The Perfect PR Package For SEO
Why we believe we have created the perfect PR package for SEO
With SEO and PR markets increasingly merging agencies at both sides of the border have started to encroach on each other’s turf to sell their wares.
Firms that once specialised in web mapping and site structure are now huge content generators, while those who have spent years honing their media relations are now working their press releases around key words and link-building strategies.
While we don’t proclaim to be SEO specialists, we do believe we have built the perfect PR package to help firms boost their off-site SEO thanks to our unique position in the media market.
Here’s a run-down of what it includes:
Link building
Link building is one of the oldest SEO strategies in the book. Since the late 1990s search engines have treated links as votes for popularity and importance in the ongoing democratic opinion poll of the web, and as such brands are constantly on the hunt to secure follow links back to their site from high-DA and relevant sites.
Our Breakthrough package offers a money-back guarantee of two follow links from publications with a DA of over 90, and we look to secure as many links as we can elsewhere to ensure there’s a healthy mix.
What’s more, our link building strategy has been developed alongside the digital desks on national publications which means we are always one step ahead of the curve when it comes to changes in link policies on national newspapers. Given that this usually has a trickle-down effect, it’s always good to be in the know.
For more advice on how to link build, see our top tips page here.
Social signals
Although links remain an important part of the SEO mix, there’s an indication that Google is shifting from exogenous signals to a new approach that relies on endogenous signals. That means a big focus on quality and an even bigger focus on social signals such as how sticky a piece of content is and how many people interact with it.
As part of the Breakthrough package we include social media distribution of the story via our in-house social media channels that places the content in front of relevant people who are more likely to share and interact with it.
Take a look at how we achieved our first quarter-million share month for our clients here
Web presence
Garnering a wide spread of coverage is key to an effective SEO strategy. The popularity of a story can amplify your brands message and presence on the web, so creating powerful, engaging content that gets wide pick up is a silver bullet solution to getting noticed in search.
We distribute our Breakthrough stories to a guaranteed 137 regional sites, including the likes of The Scotsman, Yorkshire Post and Lancashire Evening Post. On top of that we get guaranteed national coverage and widespread pick-up from relevant titles that deliver a healthy web presence almost at the click of a button.
To get an idea of the sort of numbers we can achieve, check our results from 2017
Content collateral
Finally, all the content we create for our clients as part of the Breakthrough package is theirs to own and use on their site and social platforms.
From the research to the video and visual assets, we provide clients with a range of content that will boost visibility on search and helps deliver longevity in the campaign. Our infographics are cut up as five separate visual assets which can be posted out on social media over a number of weeks or months, and our videos sit perfectly on landing pages that sip up that all-important SEO juice.
Get in touch with us today to see how we can help with your SEO strategy.
How to Capitalise on Influencer Marketing
In 2017 it was recorded that there was an 325 per cent increase in influencer marketing searches on Google. With Kylie Jenner being capable of wiping off $1.3 billion off of Snapchat’s value in one Tweet and the mass outrage brought about by Youtube star’s Logan Paul’s visit to Japan, it is clear influencers are as important as they have ever been. However, with that in mind, there is a right and wrong way to use influencers for brand purposes. This is especially true where Jenner was also responsible for the complete social media catastrophe in Pepsi’s controversial advert last year. Here’s our tips on how your brand can safely use social media stars to elevate and gain coverage.
Tips
1) The Bot Problem
A recent survey from the University of Southern California and Indiana University found that up to 15 per cent of all Twitter accounts were not even real people but bots. Significantly, this means that up to 50 million accounts are fake. It also doesn’t ignore the fact that many wannabe influencers are buying these bots to make themselves look more credible. This is relevant as it could mean that by using these influencers, you could be conveying a strong message to a very small audience which is not just a waste of time but also money.
2) Focusing on the Right Demographic
More followers may equate to potentially more eyes on your brand but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee success if the brand’s message can’t accurately be conveyed by that influencer. At 72Point we focus on listening attentively to customer needs as brand message is the biggest priority in any campaign we produce. This is exemplified by our recent campaign for Cineworld which used The Mash Report’s Rachel Parris to highlight “what makes the perfect film.” The success garnered a staggering 148 pieces of coverage in print and online media, with coverage in the Metro and The Sun. Consequently, the message was authentic and combined an influencer who had an engaged following with a brand they loved. This unsurprisingly resulted in a natural relationship that worked very well. Therefore, the focus should be on having a partnership with an influencer who has followers in the right demographic who are actually listening and will be interested in the brand’s message.
3) Consistency
Staying true to your values is an unheralded value that is dismissed more often than not. However, in the increasingly scrutinized world of social media it can come back to haunt you in the worst ways. This was best shown with Zoella’s old Tweets resurfacing. By using influencers you have to be very careful in picking consistent individuals who you are confident can deliver. The core of 72Point also focuses on consistently providing good results that don’t devalue a brand in circumstances that may result in negative coverage later on. Ultimately, this can only be rectified by strong research for brands to find the right people for the job.
