Lobbying the public to change a long standing habit is never the easiest of mandates a PR or marketing team can get. Enter Sweden’s The Sex Profile campaign. Aimed at getting the country’s youth to improve safe sex habits, the campaign was interactive, cheeky, fun … and effective. 39% of young Stockholmers reported feeling more positive about condom use after being exposed to the mobile/QR code/web/print campaign.
Check it out:
Advertising Agency: Ester, Stockholm, Sweden CEO/Account Executive: Roger Kempe Creative Director: Lotta Mellgren Art Director: Emil Jonsson Copywriter: Magnus Ivansson Graphic designer: Michelle Christiansen Production Manager: Anna Wennerström Production company: Queensbridge Production company: Monterosa
De nouveaux horizons s’ouvrent à moi: on m’a approché pour m’offrir … et j’ai accepté … un poste dans une entreprise d’envergure nationale, dont je divulguerai l’identité dans les prochains jours. Il s’agit d’une très belle opportunité qui me permettra de développer davantage ma passion pour les médias sociaux au sein d’une équipe dynamique et convaincue. Les marchés québécois et canadiens ont pris de la maturité depuis les deux dernières années, et voilà que de plus en plus d’entreprises ajoutent cette corde à leur arc; les médias sociaux s’intègrent maintenant régulièrement dans les stratégies des professionnels en communication, et j’en suis la première ravie. À mon tour maintenant d’en profiter!
Je retourne donc en entreprise, riche de mes expériences chez HKDP/Hill + Knowlton. Mon seul regret est d’avoir à quitter une si belle équipe et les clients que j’ai eu le grand plaisir d’accompagner. Mes nouveaux collègues du bureau de Montréal sont impressionnants, et j’aurais beaucoup aimé travailler davantage avec eux. Les collègues des bureaux de Montréal, de Québec et à travers le Canada (pour ne pas dire le monde) que je côtoie depuis deux ans me manqueront énormément. Le monde des communications étant très petit, je suis certaine que nous nous croiserons souvent à l’avenir.
Pour ce qui en est de mes clients: sachez que je vous laisse entre de très bonnes mains. Marc Snyder prendra ma relève chez HKDP. Si j’ai été la troisième pro des relations publiques à bloguer au Québec, Marc était le premier. Il assumera ce rôle avec brio, j’en suis convaincue.
Je demeure en poste à l’Université de Montréal: les étudiants du cours REP2300 relations avec les médias ne seront pas abandonnés! Je garde aussi les clients de Michelle Sullivan Communications. J’ai toutefois dû annuler ma présentation de fin de mois à la SQPRP, vu mon horaire excessivement chargé ce mois-ci. On se reprendra.
Pour ce qui en est de mon nouvel employeur … j’entre en poste le 23 janvier prochain. Je vous en reparlerai sous peu… À suivre!
New year, new horizons. I was approached, offered … and have decided to accept … a position in a major Canadian company, whose identity I’ll reveal in the coming days. I’m being given a wonderful opportunity to work with a dynamic team already convinced of the value of social media. The Quebec and Canadian markets have matured in the last couple of years, and we’re seeing more and more small, medium and large companies embrace social media, to my great satisfaction. It’s time to reap the rewards!
So I’m going back to the client side, taking my experiences at HKDP/Hill + Knowlton with me. My only regret is that I’m leaving behind wonderful colleagues and clients. My new colleagues in HKDP’s Montreal office are an impressive bunch, and I’m sorry that I won’t have the chance to work with them further. I’ll miss the wonderful H+K specialists I’ve had the pleasure of working with for the past two years worldwide, including in Montreal, Quebec City and across Canada. Knowing how small the communications world can be, however, I can only hope our paths will cross again.
As for my clients: know that I’m leaving you in excellent hands. Marc Snyder will be taking over as HKDP’s social media specialist. While I was the third PR blogger in Quebec, Marc was the first. I know that his years of experience and dynamic personality will serve the agency and its clients well.
I continue as professor at the University of Montreal. My student of the REP2300 relations avec les médias media relations course will not be neglected! I’m also keeping my clients from my consulting days. I have, however, been forced to cancel the conference I was scheduled to give at the end of the month at the SQPRP, given my insane schedule this month. We’ll come back to it at a later date.
As for the identity of my new employer … patience, patience! I start January 23rd, so all will be revealed shortly …
We’re recording the world around us. The cameras in our iPhones (et al.) make it easy.
Case in point, the protests which continue in Egypt following the events of this past year’s Arab Spring. Video of the « Girl in the Blue Bra » has ignited reactions from around the world, including comments by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, as quoted by The Daily Telegraph:
Recent events in Egypt have been particularly shocking. Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago (…) This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonours the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform and is not worthy of a great people.
Shot by an amateur videographer from a rooftop, this footage is only one of the thousands of videos which have emerged from what has been dubbed the Arab Spring. In a country like Egypt, where mobile phone penetration is at 91%, a camera phone is a powerful communications tool which becomes a weapon in the protester’s arsenal.
While, according to YouTube’s own year-end top 10 list, most Canadians were watching videos of cats, babies and Rebecca Black in 2011, hundreds of protesters were documenting events in their cities and sharing them online. While most are viewed only by a small number, lost in the sea of YouTube videos, some, like that of the Girl in the Blue Bra, touch a particular cord and spread, much as the video of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan had during the Iranian protests of 2009.The moving image remains a powerful thing. It’s even more powerful when coupled with a platform like Facebook and its network of « friends ». Simply by clicking on a share button, we can express our outrage on our Facebook profile. And our 130 Facebook friends can hear about it.
