Andres Wittermann on European PR

Social Networks Around The World

I just found a great map on locally dominating social networks around the globe here.

It shows that Facebook is the number one social network in most countries - but that to find your audience in some countries you need to go beyond that. In Europe the big exceptions are Netherlands (with Hyves), Portugal and Romania (with Hi5), Czech Rep. (with Lidé), Poland (with Nasza-klasa), Hungary (with Iwiw), the Baltics (with One and Orkut), Moldavia (with Odnoklassniki) and Russia, Belarus and Ukraine (all with V Kontakte).

Again, even in the age of globalization you need to think local when you want to reach your audience. Global outreach is certainly easier than ever before - but things are in permanent flow and this map may look different next year.

The Beginning of a New Automotive Era - Tesla Coming to Europe

It seems to be official now - Tesla, the company producing the first "mass-market" electrocar, is about to open their first European offices. In Monaco (wonder why!), London (my second home) and - Munich (hooray, my homebase).

Not that I will be able to afford the car, but this is the hottest car I know currently. I also use them as a test case in my seminars on International PR and it seems everyone grasps it immediately.

If this won't fly as a PR success, I don't now what will.

State Of The News Media Just Out

Just found an interesting report on all the developments in the U.S. news media, just – excerpts from the summary:

“Newspaper ad revenues have fallen 23% in the last two years. Some papers are in bankruptcy, and others have lost three-quarters of their value. By our calculations, nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet. (...) Perhaps least noticed yet most important, the audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating. The number of Americans who regularly go online for news, by one survey, jumped 19% in the last two years; in 2008 alone traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27%.”

Nothing new really, but very comprehensive reading with great stats.

The Year When Companies Discovered The Social Web

German business newspaper Handelsblatt writes about a recently published survey which reveals that over 80 per cent of the biggest European companies are using social networks and tools like Wikipedia to manage their reputation.

This confirms my observation that over the last 12 months (nearly) all companies have finally realized the power of the Social Web. And although some people may still think the web offers great opportunities to save money - it is more the ability to target certain user groups much more efficiently than ever before which really makes the web interesting. The fact that Wikipedia rules in this research still seems to indicate that the companies are still going for large audiences rather than using the really Social factor in the "new" web.

So, still some wy to go for many it seems.

The survey, carried out by Swedish consultancy H&H, says that the last 12 months have seen a steep increase in companies using social networks to do their PR. The most popular platforms today are Youtube (where many companies already have established their own video channels), picture portal Flickr, presentation portal Slideshare and Apple's audio platform iTunes. Surprisingly (or not), the top target for online PR is Wikipedia though.

Interestingly the research also shows that 90 per cent of the analysts, shareholders and business journalists contacted said they are increasingly using these channels to gather information.

European Social Media PR leader is Siemens, followed by Vodafone and BP. When asked about the quality provided by the ocmpanies, they rated Deutsche Post as the leader.

And yes, here comes the country ranking (how we love it): Quality-wise German companies are best in European Social Media PR, followed by Finland and the UK. If ranked by quantity of Social Media usage France is the leader followed by British and German companies.

International PR Forum in London

LEWIS PR is holding an evening of networking and presentations on April 1, 2009 on the topic of international PR.

We have a fantastic line up of speakers (including salesforce.com and Orange Business Services) imparting their knowledge and experience on different facets of international marcomms including global branding strategies, how to take a global message to a local market, driving campaigns in emerging markets and the secrets of the international media.

The forum is from 16.30 - 18.00 at our central-London venue the LEWIS Media Centre and tickets are complimentary but limited. It would be great to see you and any interested colleagues there.

Please find more information at http://files.lewispr.com/mailer/internationalPRforum/ or give me a call on +49 179 1075 441 to book spaces.

Great event in Budapest

I have just been speaking at PR Nap, the First PR Conference in Budapest arranged by Kreativ, the #1 Hungarian PR publicatication.

Interesting how everyone says the same - it is all about web 2.0, speed and visual elements. It seems to me that the Hungarians are around 6 months behind the developments in Western Europe re Web 2.0 / Social Media. But the trend is clear.

Back in Germany there recently have been several stories about how Twitter and Blogs are key in PR and mass communication. It is amazing how fast this now happens.