4) Measurement
Without the right tools it is difficult to evaluate how successful a campaign has been, which is why a large proportion of the job in conjunction with influencers is convincing them that we can deliver on our promises. The Digital Team at 72Point focuses a large proportion of their time measuring different metrics and keeping up to date with trends to stay on track in the ever-advancing digital landscape. Overwhelmingly, it means our content matches up well with how much extra coverage an influencer can provide to strengthen a brand to the next level.
Conclusion
As a PR firm we are always looking to capitalise on the next big trends but before doing so it’s always important to step back and get the fundamentals of conveying the right message to the right audience. The marketing and PR world is always adapting but with these tips it could provide an effective solution to help steer your brand in the right direction.
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Why PR Needs To Be A Valuable Part of Your 2018 Marketing Strategy
The beauty of PR as a 21st century marketing tool is that it has evolved into an all-encompassing method of communication. Few, if any, comms methods in a modern marketer’s tool kit could claim to meet SEO, social media and brand exposure KPIs in one fell swoop, but thanks to the nature of the digital market that is precisely what PR can achieve.
In an age where content is king, creating stories and empowering storytellers has given brands oxygen on the web to stand out where others get swallowed up. Little surprise, therefore, that 77 per
cent of exhibitors at this year’s Prolific North Live carried out PR campaigns in 2017 and 92 per cent look to do it in 2018 as well.
But there are objections to utilising PR tactics among the marketing community, namely because confusion exists over how to implement a successful PR plan.
And who can blame them? The market today is extremely crowded, which means the ability to stand out is becoming increasingly difficult. PR can return a bounty of positive business benefits, but only if campaigns are orchestrated successfully, which returns me to my initial point.The art of PR is about creating stories and empowering storytellers. Whether it be journalists, bloggers, vloggers or social media influencers, having a good story at the heart of your campaign is key to its success, and so a PR plan should always start with idea generation and stress testing.
Although journalists and other media professionals aren’t always on hand to judge a story before it has been created, plenty of agencies do have current or former hacks on their books, so seek them out and run your ideas by them before you get underway. After all, overcoming the first hurdle early on will ensure you don’t run into any bumps further down the line. Then, make sure you develop the campaign with a holistic approach across all platforms and channels. Ask whether there is a natural linking structure to satisfy SEO objectives, whether the content is optimised for online media and social media and that it is sharable.
Crucially, make sure you have an effective means of distributing the story beyond your established circles by assessing how to make a big splash in the media and ways in which to infiltrate social media audiences that aren’t currently in touch with your brand. With over nine in ten companies set to roll out PR campaigns this year, the reality is that PR is not something you can afford not to do.
72Point secures media exposure for your brand across digital and traditional media. We create, distribute, and land PR and branded news stories in massmedia publications including Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Sun, Daily Telegraph and Metro as well as mass-readership news sites such as The Independent and UNILAD. Content. Covered.
This blog was written as part of 72Point’s presentation at Prolific North Live 2018 as part of their Digital Keynote Theatre – click here to view video highlights from the event
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How to Make the Most of Marketing Exhibitions
How to Make the Most of Marketing Exhibitions
Exhibitions form a key part of a marketer’s arsenal, offering unique face-to-face communication with prospective clients and vital networking opportunities. But it can be a tricky task to maximise the takeaway from these events. Last week, 72Point attended the Prolific North Live Expo at EventCity in Manchester. If you read our earlier blog (http://www.72point.com/future-digital-media-north-heres/) you will be aware of just how pivitol the North is within the digital industry. 70 per cent of total UK digital tech investment was in regional clusters beyond London, with Edinburgh (£159 million), Manchester (£78 million) and Sheffield (£61 million) among the notable recipients. The event represented a massive opportunity for us to interact with the biggest movers and shakers of the digital sphere, and we wanted to share our strategy for how we maximised our return on investment.
Make sure your branding stands out
Expos offer a fantastic opportunity to get your brand out there, and you should be looking at capitalising on every opportunity you get to do so. From merchandise to sponsored events, billboards and digital content, it is crucial that you utilise as much of the available collateral at hand to make sure your brand has prominence. At Prolific North Live, we sponsored the keynote session as a way of ensuring that our logo was in as many visual slots as possible. Our Managing Director Chris Pharo and ChannelMum’s Jane Hamilton also took to the stage to share their vital experience and insights on the changing world of digital media, news and PR, which reaffirmed our position as a professional, authoritative brand. It also gives attendees some real takeaway – making them more likely to attend and remember your brand.
Keep It Simple
Simple but effective branding is the best way to convey your message. Long-winded, complex collateral can often result in key messaging being lost. Any collateral used at an event should be punchy yet informative. At our exhibition stand at Prolific North Live, we made sure to keep it simple. As an agency that creates, distributes and lands proactive stories in major publications, we can cut out the marketing fluff and just say it as it is, highlighting our key services and ROI for clients. Making sure that your message is conveyed clearly and concisely with your exhibition panels is vital so that any passers by can instantly recognise your specialties at a glance. This will give potential customers a lasting impression of what you specialise in, meaning that you will likely be their first port of call.
