Category Archive: Inspiration

Google’s Augmented Reality Glasses

Google has unveiled one of its most incredible technologies yet – augmented reality glasses.

Code-named ‘Project Glass’, the specs allow the wearer to get directions, take photographs, check in at places and message friends, with all the information appearing on the lenses of the glasses, and the technology staying out of the way when it’s not needed.

Is this the next technological leap or a wacky fad? We’ll let you be the judge!

Social Media in Ireland

We recently attended the Social Media Academy’s conference in Clontarf Castle, where the theme of the day was ‘Discover the Future Social Media Holds for PR and Marketing in Ireland’. With 13 speakers from Dell and Tourism Ireland to O2 and O’Leary Analytics, each speaker covered a different social media topic from their brand’s perspective. Emma Kelly, our MD, talked about driving business results with social media and many of the questions, as you would expect, focused on how to best measure social media coverage and mentions online.

Chair, Martin Thomas, opened the event by discussing how brands need to ‘let go’ before social media can truly become part of their marketing mix. Response times for large corporations, especially on Twitter, are often too long, (up to a number of days on some occasions), as a result of the management escalation they require. In Martin’s experience, the best response times are 60 minutes for a blog comment and 10 minutes to respond to a tweet. Cathy Orr from Pop Cap spoke of the opportunities available offline, as so many brands are fighting to find space online and how customer recommendations are more powerful than celebrity endorsement. Paul Dervan from O2, also reiterated this point, as well as the value of listening to customers online, which may eventually lead to collaborating with them on product innovation and development.

Georgina Bowes from Eircom presented some interesting statistics about older generations and their online presence. As so many young people are immigrating, more and more of our parents are joining, (if they have not already), social media sites just to stay in touch. Georgina also discussed the importance of YouTube as the second largest search engine and the power of Boards.ie with its 1.1 million views and 350,000 users. Silviu Preoteasa from Dell addressed the ‘white elephant’ in the room on the day – selling through social media – as did Jon Mell from IBM. They also spoke about using staff to act as their brand’s social media ambassador online, which threw up a lot of questions. In response, both speakers made similar recommendations: set up an internal blog / social media site as a training tool, trust staff and ensure clear and exact social media guidelines are in place.

Larry Taylor from BT focused on the B2B area of social media, speed of reaction time and CEO blogs, while Ciaran Doherty from Tourism Ireland presented on the ‘brand as a publisher’ now that brand’s are creating content especially for online. As the third largest Facebook presence of any tourism body in the world, Tourism Ireland was also the first to create a social media game. Supt. John Gilligan from An Garda Siochána gave a very interesting insight into the power of social media for communities, using the @gardatraffic Twitter account as an example. Set up to help with traffic information for visits by the Queen and Barack Obama, this proved an invaluable tool for the general public, as does the Garda Flickr site in returning lost property.

David Scanlon from Enterprise Ireland spoke of SME’s poor knowledge of the online sphere and their lack of tracking what works and what doesn’t. Niall Harbison from Simply Zesty and Stephen O’Leary from O’Leary Analytics finished up the day by talking about the importance of video, as 95% of all web traffic is video based, and measuring social media online through sentiment, share of voice, demographics, key influencers and competitor comparison.

The conference gave some very useful insight into social media, especially the importance of listening, choosing the best platform for your brand, reaction times and measurement. ‘Measurement’, always the hot topic at social media events, was still up in the air. While Stephen O’Leary from O’Leary Analytics analysed some brands in attendance successfully, it still throws up questions for the PR industry in terms of presenting ‘Return on Investment’ to clients at the end of campaigns. If you have thoughts about how best to measure social media as part of a PR campaign, we would love to hear from you.

Friday Round Up

- We are well and truly sick of the snow at this stage but did anyone else notice the strange footwear worn this week – we’ve seen football boots, running spikes, golf shoes, lots of sodden Uggs and even high heels! Check out RTE’s collection of snow pictures here.
- Christmas markets are starting today – we are really looking forward to browsing in Fitzwilliam Square next week to get in the Christmas mood.
- We watched Panorama’s documentary on FIFA’s corruption this week and hence were not at all surprised that England only received two votes out of 22 to host the world cup.
- D’Unbelievables are reuniting for the first time in 10 years on the Late Late tonight – well that’s if they make it up in this weather.
- Thinking of the poor Christmas Tree Farmers who are finding it very difficult to harvest their trees this year because of the snow – thankfully our tree arrived safely today. Looking forward to decorating it!
The Craft Fair in the RDS this weekend is certainly worth checking out – it’ll be a boost to the economy if we all try to buy Irish this year too.

