

Of course, it is still early days for Stickybits, but it is backed by people with proven track records in social media. There is also a limit to the popularity of Stickybits because use of it is largely limited to iPhone and Android phones. The app is currently available on iPhone and Android here.

This public relations video discusses the Toyota crisis, how Microsoft handled their corporate reputation when Bill Gates took his role part time, and corporate reputation in general. It’s a long video and I’ve only watched the first half hour, but the content is first class.