Engage with social channels
Events provide great visual content for social media channels, another key way to boost engagement. Followers can be gained by simply interacting naturally with other attendees and piggy-backing on the momentum that any decent expo will generate. The exhibition floor at Prolific North Live was full of cutting-edge brands showcasing innovative tech which lent itself to regular Instragram story updates – great engaging visual content for our followers to view. Through regular updates linked to the event you can boost traffic to your social pages page and gain followers. Twitter feeds work well when utilised on a rolling basis displaying general updates and goings-on at the event including relevant hashtags. This provides followers with a newsfeed, giving them all the information they need.
The take-homes
Marketing events are a great way to boost brand exposure and increase traffic to company websites/social channels – all very viable justifications for allocating spend. But, above everything, attending marketing events allows your company to stay on top of industry trends. They provide a fertile ground for networking with key individuals and learning about what’s current and what’s next to come – allowing you to identify how this relates to you. This knowledge can be invaluable in keeping your brand fresh and relevant.
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The future of digital media is in the North - here's why
The future of digital media is in the North - here's why
In what is being dubbed a “digital migration” in the industry, many media organisations that once housed their digital functions in London are migrating to the North of the country.
Although the shift can be attributed to a number of factors, early signs that London has been caught napping while the digital revolution took hold are certainly there.
According to one recruitment consultant there has been a significant increase in the demand for experienced digital professionals throughout the north, with Leeds a particular hotbed for such talent over the years.
Here's how the north positioned itself as the chief beneficiary of a digital migration.
The Past
There once was a time when London had a monopoly over the media industry. In fact, so concentrated was the media landscape that in 2003 the government was forced to intervene with the Communications Act, which required a proportion of programmes by the UK’s main broadcasters be made outside the M25. This acted as a catalyst for big media moving to the north.
The Present
Fast forward to today and the news on the media front is that Salford outranked both London and Manchester to become the UK’s top city for starting a new business in 2017. Sunderland also laid claim to the most new tech businesses in the UK, with the turnover of digital tech businesses in the city growing by 101 per cent between 2011 and 2015.
This is even further exemplified by the fact that nearly 70 per cent of total UK digital tech investment was in regional clusters beyond London, with Edinburgh (£159 million), Manchester (£78 million) and Sheffield (£61 million) among the notable recipients.
Significantly, digital employment in Sheffield and South Yorkshire stands at over 21,000 and digital firms in the region boast one of the highest growth rates of any cluster in the UK, with turnover increasing at 47 per cent.
In Birmingham, there are already an estimated 50,000 creative workers in the city area, and more than 5,800 companies. Little wonder, therefore, that Birmingham successfully lobbied to gain more investment from the BBC in the same vein as Salford by pitching itself as "young, diverse and digital".
The Future
The impact of Media City’s introduction to the wider region and the rate of growth should not be understated, as thousands of start-ups now rub shoulders with the likes of the BBC and Channel 4, who headquarter in the city.
It would appear the only way is up for the region. In 2016 a £1 billion plan to double the size of MediaCityUK was given the green light. Moreover, according to a study by DueDil, if Salford maintains its startup growth rate, the city could be on course to produce 5,286 new businesses this year alone, a huge increase of 2,436 from the previous year.
According to Stuart Clarke, who headed up the Leeds Digital Festival in June 2016, Leeds has the potential to become ‘digital capital of Europe.’ Thanks in part to the rising costs of running a business in London an increasing amount of start-ups are heading to Yorkshire to capitalise on its burgeoning digital sector. The Leeds University backed SPARK programme supports student entrepreneurs, while Futurelabs, Duke Studios, Leeds Beckett Digital Hub and ODI Leeds provide space and networking opportunities. A £3.7 million grant from Leeds City Council will be divided between innovative tech projects, and Creative England backed Gameslab Leeds will continue to support games studios in the area.
The North East is also in the process of handing the keys to the region over to tech-savvy Millennials. The IPPR “State of the North” report pointed to the opportunities afforded by the creative and tech sectors in the region that will necessitate more digital skills. Sunderland now has the highest rate of digital tech business startups in the country, while Newcastle and Middlesbrough both have higher birth rates than the national average – with a hotbed of IT and digital talent and creativity there to welcome firms who take a punt on the country’s chilly North East.
In Birmingham, the digital scene is thriving with the youthfulness and diversity of its workforce, as Under 25s make up 40 per cent of the population, making it among the youngest cities in Europe with an increasing supply of talent for media firms operating in the digital space.
Conclusion
With the secret now out, it will be interesting to see how aggressive this migration is set to be. Although London is undoubtedly important to the Digital Media sector, it seems like the tide has turned to the North with only greater growth expected in 2018.