Arab spring. The Occupy Movement. Each now with their iconicvideos.
It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. - Henry Ford
It has taken close to a century for what could possibly be the revolution Henry Ford imagined to begin to take root, but if protesters behind the Occupy Wall Street movement that has now sprung up in cities around the world including Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver have anything to say about it, we may be alive to bear witness to it.
Politics and economics aside, this movement, like those of the Arab Spring, bear witness to another kind of revolution: a communications revolution. For the first time since Gutenberg invented the printing press, traditional media has not played any role in helping to instigate a Western country’s protest movement*. (At least I can’t think of another example). On the contrary, the Occupy Wall Street protest was ignored by mainstream media for the first weeks of its existence, including, surprisingly, left-leaning media outlets. It was on its own.
How does a movement mobilize tens of thousands of protesters in the absence of media coverage?
Easy … since the emergence of Twitter and Facebook. It relies on social media.
Social media does not create revolutions. People do. It does, however, enable those people to create ties with the like-minded. It facilitates the exchange of ideas. It means that individuals no longer need traditional media to tell them where to congregate, and at what time. They don’t need it to stir up emotion, share stories and transmit ideas. They don’t need it to show solidarity or to feel empowered.
When Blacks rose up against oppression in the Deep South, local churches played a significant role in organising opposition to the establishment. It’s no accident that Martin Luther King was a reverend. Still, media covered lynchings and church burnings. It was there for the March on Washington. It brought civil rights workers down from the North to encourage voter registration. If media hadn’t been there to expose injustice, young men and women like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner wouldn’t have boarded buses to head to segregationist states likes Mississippi to fight for social justice.
Fast forward fifty years: we don’t even need a charismatic leader anymore. No individual has stepped forward as THE face of Occupy Wall Street. This movement has no Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Fidel Castro, George Washington or Robespierre. The 99% are all equal in the eyes of social media. Quite fitting, really.
Some of the most popular social media platforms being leveraged by the Occupy Wall Street protestors:
Avaaz – whose mission is to help people organize – their online petition in support of Occupy Wall Street is currently at 743 448 signatures.
Is traditional media obsolete? Of course not. Now that it’s covering Occupy Wall Street, traditional media will bring the protesters’ messages to an even larger audience. But social media has become an essential part of the communications mix. There’s no ignoring it.
This begs the question: given what we’re seeing with Occupy Wall Street, can the political machine continue to operate without social media? There are still municipal, provincial and federal politicians – including aspiring party leaders - snubbing social media.
How long before they realize that times have changed and that if they don’t include social media in their communications arsenal, they’re missing out? Head-in-sand is no longer an option.
Word cloud created by The Huffington Post based on #occupywallstreet pages on Facebook
*ed. note: In the direct sense – media exposure of the Arab spring and other revolutions around the world which inspired Occupy Wall Street organizers notwithstanding.
When Jack Layton passed away, I decided to postpone publication of this blog post to pay tribute to him. The positive reaction that my 500th blog post garnered reinforced the notion that social media in general and blogs in particular are a wonderful way for me, as an individual, to connect in meaningful ways with other members of my tribe. Thank you for everyone who took the time to write and speak to me about what I’d written.
In that 500th blog post, I alluded to the fact that I was going to change the direction this blog has been taking for the past 4 years. When I first launched this social-media-for-PR blog in January of 2007, there were only 2other PR bloggers in Quebec. I had been excited about the possibilities social media opened up for our industry and our clients for a few years by then, and was eager to share and discuss my discoveries with my PR tribe.
Mission accomplished. Far from single-handedly, mind you! Along with many other early adopters and social media zealots, I’ve managed to convince a colleague or two to take a look at social media for PR and I’m pleased with the inroads that have been made. We’ve been joined by the industry mainstream and social media is taking root in the Quebec PR landscape. There now are dozens of Quebec-based blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Google+ profiles and LinkedIn Groups – not to mention Third Tuesdays, Camps and other events – available to Quebec PR types hungry to stay abreast of the latest developments in social media.
I’ve written hundreds of blog posts presenting social media case studies, tools and best practices for PR professionals. Now, many more voices have joined and there’s a wealth of information out there. It’s fantastic.
And it’s why I’m now able to shift gears.
I’m going to start concentrating less on the tools and innovations, and more on the impact social media and the Internet in general is having on society, on tribes, on individuals. You’ll see less of this and more of this and of this. And you’ll probably hear more about tribes than you ever thought possible. I may just have to rename this blog …
I also intend to focus more on the public affairs side of PR, moving away from where social media seems to have found an easy and natural fit – marketing communications. So no more brand name case studies. There are other great blogs for that kind of thing. I want to take a look at how lobby groups – whether corporate or grassroots – are leveraging social media to effect political and social change.
Fifth gear: Lowest power, highest speed. Used for high speed cruising on dual carriageways, motorways and other such open roads.
Third gear: Used for driving uphill, through a hazard at speed and where a greater degree of power is needed than fourth will allow.
This blog is shifting into third gear. The hazards are greater in number, the stakes are higher. We’re talking about people’s lives and how they use social media to change the world around them.
It’s going to be a fascinating ride. And yes, I pick up hitchhikers.
