Lights. Camera. Fashion. And the evolution of media relations

Photo credit: AP Photo/Andrew Burton via Yahoo News

Hair. Makeup. Couture.
Press. Publicists. Bloggers.

New York Fashion Week is on and what I love about this is how the media landscape has changed from a few years ago to what it is now. Social media has changed the face of media relations across the PR industry. Gone are the days when having a by-line in a newspaper made you the most important dude to a PR exec. Now with a laptop and an opinion, you can catch the attention of PR teams, whose eyes now have to scan new forms of media to gauge opinions about their brands and to build their brands.

Photo credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer via Yahoo News

I love that Tumblr has sent 24 of its fashion bloggers to NYFW. Just regular people with a love for fashion, who have a great following and who have the power to influence their readers.Great strategy for Tumblr, which is a favourite platform for photogs and fashionistas.  One of their Tumblrs is only 16 years old - from Devon, England. She will be rubbing shoulders with Oscar de la Renta and top fashion editors, and "reporting" live from one of the premier fashion events in the world. A 16 year old can open up the world of high fashion to an audience that may yet be untapped by traditional media. It's pretty damn awesome.

Media ownership now goes way beyond conglomerates. It lies in the keyboards of the citizens of the world. Media relations strategies now have to include and consider social media influencers in promoting the personality and image of the brand - making brands so much more accessible to so many more people. It's really fantastic how quickly things have changed.

I regularly follow one of the 24 Tumblrs - Jessica Quirke - and she is having a remarkable experience. She and the 54,000 people who follow her religiously. Amazing.

Read More

How Social Media has changed the way we travel

So I talked a lot about travel this week so thought I would just end the week with a travel round up.

Social media has changed the way we travel, in more ways than one. You can plan your trip using social media, meeting new people in the process, use it to enhance your tourist/explorer/adventurer experience and on the back-end, when things go awry, you can turn to your new media tools to rescue you from various levels of hell.

But it's also changed the way we travel on a basic level. We now have a larger audience at our fingertips with which some of us may want to share our experiences with, be it through photos or a blog, and be it with closest friends and families or the voyeurs of the cyberverse. Though we cannot pack our best friends in our bags and take them with us, through our images and our words, they are right there with us, no longer after the fact, but in the heat of the moment. The simple touch of a button on a phone, or on a Netbook has made MY experience, OUR experience, and that is something we did not have 5-10 years ago. Tweets and real time status updates (and BBMs) are the new check-in phone calls, without the static and long distance charges. Videos and digital images are the new living albums. And out of the newness are born photographers, videographers and authors of life - those who may not be published or recognised in the mainstream, but whose words and visuals mean a lot to someone out there, for one reason or another, creating an audience unique to them. No need to worry about spelling (unless I am reading it of course cause yes, I am anal about it!) or bad lighting (unless you are anal about it).

Social media affords us a window to our lives and the lives of others. The only thing you really have to do is decide if you want that window and how wide you're willing to open it.



Photo credits: Me

Read More

Social Media is Hot over Iceland Ash

The immediacy and community of social media benefitted many of the millions of stranded travellers across Europe and the world. Sitting around in an airport is never fun. I have had my share of long layovers and having access to other people rather than running amok in a terminal was really a Godsend. I was never as unfortunate (knock on wood) as the "victims" of the Icelandic ash vs flightplans, but I can well imagine how having a channel to the outside world, to tips and help would lend to maintaining one's sanity in the face of uncertainty, especially after several days.

The Survival Guide page was one such page created on Facebook, where already over 1600 persons have been offering tips, advice and using the space for frustrated discussion.

Not only was it an opportunity for travellers to connect with each other and share their experiences and gripes, but it also afforded many of them the opportunity to find accomodation and support from others. On Twitter, hashtags like #getmehome, #putmeup and #stranded have provided tweeters with dozens of links to available hotel rooms, guest rooms, people willing to put up the stranded in a spare room of their private homes, etc.