72Point's Jack Peat will be leading Prolific North Live’s Digital Keynote Theatre on 28th February and 1st March, for more details, see https://live.prolificnorth.co.uk/.
Ode to Twitter
There’s a lot of talk about the impending death of Twitter; “it’s got no money”, “there are too many spam accounts”; “there’s too much content”; there’s this, there’s that….
All of these things are of course true.
Yes, Twitter is running out of money, that’s no secret but I’m not going to get into that now because, well frankly, money…snore!
Yes, there are too many spam accounts on Twitter. Whether it’s eggs that don’t tweet, naked ladies posting pictures of their flesh, accounts that live to follow people only to unfollow them weeks later and or the trolls, Twitter can at times be an unpleasant, ingenuine place to be and it has damaged the user experience. But they are working on this. Their latest announcement of their advanced muting options, which now allow you to mute offensive words, phrases and emoji in your notifications and mentions so although it won’t stop the existence of bad Twitter users, it will make their impact less noticeable.
Yes, there is too much content. Sometimes going on Twitter can be like wading through the medieval streets of London in flip flops. Treading in other people’s crap left right and centre.
But let me tell you something….I personally don’t care. I love Twitter.
I love that it’s everybody’s dumping ground. Isn’t that why we fell in love with it in the first place?! Because we could dump our thoughts there. Don’t get me wrong, there is sharing and there is over sharing but I’ll tell you this that excessive dumping has given me something that I just don’t get from other social networks: a good laugh. In a world that sometimes makes you want to run for the hills, Twitter can be a source of unlimited joy.
Take the shambles that was Euro 2016. English football fans were left devastated, if unsurprised, about England’s early exit and, although they won’t admit it, by Wales’ disappointing defeat in the Semi-finals. But devastation quickly dissipated when a moth landed on Ronaldo’s face and within minutes endless numbers of ‘Ronaldo’s Moth’ Twitter accounts appeared.
Then there’s Brexit. Millions of people awoke one morning to realise half of the population had potentially thrown their country into turmoil. But it was ok because of the abundance of ‘Twitter bants’ we had to get us through it. Buzzfeed had an absolute field day with them offering us 36 of the best to make us ‘laugh despite everything’. Other lists of Brexit based hilarity can be found on the Poke, IBTimes and Yahoo and, well pretty much all over the internet.
Live scenes from the Channel tunnel. pic.twitter.com/l04wXKpjaq
— John Myers (@johnmyersteam) June 24, 2016
Whoever created this, I salute you. pic.twitter.com/zsyMSd0GIL
— Nick Harvey (@mrnickharvey) October 10, 2016
The same goes for the mind blower that was the US election. When logic and reason had gone out the window, Twitter helped us laugh before we cried. It is also true that Twitter was partly responsible for the ludicrous outcome but it was tweets about Donald Trump that made us rational folk realise quite how ridiculous the man, and the result, is. Carefully edited videos, such as the one to the left, cut through the bile to show a beautiful outcome more positive than the reality. Not only that but the good people of the UK took to Twitter to bring the world back down to reality and help the world see what was really important during this confusing time….the changing shape of Toblerones.
Then there’re the GIFs. Yes, ok, so we can now get those on Facebook but we can also write big, long meaningful statuses on Facebook to convey how we feel. Twitter requires you to think about it. How can you convey how you really, feel with brevity? GIFs. How can you quickly engage someone scrolling through at lightening speed? GIFs. How can you make Ruth really happy? GIFs.
I also love Twitter for its sense of conversation. The world is a lonely place and with everyone supposedly becoming antisocial mobile phone/human hybrids, the truth is we’re actually being very social. It’s just not #IRL social. Everyone is having a chat, online.
The best examples of this are when we look at the link between Twitter and television. Twitter, more than any other social media platform, brings people together during the big (and little) TV occasions creating imagined online communities to fill the void of actual human interaction. Bake Off is perhaps the most obvious example of this.
Bake off is (or should I say was, boo hoo) appointment to view television meaning that, by definition, people are choosing to be inside watching TV and not ‘out’ socialising. But, in reality, the world was watching Bake Off together…tweeting along bake by bake. Innuendo by innuendo.
The correlation between hot TV and Twitter is so
You could hear a rolling pin drop around the country on Wednesday night at this moment. #GBBO #ExtraSlice pic.twitter.com/Bs0MV7060c
— British Bake Off (@BritishBakeOff) October 28, 2016
strong that Twitter is launching their live tv partnership with Apple TV which allows you to watch the live video (say American football) and have a curation of relevant Twitter feed next to it on the screen so that you can engage in conversation whilst you engage with the video.