Anti-Cyclical Behaviour Wins

It is an open secret that being really different is a key factor in being successful. Why else would companies try to define their key Unique Selling Propositions (USPs) - who basically summarize what makes them different?

Warren Buffet is the richest man in the world because of this.

And today I read on Grenzposten (a German journo / PR / online blog) about the idea that companies should build a fund of communication budget to be spent in time of a crisis or recession. Because that is when you really need to communicate internally and externally. And because in a recession still the main first reaction is to cut comms budgets.

I think this is a great idea. I am also lucky enough to work in a company who has been building a cash reserve which now allows us to grow even in a recession and to open new offices.

International PR Panel at Medientage Munich

Finally I have found a link to the interesting discussion we had at the Medientage about International PR.

I had been kindly invited by GoldMedia to participate and had a great time discussing International PR with my fellow panelists from Publicis and Roland Berger.

Enjoy (it is in German though!).

European Web Innovation - (Nearly) Without Germany And the UK

Today LeWeb announced the entries for the upcoming competition.

OK, this event is taking place in France and therefore has a string focus on this country. But still, I would have hoped to see more entries from main markets like the UK and Germany. From the 30 contestants only 2 are from these countries (Samedi from Germany and Charge Ventures from UK).

So - congratulations to the our Dutch neighbors and to Spain - who both at least were able to enter two interesting candidates.

How Online Trends Research Should Be Like

I just found a report on Google's latest online research tool on TechCrunch.

If you liked Google Trends already, I am sure you will love Google's new Insight for Trends. Especially the new filtering mechanisms and the heat map are really great for a first shot at trends or companies. I was using Google Trends already a lot and always was surprised to see how few marketing experts were aware of it when I mentioned it.

So let's see if Google IfT will change this.

LEWIS Opening in Japan

Although I am usually focusing on industry issues not directly related to my company, today I am so excited about the latest LEWIS announcement, that I make an exception.

After over 12 years of global expansion, LEWIS announces the opening of LEWIS Tokyo from July 28. This move is in answer to our clients’ call for LEWIS’ brand of PR in that market.

Our Tokyo office will be headed by Fred Tanaka, a 14 year PR practitioner in the market with in-house and agency experience. Fred has in-depth experience implementing local PR programmes for internationally recognised brands including All Nippon Airways (ANA), DaimlerChrysler, ExxonMobil, Faurecia SA, Giorgio Armani and Nissan.

Good luck, Fred. I hope this finally allows me to get to Japan at some stage .

The Age of Commercial Blogging Is Here

I just saw this on the web: Technorati launches an advertising network for blogs and targets IT companies.

This could become really interesting. Recent studies show that increasingly the "internet" is beating traditional marketing in influencing buying decisions. It is not too far-fetched to assume that "internet" translates to communities, blogs and other Web 2.0 platforms.

Technorati is the market leader in blogging search and this means they are ideally positioned as advertising network.Obviously this will mean bloggers are losing their virginity / innocence. They will become adult. Some may become boring even. It will definitely be interesting to see how this will change the blogging culture. I bet that money will "spoil" many of them and blogging will increasingly become lke traditional online media.

Here lies the chance for the traditional media who recently saw themselves increasingly under attack from the Web 2.0. They know how to handle journalistic "freedom" against ads.  Bloggers will have to undergo a cultural shift - and that is never easy.

Trying To Save Printed Media

Finally someone has the courage to save the world of printed press: The German government today launched the "Nationale Initiative Printmedien" (do I really have to translate that?). This initiative wants to encourage young people to read more printed media.

Whereas I am always glad to see how someone tries to save quality (and I think that is what they are trying to do or what they THINK they are trying to do). I am just not sure if this is a vain effort.

Just yesterday I attended a "Media Accused" event in London (ahem, organized by LEWIS) with Nick Davies, author of "Flat Earth News". This book basically deals with the loss of quality journalism in (formerly) quality press. No-one really argued this is happening. No-one really was able to find a solution to the problem.

I wish I would believe the German government is able to bring back quality into the printed media - as this is the only way out of the problem. Seeing how owners of the big quality papers all over Europe are continuing to cut costs (basically cutting back the workforce of editors) I am not sure how this initiative will be successful. Who wants to read old news? And who really wants to read entertaining stories in a newspaper when you can watch TV - or get it all on the internet?