Lessons in Social Media – An Irish Perspective

We attended Lessons in Social Media – An Irish Perspective in the Royal College of Surgeons this week, courtesy of The Marketing Society. Guest speakers at the event included Damien Mulley, Tom Farrell from Paddy Power, Darren Grant from The Organic Supermarket and Eoin O’Suilleabhain from Bord Gais.

Damien Mulley kicked off the seminar with a number of interesting Irish social media stats. 200,000 Irish people use YouTube daily, with over 2 billon videos watched worldwide per day, 100 million of which are mobile video views. In terms of Facebook, there are over 1.83 million people using Facebook in Ireland currently and this figure is expected to rise to 2 million by the end of this year. 58% of Irish people on Facebook log on daily, with 400,000 logging on via their handset. Twitter is a growing social media outlet in Ireland with 200,000 users and interestingly, it has become the second most used search engine after Google, with 800 million searches daily.

Tom Farrell from Paddy Power presented on what the brand saw as the main rules of social media – content is king, choose the right channel, engage and close the loop with consumers, i.e. enable them to transact with the brand in a way that suits them. The Organic Supermarket, which launched in 2008, changed their strategy in 2009 focusing on online. Set up by Darren Grant, The Organic Supermarket’s mission is to become the leading organic retailer in Ireland and with engaging content on Twitter, Facebook and their blog this new company is on the right track. Eoin O’Suilleabhain from Bord Gais presented on how the brand maintained a strong online presence and kept up momentum during the second year of The Big Switch campaign by using videos of the Last Family to target those who still hadn’t made the switch to Bord Gais. Eoin also discussed Bord Gais’s sponsorship of the GAA under 21 hurling championships, called the Breaking Through campaign, which focused strongly on video.

Each presentation on the day reaffirmed the importance of social media as a marketing and PR tool, both for big brands and owner entrepreneurs.

Friday Round Up

- Here’s to Arthur – the second year of Arthur Guinness day went down a treat, highlights included Paolo Nutini, Imelda Maye, Westlife, Black Eyed Peas and much more

- Twitter was hacked this week by a 17 yr old Australian who found a glich in the system and wanted to see if he could hack it using JavaScript

- Cork footballers won Sam back after 20 years

- An Post unveiled four commemorative stamps featuring irish Showbands heros such as Dickie Rock and Joe Dolan

- The National Ploughing Championships took place in Athy, Co Kildare this week. The horrible weather didn’t deter the crowds.

Bloggers are the New Literati

We have noticed some exciting book deals for some of our favourite bloggers

Lauren Luke’s book on makeup is out now. This is the lady who has landed herself a big career in journalism through uploading her make up videos to YouTube.

We had lunch last week with the lovely Kirstie from Ireland’s leading beauty blog – Beaut.ie, they are launching their own book at Brown Thomas on Saturday.

We have already talked about The Sartorialist’s book
» continue reading

Star Struck By The Sartorialist

In the PR game you get to meet a lot of stars and celebs and often it can be an underwhelming experience.
However, we were well and truly star struck today when we had the pleasure of attending a book signing and talk by Sartorialist Scott Schuman at the Gallery of Photography
He gave a really candid, honest and inspiring talk on his work and philosophy and we came away floating on air.
A spell bound crowd hung on his every word. His blog celebrates the joy of expressing yourself through how you dress. » continue reading

The Windy City

A trip to Chicago last week was a welcome break from Irish negativity. Americans are chirpier, more upbeat and all about the positive.

It really lifts your mood when you are repeatedly told to have a great day and given excellent customer service. The exchange rate makes it all very affordable and there is value everywhere – Target is a particular favourite for over the top Hallowe’en bits and low cost designer collaborations (on our visit a great collection from Anna Sui). » continue reading