The other reason I love Twitter is one of its biggest selling points; it’s THE place to go for breaking news. 2016 has been an awful year as far as news is concerned and Twitter has broken most of it to me. Whether it was yet another beloved celebrity who’d passed away or another horrific terror attack or shooting, I find myself going to Twitter rather than news sites for both verification and updates. 1n 2015, a survey conducted by Twitter and the American Press Institute found that 86% of Twitter users say that they use it for news, and the vast majority (74%) do so daily. In fact, the news angle is so prevalent that they have re-categorised themselves in the App Store; they are now listed under news rather than social media. The same cannot be said of Facebook, who are currently battling against their ‘fake news’ problem.
Twitter also has other positives over Facebook. The biggest, for me, being that the app itself and that fact that, well to be blunt, it isn’t Facebook. The Facebook app is enough to make Bruce Banner bust the seams of his clothes and smash up the nearest town. Twitter doesn’t force things on you in the same way. I mean does anybody actually want the Facebook market place to be in prime pressing position on the app? I don’t. I also don’t want to have to go round and round the houses to be able to access the most recent content in my feed. I don’t want to see stuff from last week that I don’t care about at the top of my wall. I didn’t care about it then; I don’t care about it now. Twitter, despite also having algorithms, lets me see what’s happening now. Yes, that might mean that it’s harder for content to stand out or that content might be missed but at least it’s accessible at my fingertips. If Twitter is ‘full of low-quality content’, Facebook is drowning in it.
But I suppose the key pull for me is that it’s based around two very important things: language and creativity. There is absolutely nothing more satisfying to me than getting appreciation for your use and manipulation of language. Conveying your point and personality in just 140 characters. Making someone laugh in 140 characters. Making someone think about something in 140 characters. That’s a skill and the way to make Twitter last is to harness the people who are best at doing that. Creativity, either through language or visual content is harnessed through Twitter. The spam accounts that I mentioned at the start of this, which feels like years ago (…sorry, ironically for a Twitter user, I’m a rambler) they don’t do any of that. And that is what is wrong with Twitter. Twitter isn’t dying. It’s being eaten from the inside by people with a lack of creativity and a poor command of language.
So, what am I really trying to say? Good question. Well, in case I hadn’t mentioned it, I love Twitter. Yes, it’s got its faults but are they problems that are unique to that particular platform?! I personally don’t think so. I think social media would be poorer if the blue bird flew the nest. There is no doubt that it needs to evolve, everything does, but at its very heart is something special and glorious. Whether it’s conversations being had or conversations being sparked from a tweet, conversation is at the heart of Twitter. And really, in the end, isn’t that the main definition of ‘social’.
SATS: Testing skills for school not for life
Today marks the start of SATS week for my son, his friends and thousands of other 11-year-olds across the UK. It’s an enormously pressured occasion for all of the children, but for my son, in particular, the tests will be particularly arduous as he is dyslexic.
Perhaps if my son wasn’t 2.5 years behind his peers already I might not worry so much about how he will make it through the week, but there are a number of other reasons why I disagree with the way schools and the government handle the Year 6 SATS.
What really bothers me is the fact my son has spent every night since September desperately trying to answer mock papers, crying when he gets the answers wrong because he can’t remember what phrases such as subordinating conjunction, synonym and adverbial mean. He’s not alone; my Facebook page went wild with parents complaining their children also couldn’t do the papers, and worse still they didn’t know how to help because the questions were utterly baffling.
Perhaps worse than that – because when he’s at home I can at least manage the tears and disappointment – is the fact his entire Year 6 curriculum has been based around the looming SATS. Day in and day out the school has been ‘preparing’ the children for these tests which, in the long run, do nothing to benefit the child and everything to benefit the school.
This means lessons aren’t fun, and rather than learning how to write creative pieces of text, they’re learning ridiculous phrases such as present progressive, relative pronoun and preposition.
And what I really, really, take insult to is that on my son’s first parent’s evening of the year we were effectively told (after a deep sigh from his teacher) that because he had no hope of passing the SATS due to his dyslexia, he was pretty much a failure. So, no SATS results means you’re no good. Never mind the fact my son is a technical whizz kid, has the inventing skills of Thomas Edison and the artistic skills of Pablo Picasso (alright that might be the proud parent talking, but you get my gist). No, because my son probably won’t pass his SATS this year, according to his teacher, and probably the government, he’s no good.
What really bugs me is that writing, learning and going to school should be FUN. And this year has not been fun. For any child, surely the most important thing is that by the time they leave school they are able to write a grammatically correct piece of text, understand when and where to use punctuation, and be able to decipher the meaning of a piece of writing? Is that not all the average adult does day to day?
Which got me thinking. I write for a living, and have done so for 17 years, so how would I do when faced with the Year 6 grammar test? I’ve been helping my son revise for the past six months, I don’t have dyslexia, and I’m pretty darn good at my job, so I should pass with flying colours – right?
Wrong!
I sourced a SATS test online and answered 10 minutes of questions similar to the following:
Q: Which sentence uses the past progressive?
- After Ali finished his homework, he went out to play
- Gemma was doing her science homework
- Jamie learnt his spellings every night
- Anna found her history homework difficult
Q: In this sentence, is the word after being used as a subordinate conjunction or as a preposition?
