NevOn

The Hobson and Holtz Report - Podcast #72: September 29, 2005

Content summary: Listeners' comments, an update on the iPod nano, Wikimedia's open-source textbook project, more on soundvertising, Neville's cheese sandwich, a great quote for making the employee blogging case, Whirlpool starts a podcast, a business podcasting white paper, Neville's new mixer.

Show notes for September 29, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, a 74-minute conversation recorded live from New York and almost live from London.

Download the file here (MP3, 33MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free iPodder, DopplerRadio or iTunes, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

Detailed show notes are coming soon.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We'll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Monday, October 3...

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel's and my podcast blog)

Free access to PR Week online

Hot on the heels of PR Week's making available RSS feeds of much of the content of their US and UK editions, the publisher of the weekly PR industry journal is now offering free access to the complete content of PR Week US and PR Week UK online editions until the end of October.

A notice on the US site yesterday said:

Coinciding with PRWeek.com's relaunch, everyone will be able to access this site without needing a user name or password until October 31, 2005. On November 1, 2005, subscribers will be asked to create a password in order to gain access to articles or features on the site.

Previously, to access online content, you had to be a paid subscriber of the print edition, or register to receive free limited access. It looks like it will revert to that from November if you don't sign up and become a paid subscriber.

An interesting move and, as the magazine says, clearly linked to the relaunch of the title. While PR Week doesn't have serious competition from other publishers as the journal of record for the PR industry, owner Haymarket must be feeling a circulation and advertising pinch as are many other print publications, possibly more so with a title like PR Week where the vast majority of its copies are free distribution, ie, not paid for.

So perhaps this is a move to bolster paid subscriptions to the print editions by letting potential subscribers 'taste the content' online for free for a while. Or, set the scene for a big move in further developing the online editions.

Either way, it might work as long as the content is worth tasting.

An alternative to email catchup

Light posting ahead until the weekend as I'll be travelling, meetings, etc.

Then, a massive email and post-comments catchup.

Do I really mean "catchup"? Comments to blog posts, definitely, but email? My email inbox looks truly horrendous. Boy, do I identify with this:

[...] My email inbox is totally out of control, with more than 8K messages to wade through (that's *after* the spam filter--I might need to just set fire to it and start again!) [...] the usual demands of our accelerating red-shift modern lifestyle means that my email inbox has become obese and should probably be put out of its misery. Does anyone have a match?

Tom Foremski has a way with words!

Related NevOn post:

• Handling the email guilt trip

Spreading the word in Europe

As we head into the last quarter of 2005, it's great to see so many worthwhile professional development events taking place during the next few months which either are wholly about social media from the business perspective or prominently include this broad topic as a constituent part of a conference or seminar.

I invest quite a bit of time in helping spread the word about the value of new media communication channels in organizational communication by getting involved with a range of conferences, seminars and other speaking engagements. So I'm very pleased to be actively involved in presenting and speaking at the following events during the coming months:

• Emerce E-day, Amsterdam, 12 October - panel discussion on "PR and the Blogosphere"
• The Conference Board Europe, Weinheim, Germany, 14 October - leading an interactive session on "The Growing Influence of Blogs on Brand and Corporate Reputation" for the European Council on Corporate Communications
• British Association of Communicators in Business and IABC UK Chapter, London, 3 November - panel discussion "Join the Virtual Revolution" (link to PDF)
• IABC EuroComm, Paris, 1-2 December - moderating opening plenary session panel discussion on "The Giant Global Focus Group: Opportunities and Challenges for Communicators"
• Les Blogs 2.0, Paris, 5-6 December - leading an interactive session on business podcasting

There are a handful of other events at which I'll be speaking which are in the planning-finalization stages. I'll be posting about those - and more details about the events mentioned in this post - soon.

if you're in the communication business and want to find out how new media tools like blogs, podcasts, RSS and wikis can help you achieve your business communication goals, participating in European events such as these will be worth your while.

