What can you do with four band members and 8 running machines?

Create an amazing promotional video.

Quirky indie band OK Go has notched over 18 million views on You Tube with their amazing dance, which can be seen here for “Here It Goes Again.” It is well worth seeing.

This makes it the seventh most viewed video of all time on You Tube.

The cost: the hire of the machines, a choreographer who is the sister of a member of the band, and someone to film, which could have been a friend or fan and some production.

The result: It was voted the most creative video on You Tube for 2006. And the album that had failed to do much in a year had a 182% leap in sales and 50,000 more CDs were shipped to stores by the record company, which is almost unheard of after a year has gone with little headway.

If you want to see OK Go’s for A Million Ways video click here and be entertained some more.

It just shows that creativity, promotion and success is within anyone’s budget.

Thanks to Jeremy Waite of brand designers and green printers Juicy Marketing for alerting me to this amazing video.

The Times has published its top 50 blogs. These type of surveys produce controversy, but the journalist said this is “a work in progress” - you’re not wrong.

There are the ones you would expect like BuzzMachines, but in the small list of 4 for marketing and media is Byrne Baby Byrne. A competitive space. I am happy with the others although some would argue if they are the best blogs in this category, I am not too bothered at least they have substance:

Seth Godin, yes, it is well read and respected.
Edelman is well established.
Tom Glocer alright.

The Byrne Baby Byrne blog is less than 4 months old and I cannot see that it has something to say that makes me think more than usual or says that it should be so well regarded by The Times. In fact if it belonged to someone with less profile it certainly would not be here.

Just because Weber Shandwick is a big agency it does not mean they are necessarily ahead of everyone else, otherwise they would have had this blog a long time ago.

Networking4Business is launching a free new event aimed at helping budding new entrepreneurs make valuable business contacts.

The Manchester based networking business, which has enjoyed success with its Simply Networking format, is holding its inaugural meeting at Tiger Tiger on 10th July.

The event, called Simply Networking New, will cater to those that are considering starting a business or have just set-up. A number of seasoned business people will be on hand to offer advice.

Numbers are being limited to 40 to ensure those new to networking can make themselves at home and get to speak to a high proportion of the attendees.

Mark Greenwood, managing director of Networking4Business comments: “Business and entrepreneurship is all the rage at the moment. Many people encouraged by media interest and more flexible ways of working are looking to work for themselves, but it is not easy. This event is aimed at giving support, guidance and most of all important contacts to getting off to a good start.”

Mark can be contacted on 0161 721 4831 for more details

I was reading Stuart Bruce’s blog and came across this reference to Charles Arthur, technology editor of The Guardian, and his frustration at the ineptness of PRs, especially in relation to pitching in to bloggers, of which he is one.

The following needs very little comment. I am not sure if it is funny or irritating but it is worrying, especially as the PRs represent sought after brands / clients.

Here goes:

PR: “Hello, you blog, don’t you? Do you want to write about our new brand?”

Gdn: (confused) “Your new brand?”

PR: “Yes, it’s London 2012, the Olympics, the new brand has been unveiled today.”

Gdn: “Do you mean logo?” (This would be the logo - described by everyone else including me - as “one of the worst marks I’ve ever seen. It’s just plain ugly”).

When the people touting your stuff don’t know the difference between a logo and a brand (hint: one can be included in your accounts under “intangibles” and have a value reaching into the millions; the other just costs that way), you’ve got a problem.

Later: phone rings. My phone. It’s been passed on by a colleague who works on blogs.

PR: “Hello, do you blog?”

Me: “Er, yes.” (Thinks: among other things.. what an odd way to open the conversation.)
PR: “I’m calling from Panasonic because they’ve got a new camera that’s come out and we thought you’d like to write about it.”

Me: “So what’s different about it? Cameras come out all the time.”

PR: “I don’t know exactly, but you’re a blogger aren’t you? Would you like to write about it?”

Me: (feeling slight stroke coming on): “Why? What’s this blog stuff? What is it about the camera? What’s special, different, newsworthy, if anything, about it?”

PR: “Umm, well, that’s not what I’m doing but I thought that because you blog…”

Me: “I edit the Technology section of the Guardian. Google me. Goodbye.”

If you can stomach anymore the full entry on what not to do PR wise is here.

There is definitely a culture gap between B2B and B2C PRs. There should be nothing to prevent a PR in one field working in another.

But there are differences and one of the biggest is how much harder the job is if you are a B2B PR.

If you look at the number of publications a B2B PR can aim at the number is much higher for B2C PRs. Say we take a Manchester based legal practise against a Manchester based clothing brand to illustrate my point.

Let’s say the legal practise has a particular expertise in property law and the clothing brand is for the bigger person.

Which publications can you aim for?

Well with the Manchester Evening News you can aim for a page every Tuesday for the legal company, which has a page for professional services, but that includes all professionals services.

You can aim for 2-3 regional monthly business magazines. Occasionally a national. Perhaps trade press from vertical sectors such as construction and the odd lifestyle title. The property press naturally and that is quite well represented.

Your competition is every other legal practise that engages in property work and does PR - that must be a high number.