- I went to the cinema after I had eaten my dinner
Q: Which sentence is written in the active voice?
- The book was returned to the library yesterday
- The assembly was held in the hall
- The bad weather led to the cancellation
- The floods were caused by the heavy rain
I got 40%!
I then decided to put my colleagues to the test, surely one of us would fare better? We’re all of different ages, but between us have a collective 50 years of writing professionally – if anyone should be able to pass the SATS grammar tests, it should be us?
But no!
Only two members of the 72Point creative team (and I’m sure age is on their side) managed to get over 40%! I should find this shocking, but having seen the homework my son has endured every night this year, I don’t. I for one have never had to remember what a main clause, subordinate clause or antonym is when carrying out my day job, OR when conducting normal life admin.
To quote two teacher friends of mine, both of whom shall remain anonymous for obvious reasons:
“To think how good you are at English, just shows how completely pointless this is – plus it has only been in the curriculum for 2 years – I hate the fact I have to teach grammar just to enable children to pass this test”
“I got 50% and I’m a teacher! Good job I’m teaching Year 1 where we stop at nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prefixes and suffixes. It is so depressing seeing what the children are expected to know by the end of primary now.”
Even teachers are frustrated with the constraints of the current curriculum – my son’s school has been amazing since the day he joined but the teacher’s hands are tied and bound by the government’s obsession with testing children instead of teaching them the skills they’ll need for real life. There are so many other wonderful things which could and should be covered by the school curriculum – a bigger emphasis on science, technology, engineering, art and cooking for example.
So what does this prove? To me, it demonstrates that the Year 6 SATS tests are complete and utter nonsense which serve no purpose other than to strip young children of their childhood and ruin the last precious year of primary school.
And what will my boy take away from this experience? Well, I guess that’s very much down to our parenting, and how my husband and I handle the whole situation. We have encouraged our son to revise every night, not because we care how he does in the tests but to encourage hard work, dedication and good behaviour.
We have promised him we will NOT be looking at his results – because we firmly believe that all children should be celebrated for how hard they try and not what they achieve – and that as long as he can walk out of that exam room on Friday knowing he tried his best then we’ll be the proudest parents walking the planet.
I wish all the children sitting the SATS this week the very best of luck – each and every one is doing something this week that the majority of 72Point, and probably everyone else in our industry cannot do; however pointless this will be in the long run.
If you want to take the test, please visit http://www.sats2016.co.uk/think-youd-pass-your-sats-in-2016/
Hippos, polar bears & paint: PR highlights of 2015
A good PR campaign or stunt can work wonders for a brand.
Get the timing, tone and creativity just right and not only will you see tons of national, regional, online and broadcast coverage but thanks to social media, it can also end up going viral, giving you more exposure than money could ever buy.
There is a fine line between a good stunt and a failure. They can be expensive to plan and carry out, with no guarantee of anyone talking or writing about it afterwards.
But here at 72Point, we’ve seen several stunts and campaigns this year which have not only had great results in terms of coverage, but were memorable and got us all talking.
Here are just a few of our favourites from 2015…
Polar bear
Campaign: Polar bear on the tube
Brand: Sky Atlantic/Fortitude
Agency: Taylor Herring and Sky’s in-house PR team
Last January, commuters in London were greeted with a life-sized polar bear on the tube, after it was ‘set loose’ by Sky Atlantic to promote its new crime drama Fortitude.
The huge bear, which was built by a team of Hollywood special effects experts and operated by two puppeteers from the West End production of War Horse, was seen around various places in the city including the underground and crossing the Millennium Bridge.
Fortitude was set in the Arctic, and what better symbol is there of the frozen landscape than a terrifying but beautiful polar bear?
Thanks to the amazing pictures of the bear riding the tube, walking over bridges and roaming the city’s parks, the campaign got widespread coverage but it was also great for social media. The first thing confused Londoners would have done is to Tweet, Instagram or Facebook about their unusual encounter with a polar bear that day.
It received 47 million impressions on Twitter – 30 million of which were from the UK, while the show launched with just over 700,000 viewers – the biggest audience to date for a UK originated drama on Sky Atlantic.
Fifty Shades
Campaign: Fifty Shades of Grey ‘Leaked Memo’
Brand: B&Q
Agency: Good Relations
At the start of the year, it was all about the highly anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey film, which was released in February.
B&Q ‘issued’ a memo to all staff telling them to get to know the storyline in case customers enquired about items inspired by the film, such as cable ties, rope and duct tape.
So many brands wanted to be associated with the famous movie, and all kinds of surveys, PR stories and stunts were planned to allow them to get on the Fifty Shades bandwagon.
But this was one of the best – the ‘leaked’ memo format was great and entirely believable, while still being very tongue-in-cheek, resulting in a huge amount of coverage including The Daily Telegraph, Sky News and BBC Radio Two.