The problem of quality journalism lies deeper. And one initiative won't help I am afraid. Especially when it is backed by journalist and publishers associations as they are at the core of the problem.

Nice blogging feature on Facebook

I just added Blog It on Facebook, a nice little app to directly send basic blog posts from Facebook. Looks like a useful tool (if limited), especially as you can also update your Twitter account as well through it. Not sure how widely spread this is, but it certainly serves Facebook well to become a central application in your day to day work.

Launch of TV on iTunes Going Bad

It seems that Apple missed a big opportunity when launching TV content on German iTunes this week.

The initial feedback showed that the audience was completely taken by surprise. E.g. Werbeblogger complained that he could not find the full offerings (it seems to me he simply had not downloaded a new version of iTunes yet). So I think the preparation could have been done better.

Now the users are feeding back on different forums, blogs and inside iTunes. Feedback is that it is too expensive (one old Harald Schmidt show for €2? are they serious?), only having shows on offer which have been on TV already, only offering German audio (and people really want the original version), etc. etc.

It seems that Apple trusts to be successful in the long run. A bit arrogant if you ask me. But in the end it will certainly be successful as it is from Apple, you may say. Well, I would not be that sure. There are so many other Internet TV offering s out there these days that it is only a question of time until people will be able to access at least old TV content in English for free (from Europe) without going to suspicious websites. I really wonder if Apple's TV approach can be successful - and if they should not have prepared this better at least this time.

Reputation management by Youtube

I just found an interesting video on Youtube where I am not sure exactly how old it is (seems about three days, but it might be much older).

Still, I find it very interesting - it shows Queen Rania of Jordan talking about Arabic culture and how surprised people will be learning everything about a country like Jordan. I find it very interesting they chose Youtube as a platform to launch a conversation / discussion on that topic. The 815 comments so far are showing this seems to work.

I wonder what happens next and how they will continue this dialogue. But it is (and will be) certainly something to learn from.

The end of the press

The end of the press is coming nearer. There still are some around who think this is a hype and that in the end this may not happen - we still have many clients who think offline coverage is better than online. When I ask them though where they are getting news from, they say (without a blink of their eyes) "from the internet". Can someone please explain?

Well, here you go - I just found the latest US stats on internet spend online vs offline on Techcrunch, my fav tech blog.

Enjoy the numbers and then let me know where you would spend your marketing budget, after having allocated most of it to PR obviously.

The Poorer, The Yahoo!

An interesting survey by Hitwise shows that socially struggling people tend to use Yahoo! rather than Google. And the more privileged ones are using Google rather than Yahoo! Don't ask me to explain this.

This certainly explains why Ali Baba is now interested in Yahoo! The power to the people, Proletarier aller Länder vereinigt Euch!

The Times Diggs It

My colleague Will Sturgeon just published a post on LEWIS 360 on an interview The Times had with Digg's CEO, Jay Adelson. It seems that traditional journalism does not only wake up to the challenge of blogs but is also increasingly embracing the other aspects of Web 2.0

Read the original interview here.

Watch Your Mouth - WOM, the new marketing approach

Yesterday I attended a breakfast event where Germany's first word of mouth marketing agency, trnd, presented this new marketing tool. Some may already be aware of this new approach, there already have been many campaigns in the US, in Germany, even in Poland already.

The idea is to involve a selected group of opinion leaders in your marketing campaign directly. They receive products to check them out - and to talk about them to their friends. These may even also receive some product samples - because the idea is they again talk to their friends and these to their friends - an so on. There are blogs being created as part of the campaigns (like this one about an Opel campaign) and generally the WOM'ers are creating lots of stuff around the products they review and talk about (like videos, pictures etc who then will be sent to the usual platforms like Flickr, Youtube, Sevenload etc).

WOM (Word of Mouth) marketing is taking PR directly to the opinion leaders and let them do the marketing for you (you don't even have to pay them directly - although I have been told in the end WOM campaigns are far from inexpensive).

Interestingly with many products traditional WOM really had a strong impact on buying decisions - because people trust their friends more than ads or even journalists (!). My fear is that once people realize that WOM is now being part of a professional marketing campaign and the WOM'ers are directly supported by the vendors, the value of WOM is decreasing fast. Like no-one today trusts ads anymore and people even start disbelieving TV. Still, it will be interesting to see how WOM is going to develop and how we will come across some of the campaigns in the future.