I have had a few interesting new business meetings recently with intelligent marketers from brands across several industries and I have noticed that the desire for social media is increasing. However, although the desire is growing this is usually accompanied with a strong need to understand the real tangible benefits of SM. I am sure many social media specialists across the globe are noticing the same thing. It’s normal for people to want to understand what they are buying. The new business process normally consists of us going through all of its benefits and then being told “we are only interested in one thing – increased sales.” To be honest every client I have ...

Mike Tyson Vs Evander Holyfield all those years ago was an exciting flight albeit slightly alarming. Two of the world’s hardest heavyweights battling it out, made for interesting late night viewing. However, that was twelve years ago and this is now. Today’s Metro is reporting that they plan to do it again with these two going at it again for $25 million each making it the highest paid fight of all time. Are they serious? Take a look at a recent picture of Mike below – does he look like a refined athlete ready to go twelve rounds? This is purely ...

I have heard a few arguments recently for and against who should make that all important sell-in call to the media. Should it be the PR manager, director or executive? The arguments for managers/directors They are more knowledgeable about the industry and tend to know more about their clients. Journalists tend to prefer being called by more senior team members They have experience of making these types of calls before They are more likely to have good relationships with the journalists Some junior staff members might feel uncomfortable ...

Marketing Magazine has reported that Universal Music has signed a global deal with Web 2.0 service Kyte to develop branded online and mobile sites for its major artists. Universal which has artists like Amy Winehouse, Just Jack and Girls aloud is going to be using the platform to develop interactive entertainment applications to engage better with music fans and to hopefully generate funds from its video content. The artists will be able to use Kyte's mobile production tools to broadcast live gigs and create on-demand videos, giving their fans special and personal clips. For a quick demo of how ...

I read an interesting post by Stan Schroeder today stating that European companies and PRs still don’t like Twitter. In the US Twitter is huge with CEOs and senior directors using it everywhere but it seems us Europeans are still a little more sceptical. However, personally I have noticed a lot more PRs using Twitter recently and I seem to acquire a few new followers everyday. I think the majority of that is down to a useful couple of posts from Stephen Davies on hacks and flacks that use the social networking tool. Loic Le Meur, founder of ...

Here is another entertaining viral, which has been created by The Onion an online satirical newspaper. The clip is basically about Apple launching the Apple Wheel MacBook a brilliant invention that replaces the keyboard making emails take only 45 mins each. My favourite comments from this video are: “Everything is just a few hundred clicks away!” “It remains to be seen if the wheel will catch on in the business world where people use computers for actual work and not just dicking around.” ...

As the credit crunch continues to bite and more retailers and companies go the wall it seems the same may be happening to one of the original social networks. Friends Reunited once described by Michael Grade as ‘the Sweet Spot of the internet’ is reportedly being re-valued by ITV which bought it for a huge £120m in 2005, as ITV feels it may have paid too much. To be honest the real problem here is that ITV bought it at the wrong time and Friends Reunited has since been outshone by competitors like MySpace and more recently Facebook. Many people (me included) just felt the site was too ...