They even saw a second wave of coverage after admitting the memo was, in fact, fake.
It was a great quick-win, which was quick and easy to execute, providing great talk value and standing out at a time when so many other brands were trying do stories about the same thing.
Lego
Campaign: Lego-proof slippers
Brand: Lego
Agency: Brand Station
As a parent to an almost five-year-old, Lego-mad little boy, as soon as I saw this, I thought it was a brilliant idea – stunt or not.
Anyone who has a Lego fan in their house will know the unbearable pain that comes from stepping on a discarded brick, trying hard not to swear repeatedly because your darling child (who is most likely the one responsible for leaving said brick in the middle of the floor) is nearby.
The branded slippers come with an extra thick sole, meaning parents can walk around their house freely, safe in the knowledge that more of the little bricks will no longer be a threat to their feet.
Unfortunately for millions of parents, Lego and the French agency behind the slippers, Brand Station, only made 1,500 of the slippers, but the coverage and social media activity around the stunt was a great result for the brand.
Lights
Campaign Christmas: Lights Untangler
Brand: Tesco
Christmas is a tricky time of year for PR – everyone wants to get in on the action but there is only so much Christmas PR the media can take.
Tesco came out on top with their idea to hire the first Christmas light untangler in one of their Wrexham stores after research found those in the town were found to be most frustrated by the festive job.
They took something which causes all kinds of stress in UK households at the start of December and tied it into their famous ‘Every Little Helps’ slogan with ease.
As part of the job ad, responsibilities included ‘manning and managing the Christmas lights untangling stand’, ‘checking lights and bulbs for signs of breakage’ and of course ‘successfully untangling customers’ Christmas lights neatly, quickly and efficiently and in an orderly fashion’.
The ideal candidate had to be ‘passionate about Christmas, ‘able to untangle three metres of lights in under three minutes’ and ‘be persistent and patient’.
After the first wave of coverage from the initial job ad, Tesco also saw further hits once they revealed more than 100 people had applied for the position.
NHS
Campaign: Missing Type
Brand: NHS Blood and Transport
The Missing Type campaign, in June, was designed to raise awareness about the shortage of blood donations, and saw As, Bs and Os, removed from the brands logo to highlight the different blood groups.
It started with a host of brands such as Waterstones, Odeon and even Downing Street mysteriously removing letters from their signage.
A few days later, NHS Blood and Transport revealed they were behind the missing letters with a news story revealing that 40 per cent fewer donors had come forward in that year, compared to ten years ago.
But following the reveal, as well as the brands who had already joined in, other brands took part with the public also joining in by changing their Twitter handles to replace any As, Bs and Os with a blank space. We even took part ourselves. The success of the campaign is clear in the figures – more than 30,000 people registered as blood donors during 10-day campaign and it had more than 700 pieces of coverage, which even resulted in the public website having to be taken down as a result of the unprecedented demand.
Snickers
Campaign: You aren’t you when you’re hungry
Brand: Snickers
Following news of the Jeremy Clarkson ‘fracas’ in March, Snickers jumped at the chance of some brilliant reactive PR.
As details emerged of the incident, where the Top Gear presenter was said to have assaulted one of the show’s producers because he was refused a hot meal, Snickers sent a box of the bars to the (former) BBC presenter with a note using the brand’s slogan ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’.
The chocolate brand’s campaign and TV advert sees a Snickers bar given to someone who is acting diva-like due to hunger. After tucking into the chocolate treat, they return to their normal self.
The parallels with the Clarkson story were just too good to pass up and Snickers were quick to react – and tweet a picture of the box and note to their followers, which was retweeted thousands of times.
And finally, on the subject of Jeremy Clarkson, we also need to give an honourable mention to the Robox, a 3D printer created by the husband of our very own creative account director Emma Elsworthy, who created a Jeremy Clarkson version of Hungry Hippos, ‘Hungry Jeremy’.
They designed a 3D-printable version of Clarkson’s head, which can be used to replace the hippos’ heads in the classic game, which saw great coverage across print and online. It goes to show that a killer of an idea is still at the heart of a good PR campaign – you don’t need to be a big brand to generate a buzz.
Banksy blunder - The benefit of hindsight
It’s not quite as bad as being the man who failed to sign the Beatles but sometimes, as I crawl to work through Bristol traffic on a dismal Monday morning, it feels that way.
In the late 90s, I began to notice funny and subversive graffiti emerging around the city. A rat here, a clown there, a thought-provoking stencilled slogan amid a scrabble of tags.
One particularly striking image appeared overnight on the side of a pub next to our old office on Hotwells Road opposite the SS Great Britain. It was of a screaming clown with Kiss-style eye make-up, toting two pistols. For some unaccountable reason it cheered me up every time I saw it.
While talking one day with a pal who owned a skateboard store off Park Street, I learned that the artist responsible was known as Banksy. I filed the information away and continued to enjoy his work as it cropped up throughout Bristol, experiencing a kind of old school ‘I Spy’ thrill every time I found one.