The uncertainty lately with flightplans, with strikes and acts of God have made it even more important for social media to play bigger roles in the tourism and hospitality industry. Their crisis management plans not only kicked into high gear but also took to the cyberverse in a big way. Communication in this instance needed to be immediate and ongoing, with so many people being affected and taken completely by surprise. Not knowing when you're going to be seeing your home, your dog, your 2.5 kids because you're stuck in a foreign country can only exacerbate an already tenuous scenario. Twitter sites from airlines and hotels lit up like flash bulbs when news of the ash cloud stopping flights first dropped. Tweets and DMs have been going back and forth between airline representatives and passengers, as one can imagine. Despite not being stranded anywhere myself, I still took time to tweet @British_Airways yesterday on something related to the ash and their tweeters are on the ball, though it must be an extremely tough time for them all at the moment - passengers and airlines alike.

This Facebook group is just one of many which was formed within hours of the closure of European airspace to offer solace to passengers stranded miles from home in New Zealand.

There have also been a number of people who have used the opportunity to blog about their experience, from sitting in an airport terminal, to looking for more comfortable accomodation, trying to reach family in other cities, and the long, convuluted journeys home. Nadia El-Awady chronicled her Icelandic ash "adventures" in her blog, Inner Workings of my Mind. There are many more and which would be excellent reading, I am sure.

The silver lining in this ash cloud is that we are reminded that community still exists and though we use social media everyday for idle chatter or for business/marketing, we only fully appreciate how powerful social media communities really are in times of crisis. The help which many of the stranded have been able to get simply by logging on to Facebook or Twitter or Roadsharing via their laptops or their mobile phones, is testament to how important social media has become in our daily lives and how it can connect us to people we never imagined we would need to be connected to. Had this happened back in the 90's or maybe even 3-5 years ago, when social networking had not yet gripped our senses, I can only guess that the chaos experienced by those left behind would have been multiplied by 10,000. Here's hoping everyone gets back home safely in coming days and weeks.

Here is a really cool story about a webcam wedding which happened as a result of the bride and groom being stranded. Congrats to them. Ahh...technology. Isn't it great?

Read More

Best Job Ever!!

No, not mine. But can I tell you how much I love these "Best Job Ever" promotions that have been popping up more often lately? They appeal to the littlest hobo in me and besides that, it's a great marketing strategy. How else to get people talking about your brand but to offer them an experience of a lifetime? The most recent BJE is the what CNN referred to as the Honeymoon Tester.

"Wanted: Luxury-loving couples available to globetrot for six months and get paid to test out the most romantic wedding and honeymoon destinations around the world....

...The winners will be asked to blog about their experiences a few times a week "when they can get out of the hammock after sipping a glass of champagne," Meleady said, and write for The Irish Times once a month.They will also be paid 20,000 euros (about $27,000). Hopefuls have until April 7 to apply for the "horrendous assignment" -- as the company teasingly calls it -- which starts mid-May."

This promo was born after the success of the BJE promo put on by Tourism Queensland, which was won by a lucky chap called Ben Southall, who has spent the last few months in isolated bliss, blogging about the wonders of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.

Both promos use social media heavily, with applicants being asked to create short videos introducing themselves and saying why they should be chosen. Then there is voting and online mania, and when the winner is selected there is blogging and photo taking and all that great promotional stuff - from the awesome minds and mouths of people NOT directly associated with the promoters. Because let's face it, tourism boards and travel agents are paid to sell and yes, the couples in this case will be paid for their "labour", but who better to sell to couples, than a happy couple? It's not rocket science but the promotions make it all the more exciting and attractive.

And there are others like 67 Days of Smiles, and even a winery got involved with the "Really Goode Job". What I love about it, and I think most people would love this aspect, is that you get real reviews from real people. It could be anyone. It could be a housewife, a student, your neighbour. It could be you. It is not someone with a marketing degree or someone with years of experience peddling hospitality, and selling dreams. It's the average Joe and Jane. It really changes the way we learn about travel destinations and emphasises the shift from destination websites with canned content, to social networking and user generated content. And as a traveller myself, I appreciate getting the traveller perspective over the canned stuff, and we already talked about my love for Tripadvisor and other such user sites. Not to mention, these promotions give the organisers brilliant marketing exposure. The couples have to promote Ireland and their videos are just the first step. The promotion brings a new audience of people who may never have considered Ireland as a honeymoon destination before. And paying a couple $27,000 vs paying an ad agency God knows how much to sell the destination - you don't need to be a math whiz to know that one is more cost-effective than the other. But it's not even about the money. The creativity of the couples and the personal accounts from the winners are worth their weight in publicity gold.