Biz-Tech-News: Headlines 27-Sept-05

• 24-megabit broadband launched at £24 a month
• Are You on Top of Your Enterprise IM
• Blogging @ McDonald’s
• Blogs that link to Global PR Blog Week 2.0
• Book: Blog! How the Newest Media Revolution is Changing Politics, Business and Culture -- by David Kline & Dan Burstein
• Feed Etiquette
• IABC Financial Communications Conference - Notes
• PR folks see blogs as powerful and dangerous
• The value of the Web 2.0
• What makes an idea viral?
• Whirlpool is podcasting
• Why suing Kate Moss is a really bad idea

The Hobson and Holtz Report - Podcast #71: September 26, 2005

Content summary: Listeners’ comments discussion (building engagement; figuring out b5media; the problem with Google Print; good and bad batteries; ID3 tags; finding the needle in the haystack); soundvertising with Senseo; sound quality challenges with podcast interviewing by phone; podcasting: tech challenges and communication opportunities; new business podcasts; tagging; Lee Hopkins report; end of the road for Land Rover customer; Apple's problems with scratchy iPod nano; PR Week RSS feeds.

Show notes for September 26, 2005

Welcome to For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, an 82-minute conversation recorded live from Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and almost live from Concord, California, USA.

Download the file here (MP3, 33MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as the free iPodder, DopplerRadio or iTunes, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

Show notes OPML: Get the show notes on your own PC, Mac, PDA or other device. To use this file, we suggest trying Dave Winer's OPML Editor (for Windows).

In this Edition:

Intro:

• 00:29 Neville introduces the show; Shel's on the road today; what the show’s about; what’s in this edition; how to give your feedback; show notes

Listeners' comments discussion:

• 04:03 Andrew Marritt builds engagement and asks if we missed something from show #70's show notes
• 06:07 Jeremy Wright is figuring b5media out on the go
• 06:41 Sallie Goetsch says the problem with Google Print isn't the project itself but the opt-out approach not opt-in
• 10:17 Dan York with more on batteries - alkalines good, NiMH not good
• 12:29 Sebastian Keil guesses iTunes is messing up FIR's ID3 tags, has some suggestions about batteries, and says Vodafone Germany has the technology for VoIP blocking
• 14:42 Craig Jolley tries to find a needle in the FIR haystack and wonders about Podcast Anxiety and Podcast Unavailability Trauma

News and Features:

• 17:58 Soundvertising - is Adam Curry's suggestion for Senseo a neat advertising idea (stop, look around, note your surroundings and think about Senseo), or is it just more personal bandwidth overload?
• 25:29 Hurricane Katrina public service announcement from 1st Music 1st for Cutting Edge Sound
• 27:19 About the FIR interview with Charles Pizzo, communicator and Katrina evacuee, and Steve Lubetkin's interview with John Deveney, communicator and Katrina evacuee
• 31:07 Podcasting - technical issues and challenges: networks, echos and other gremlins
• 35:40 Podcasting - communication opportunities for business as more organizations dive in with this new medium
• 44:45 How blog tagging can support organizations working together in a crisis such as Hurricane Katrina, as well as for other more traditional purposes
• 51:14 From Our Correspondent Down Under: Lee Hopkins - blogging again beats the MSM; a call to Adelaide business communicators to meet up; amusing bumper sign; Donna Papacosta now smoking the podcasting dope; inaugural IABC conference in Australia doesn't include social media
• 58:00 Concluding the Land Rover Discovery saga - not a happy ending for customer Adrian Melrose; quality issues for Land Rover take this beyond communications
• 62:43 Apple has a quality problem with the new iPod nano - are scratches on the screen developing into a crisis of brand confidence?
• 74:22 PR Week launches RSS feeds

Outro:

• 75:36 Neville outros the show; how to give your feedback; show notes; the music
• 77:13 Shel solo on Thursday with recorded contribution from Neville

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show:

Listeners' comments discussion - Andrew Marritt, Jeremy Wright, b5media, Gawker, WeblogsInc, Sallie Goetsch, Google Print, The Writing Show, Barbara Quint, Authors Guild, Dan York, Marantz PMD660, iRiver, Sebastian Keil, Mike Strock, Vodafone Germany, Craig Jolley, OPML, Dave Winer's OPML editor.