Fast forward to 2000, and the announcement that Banksy was making the move towards the more traditional medium of canvas, and marking this with an exhibition at the Severnshed restaurant. I went along. Although many of the paintings bore red ‘sold’ stickers (prices were in the high hundreds, rather than today’s astronomical figures) the event itself, it seemed to me, was sparsely attended.
I met and chatted with Banksy’s then manager Robert Birse, in the course of which I was invited to visit the man’s studio, which I jumped at.
If memory serves, the near-derelict space was tucked away in Bedminster. I’d persuaded my news editor that there was something very interesting going on here, although the Banksy phenomenon was still a long way off.
During the course of the visit, I enthused as was shown various canvasses, including one particularly strong image – an elephant with a missile strapped to its back, against a vivid pink background.
“The frame on that one is slightly off,” said Robert. “If you hold it up you’ll see it’s a bit skew-iff.”
It was. It meant it wouldn’t hang completely flat. “Still amazing though,” I replied.
Robert thought for a moment and then said: “Well, you could have that one for a reduced rate, if you like.”
“So … how much?”
“Say £300?”
Now, at the time I was a pretty hard-up reporter with three children to support and another on the way. Three hundred quid bought a lot of nappies and Wet Wipes. But still …
“Yes,” I said. “But is it OK if I give you a cheque for £100 now and pay the rest over the next couple of months?”
He agreed, and I loaded the piece into the back of my battered Peugeot 205.
Back at the office, I phoned my wife and – having spent the journey back planning the best way of pitching the purchase (investment/it’s beautiful/it’ll cover that dodgy bit of plastering in the front room) – recounted the tale.
An ominous silence. A reaaaalllllllly long, ominous silence. Then: “You know we can’t afford it, so I don’t even know why you’d consider this. It’ll have to go back. And you need to get the bloke to tear up the cheque before he banks it.”
The channel for negotiation had clanged shut. I muttered something about a loan, or perhaps borrowing some money from a parent or a mate, but we were already overdrawn to the hilt, and this was met with a dangerous snort.
So back it went.
I’ve tried to “take a positive” from this over the years, but I can’t. I experience a pang – actually it’s more of a stab – every time I read about a Banksy selling at auction, or something like the wonderful Dismaland opening its rusty doors to the public.
If there’s anything I learned from my own very personal Banksygate it’s this. If you love a piece of art for what you believe it to be – something you love – then buy it, if you reasonably can. Absurd as it sounds now, I genuinely didn’t have the spending power at the time, but I guess I could have rustled up the cash somehow.
The other thing I take comfort and joy from is that I can still see and enjoy Banksys every day, in the streets here in Bristol. He even painted a commemorative flower over the trigger-happy clown on Hotwells Road, which always raises a smile. I see them every day, and they’re free.
The Joy of Print
Having spent my entire career working in digital media, it may seem like a counterintuitive move to eulogise the great tactile thrill I get from thumbing through my favourite print journal - each new page the ultimate soul-cleansing elixir.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my now scarily close to 40 years on this planet, it’s that whatever I’m saying, doing and thinking, there’s someone else in the world going through exactly the same experience – perspectives on print’s function and importance are beginning to converge.
Scratching around for any advantage to being ancient, I can remember the birth of content marketing programmes, when print programmes were being hastily transitioned to ‘all media’ equivalents with a view to binning print altogether.
Though video, visual and bitesize social content has since thrived and become an essential mainstay of any marketing mix, print has miraculously survived, much in the format I hoped it would.
Limited run, custom-bound, meticulously crafted and curated magazines are all around us, ranging from cultural beacons like Oh Comely to hybrid travel and fashion mags like Suitcase and Cereal, via the literary darkness of The Alarmist and Australia’s greatest ever export, Dumbo Feather.
As ever, a large factor in this particular pleasure is the chase, with coquettish glimpses of new titles catapulted into my social feeds on a daily basis – Avaunt being the latest, a beautifully-shot bible for global adventurers.
The key difference between then and now for print publishers is innovation – magazines are being marketed and distributed in ways only the social age could facilitate. This is a true marriage of analogue and digital – and it’s exciting.
Take Stack, for example, the subscription service that handpicks the best independent magazines from around the world relevant to your interests and delivers them to your door, but trains its marketing crosshairs on social, digital and radio.
Also consider Airbnb’s initial foray into print, Pineapple, which has been used by the brand to unite its community with an elegance the social web can’t compete with. Hosts and travellers collaborate on stories that form the magazine’s editorial spine, creating an axis of expedition and anthropology that digital publishing would struggle to articulate.
With big names in youth publishing like Hypetrak getting their print on, not to mention Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean releasing print magazines alongside their latest albums, I’m beginning to wonder whether print could actually outlive websites?
With social content hosting and custom print in the ascendency, traditional websites have never looked more clunky and anachronistic.