Hey, if I had seen these early enough, it could have been me! Shucks! Oh well...

Check out the Ultimate Job in Ireland site and vote for your favourite couple.

Read More

I Heart Putting Words Together

Chris Brogan wrote about his love for blogging and it's been something I have been thinking about myself for a couple weeks. I have been blogging for about 8 years now, though this blog is a recent one, a public one and more work-related in comparison to my others.

I love writing in general. I think I always have. I was never good at Mathematics or science based subjects (blech!) but I always loved English (later French) and writing stories and expressing myself in words. I first realised I was kinda good at it when I was in primary school and I would get gold stars in Composition and would have my teacher read my essays to the class. I  conducted my very first interview for print back then as well. I was 10.

When the borough of San Fernando was elevated to city status, there was an essay competition and while the details are now foggy (c'mon now...you expect me to propel my grey matter that far back??), my teacher selected me to be one of the 2 girls to enter. The essay had to be about the city, its people, its history and my essay was going to be on Rodney Wilkes, who sadly, was not well known (probably still isn't, which is a travesty). We all knew about Hasely Crawford (also from San Fernando) being the first Olympic gold medallist (and only thus far) for Trinidad and Tobago, but Rodney Wilkes was the first T&T medallist ever. Period. I remember going to his house one lunchtime, which was not too far from school, sitting in his living room, asking him lots of questions, seeing his medals and trophies, and old photos and hearing his story. I wrote it all down, put it in an essay and on City Day I was awarded a certificate, presented to me by the Mayor, in front of hundreds of people, for having one of the best essays from all the entries. I would love to read that essay today, if it even exists still. Maybe one day I will go find it, if they have not burnt all those City Day memorabilia.

But, yes. I love writing and as Chris said, it's something you have to do regularly, if you want to keep your mind constantly regenerating itself and creating new ideas, and to improve. It's like anything else - sports, music, cooking. It takes practice to get better. And when you write, you ultimately have to read. I don't know of anyone who writes in a vacuum. With this blog, even though it's my ramblings, I still have to read - I am forced to make time to read and keep up with the world because sometimes work...life gets in the way of little things like that. So kudos to my blog for keeping me less ignorant in the face of early mornings, busy days, tired weekends.

At work, it's not always the stuff I am passionate about writing about, but I do have to write at work.  Still, with communications one has to be mindful of who the audience is, and adapt to suit their knowledge level, their background and other intrinsic details that can make or break the message. It gets a little more complicated at work, but I guess it still comes a little easier to me than to most.

I have encouraged friends to blog because experiences are so varied and can make for such great stories, sharing, networking. Some have gotten married and moved away, to new environments, experiencing culture shock even. I (via my blog) would be all over that! Sometimes time is against us but it is probably my one passion - writing. I use my breakfast time to scribble, or in this new age, type. Some people claim blogging is dead, with the advent of micro blogging but I don't agree at all. Microblogging is great, but for those who want more than 140 characters and who are restricted by 140 characters or status updates, blogging is an outlet and a conduit for self expression and illumination.

I also get to meet interesting people and have met different people through blogging. It's something that's mine as well. On my blog, I don't have to get approval from higher powers or permission. It's my self expression, and my little space on the web to say what I want, though of course I still use tact, discretion and try to respect others. It's something I can do anywhere and at anytime. It is a stress buster, lemme tell ya and can be therapy. It's fun and I like, in other spaces, making my friends laugh cause sometimes I am just hilarious when tickled. And even if one person reads my junk and enjoys reading it, it is really something special to know that. I appreciate my 1.5 readers who keep coming back! Thank you.

Read More