News and Features - Senseo, Adam Curry, Daily Source Code, Joseph Jaffe, Steve Rubel, Across the Sound, Philips, Douwe Egberts, Minority Report, Guinness, American Express, Hurricane Katrina, 1st Music 1st for Cutting Edge Sound, Podshow.com Relief, Charles Pizzo, FIR interview with Charles Pizzo, IABC, Steve Lubetkin, LOBP #10 interview with John Deveney, Skype, Hot Recorder, Adobe Audition for Windows, ConferenceCall.com, SkypeOut, GM FastLane podcasts, Bob Lutz podcast, BMW podcasts, Shel Israel, Naked Conversations, St John Ambulance podcasts, Global PR Blog Week 2.0, Neville's article on podcasting, Shel's article on podcasting, Edelman Employee Engagement, Christopher Hannegan, Reaching Employees Through Podcasting (PDF), Forrester Research's Podcasting for Marketers, Alexandra Samuel, What is RSS?, You're It! A blog on tagging, Technorati tags, Lee Hopkins, Bookseller of the Year post, Donna Papacosta, Heidi Miller, IABC Victoria conference, Trevor Cook, Warren Bickford, The Truth About the Land Rover Discovery, Adrian Melrose, Land Rover, Adrian's comment on what's next for Land Rover, Apple, iPod nano, Apple Discussions forum, FlawedMusicPlayer.com, Google News media reports, The Register article, Steve Rubel, PR Week.

Outro - Garageband.com, Beat & Path, Poor You, For Immediate Release, A Shel of My Former Self, NevOn.

If you have comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for our future shows, email us at fircomments@gmail.com, or call the Comment Line at +1 206 984 0931. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 5Mb attachment, please!). We'll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

So, until Thursday September 29...

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel's and my podcast blog.)

End of the road for Land Rover customer

The happy ending to the Land Rover Discovery saga that Adrian Melrose had been hoping for just hasn't happened.

The latest news from Land Rover's most patient, loyal and suffering customer is that he has finally reached the end of the road:

[...] So I throw up my hands in the air and tell Land Rover that they have a problem - failure of 4 different Vehicles - yet they tell me this fault is somehow connected to me personally. Trying to blame my blackberry device claiming interference!

So they took the car back and refunded my money in full and I am no longer a Land Rover ower - but I continue to get a few hundred hits a day on this site and I am going to make sure that prospective owners are fully aware of the terrible QA problems this car suffers from.

Adrian's now riding in a brand new Audi A6 Avant while he waits for delivery of his new Audi Q7 SUV next year.

I've been following Adrian's story with keen interest since I first heard about it in July. It certainly looks to me that Land Rover has blown it enormously, from the flaky foundation (poor manufacturing quality) through to customer service and into public relations.

What's next? From another post by Adrian yesterday:

[...] Land Rover - you've just enjoyed the calm before the storm - please don't think you've seen the back of me - there is too much meat on this bone and consumers deserve to hear it straight!

The ball's in your court, Land Rover (and owner Ford). I wonder how they'll play it. To adapt an old saying: "Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned."

Blog a movie and influence the world

Spotted in a post by Hugh MacLeod - an innovative (and, today, hardly surprising) approach to building buzz about a movie by getting bloggers to talk about it. In return, they get free tickets to the US preview.

The details are in an Instapundit post:

[...] The PR folks for the forthcoming Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, etc.) science fiction movie Serenity are inviting bloggers to advance screenings. [...] It's free, and all they ask is that you blog something, good or bad, about it. [...] They're full now (Friday p.m.) so if you haven't emailed 'em you've missed your chance. Apparently the blog-response was phenomenal.

It's that last sentence that's the interesting bit. Already quite a bit of blog buzz on Technorati, some of which is as a result of the blogger promo (this one, for instance).

Stimulating blogs to build word-of-mouth spread of opinion about a movie really is a smart idea. Low cost but very high return potential. Some risks, of course - negative commentary could be what people will write. That's likely if the movie is crap, in which case better get that fact out there early!