Yes, it all depends on relationships with journalists, the stories you produce and pitching in as well as being able to see opportunities. Yet look at the channels for the clothing brand:

The Manchester Evening News in lifestyle and the business section
Manchester lifestyle titles, there must be about 12 or more and the titles you can find in the newsagent for national lifestyle titles
The broadcast media locally and nationally
The nationals, The Daily Mail thrives on fashion ideas
Trade press for the clothes industry

And I haven’t got onto the wider brief you are probably going to have to be creative and that many B2C clients are very open to PR.

I think I am going to find myself a fashion house.

McMillan Cancer Support will be holding a charity ball at Old Trafford football club on the 20th September to raise money for providing support and care for cancer patients.

The event features fine dining, live entertainment and a range of brilliant prizes to bid for including a match day with the groundsman at Old Trafford.

For more information please contact Kim Smith on 01925 846 759

YE Magazine, is holding a seminar in Manchester on the 21st June on intellectual property.

Hot Property, as it has been named, is being held at the Manchester Conference Centre on Sackville Street from 1.30pm and only costs £25 / £15 for non-subscribers / subscribers to the magazine.

More details can be found on the YE Magazine website.

£300,000

Can you really put a price on it?

Joey Barton thinks you can and £300,000 is well short of it.

To reinforce the poor view many have of him after a series of incidents that include brawling with a fan, attacking a taxi driver (I didn’t know about this one, he has been active), a colleague and attacking another colleague, Joey is demanding a loyalty bonus as his contract says that he should be compensated if he leaves Manchester City without requesting a transfer.

Joey who will treble his wages when he moves to Newcastle in a contract worth £16m is pressing his claim over the “loyalty bonus” despite the club loyally backing him up over the years. Some repayment.

In the world of football values and knowing how to behave have gone out of the window.

Joey’s action not only damages him further (some achievement) but damages football as well.

Being a football PR is not for those that want a quite life.

Katie from The Apprentice, the overtly and slightly cartoon like manipulative, devious and selfish person, has been fired from her job as a global branding consultant at the Met Office.

A few things strike me as strange. £90,000 global consultant for the Met Office? Why do they need one and why pay so much?

I always get my weather from the BBC because I am a brand loyal and identify with their hip values. Doesn’t make much sense.

Apparently The Met Office denies they did pay Katie that.

She is also clueless about branding as shown on the Apprentice.

But what gets me is that she is complaining that her sacking is The Met’s fault:

“I think they wanted the publicity and you have to accept there are two sides to that.”

and

The Met “didn’t think it through” that her appearance on the show would create both positive and negative publicity.

and

“You are going to get loads of press and the people that let me go on the show wanted to cover their own backs and I have become, yet again, a scapegoat.”

No.

It was not that The Met is publicity seeking at any cost organisation. Did they force Katie on the program. And if they are so publicity seeking why does no one really know about what they do except that it has something to do with the weather?

The fact is that Katie brought them into disrepute by her behaviour on the program and allegedly having affairs with married colleagues coming to light, which there are suspicions that she staged the images for the press.

Katie will learn that media communications is like an equation: there is a price to pay for coverage. She is getting her 15 weeks of fame by her despicable behaviour and she is probably using the experience to launch a media career. She cannot complain, she should take responsibility for her own actions.

If you want more serious comment from an Apprentice aficionado go to Jim Symcox’s marketing blog.

I have actually pictured sitcom character ALF and not Katie. Look again and you can make out the difference. Can you see it? Yes ALF has less chance in being in a Christmas panto and has more talent in branding.

Enough. Entry on pitching to bloggers coming to this blog shortly.

The sponsored link!

The passport to traffic. The get traffic short cut.

Well, as Simon Wharton of PushOn points out in his recent article, there is another way: organic search marketing (as featured on the How Do portal).

Simon does not discount Pay Per Click but includes it as part of a well balanced and beneficial online campaign. Even though Simon says that organic search marketing is 6 times more effective than PPC, he calculates that a marketing campaign that secures a combination of a top three placement with a top placed PPC will generate a 93% chance of gaining a click.

However, when putting the sacred search terms “Manchester” “PR” “Agency” in a search engine I was surprised at some of the results sponsored link wise.

Simon in his article claims that we look at results in a “F” shape pattern. We scan the organic search results and tend to concentrate on the top sponsored link of the ones listed the right hand side.

But what has struck me is that some of the agencies advertising are wasting resources whether they achieve a coveted top link or not. Even if Google is selecting and placing the sponsored links the results as outlined are the same.

The PPC has included agencies from as far a field as Sheffield (not so bad but why look further afield than necessary) to Maidenhead (bad) to Connecticut USA (mmmmm).

I am sure Graham Associates is very good, but just having a London office for the San Francisco agency is not really convincing for many North West based clients. Yet there they are.

The Manchester scene is not few in numbers and offers a range of company cultures, experience and skills. In some areas such as financial PR it has less to select from so I can understand a Manchester company looking further afield in this case.

Perhaps the lure and glamour of a London agency is attractive, but a Winchester or Leicester one? Not likely however good they are and with little in the way of reputation in the North West there are unlikely to be any local references.

The agencies that advertise if they do not get clicked on are losing very little. But surely more people will use organic search only if the PPC offers suppliers that in many cases are going to be of little interest, especially as there is probably a suitable agency within a half hour drive.

What is the value of the sponsored link currency?