But if the people who blog think it's a terrific movie, then that's what they will write about. Others will see those posts and write about it as well (just as I'm doing). Pretty big opinion-spread potential in return for some preview tickets.

It's also interesting to see this as a shift in "authority reporting". Take a look at a resource like the Internet Movie Database. Go to any movie listing - Serenity, for instance. In the left-column menu, Serenity like most movies has a link to external reviews - what movie reviewers say, usually in mainstream media.

Logical next development - external reviews that include what bloggers say (and think of the potential for spoken opinions in podcasts, too). This looks like it's already beginning to happen as the Serenity review list includes a blog - The Movie Blog. But I'd also like to see reviews by 'normal folk,' movie buffs who also happen to blog (or podcast).

I know which type of review I'd more likely read (and listen to) today and be influenced by.

The prize for Skype

Writing in the Financial Times last week, Stuart Henshall has an interesting analysis of Skype's call forwarding functionality and what that could mean for eBay and Skype users following eBay's acquisition of Skype a few weeks ago:

[...] With call transfer, by contrast, the call can be answered and redirected to either another Skype account (free) or to a landline (at the transferer's cost). On transfers, inbound callers will receive identity information on the person they are talking to. Call transfer enables interactive voice-response applications, effectively offering call centre functionality.

And because Skype call transfer functionality can bypass traditional private branch exchange networks, small companies can acquire enterprise-style communications systems for a pittance.

And imagine the ease with which the seller can direct details and similarly automate information content, such as allowing potential buyers to watch a video of the product free of charge via Skype.

Similarly, calls coming into an auction will have caller ID of potential buyers, feedback of buyers, and can concurrently provide additional information back, such as details of other auctions.

Paid sub required to read the complete FT article. Luckily, Stuart has it posted on Skype Journal.

Related NevOn post:

• Communicating the power of 3

Survey: How bloggers and PR intersect

Technorati and Edelman have teamed up to conduct a survey into bloggers' opinions about their interactions with PR agencies and companies:

[...] Is receiving a press release from a PR agency just more spam? What about product discounts or free goods? Are there better ways for traditional marketers and bloggers to interact? What is the implicit contract created when marketers and bloggers communicate? What are the ethical questions? What are companies not listening to that they should be listening to?

The survey has 18 questions and will take you about 10 minutes to complete. It's anonymous although if you give your name and email address at the end, you'll get a copy of the survey results white paper when it's published next month.

It's worth getting your opinions heard and taken into account.

Now, without wishing to give away a spoiler, I do have some comments on a couple of the survey questions. There's no option in the survey to provide additional comments so I'm posting them here.

Question 9 asks: If you know a message is sent to you from a PR firm, how much are you likely to trust it on a scale between 1 and 10, where “1” is "not at all" and “10” is "complete trust"? Related question 10 asks: If you receive a message directly from a company how much do you trust it on a scale between 1 and 10, where “1” is "not at all" and “10” is "complete trust"?

Your answers to these question have to be pretty black-and-white due to how the survey is structured - you click a radio button and you can't do multiple choices. In both cases, I answered "7," which might have been a bit generous now that I think about it.

What I would have liked to have seen is a choice saying "It depends" and then a text box where you can explain why it depends.

When I get a pitch from a PR agency or directly from a company, how I react to that pitch and what I think of the agency or company and/or the product or service being pitched really does depend on quite a few things.

For instance, a pseudo-personal email press release that a) has nothing to do with what I write in this blog and b) contains my pet hate phrase "click here to unsubscribe" - I never subscribed! - would earn a 1 (or a minus 10 if I had that option in the survey). On the other hand, an email that contains information that's releavnt to what I write about here, piques my curiosity and thus leads me to want to find out more might earn an 8 or a 9. A score of 10 would be reserved for an agency or company with whom I've started building a relationship and all other things being equal. Best way to start that is a phone call (my Skype ID is listed here), not just an email.

While it's easy to think about the clueless people in our profession - and there are far too many examples - I'm happy to say that there are some bright lights out there in my experience. And that's not really much to do with bloggers or blogging - I'm not a journalist, but good media relations practice works whoever the target is.