Delighted to see that there’s now a campaign opposing the NLA’s proposals to charge for sending and receiving URLs (see my blog below).  For more information see right2link, who have organised a petition on the Number 10 website in support of an amendment to copyright law.  This proposes:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to commit at the earliest available opportunity to make an amendment to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 that will protect the right to link to publicly available information on the internet by ensuring that the creation, aggregation, copying, publication and following of any link to publicly available information contained on websites on the internet shall not under any circumstances constitute an infringement of copyright.”

Please, please sign the petition and join in the campaign.  Forward details to all your contacts.  Fight this unfair tax on information – including any you may have generated yourselves!

When you think of 3D television you probably imagine razor-sharp, 3D images bursting out of expensive, high-tech TV sets. So it might sound improbable that the first 3D film was actually shown in 1922, when George V was on the throne and the US was in the grip of prohibition.

Barring the odd flurry here and there, 3D TV has been fairly quiet ever since. Whether it’s down to the silly glasses, a perceived lack of demand or the relative expense when compared to 2D television, no-one has quite succeeded in making 3D TV a mass-market reality.

But if this year’s electronics industry trade shows are anything to go by, that’s all about to change (apart from the silly glasses, that is). Trade shows are always among the best places to catch “the next big thing”, and this year’s IBC and CES conferences were awash with new 3D TV hardware from the likes of Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Samsung and LG. One thing’s for sure: the big manufacturers are taking 3D very seriously indeed.

So could 2010 finally be 3D TV’s year? James Cameron’s 3D epic Avatar recently smashed box office records taking an estimated $232 million in cinemas on its opening weekend alone. In the home, Sky is playing its part by launching a dedicated 3D service, and ESPN will screen this year’s football World Cup in South Africa in all its three-dimensional glory.

As ever though, price will be a sensitive issue. Many consumers may be unwilling to upgrade their existing television so soon after the arrival of HD TV, but we can expect the usual cost savings over time as the technology becomes more established, and this will help to drive sales. Reports indicate that Sky’s service can be delivered through existing receivers and set-top boxes, but viewers will need a new 3D TV set (costing around £2,000).

The availability of high quality 3D content will be an important factor: Channel Four’s recent 3D mini-season featured a 3D episode of The Paul O’Grady Show, and that alone is unlikely to tempt many right-minded people to hand over their £2,000 in a hurry. Channels were quick to adapt to HD TV however, so we can expect them to show similar enthusiasm toward the 3D format.

With an estimated 3.4 million of these 3D TVs set to be sold in the US this year, it’s an exciting time for both manufacturers and content providers as they push the limits of technology in pursuit of the ultimate viewing experience.

As it happens, this is an exciting time for Portfolio too, as we announce our expansion into the broadcast technology sector. Building on the strong technology heritage within the team, we’re branching out and offering our PR services to the sectors of mobile TV, IPTV and 3D TV. As an agency, Portfolio has over 20 years of experience in B2B technology PR services so we’re perfectly placed to provide our clients with a PR programme to help meet their business objectives.

Having lots of fun playing with our new dashboard tool, designed to give a quick snapshot of the volume of Google searches for any choice of companies or organisations in a given sector, and compare them in three different ways.  Initially thinking ‘er, this is going to be over my head’, once you’ve clicked on your choices the dashboard is, well, child’s play, and would be addictive if not self-constrained by the number of bodies under scrutiny.

Take the Portfolio Universities Search dashboard.  We used universities as an example because many people will have an emotional attachment to at least one – where they studied.  There are three charts and one dial on the dashboard:

1.     Shows the volume of searches for the last five months.  Pick your chosen university, see how search volumes go up and down during the period, and compare with one rival at a time.  As you would expect, most searches happen in the autumn but interestingly the older universities peak first, with the newer universities coming into their own later in the year. 

2.     Chart 2 smooths out the above information into trends – which could be predictable unless there’s a sudden spike.  And helpful if you want to change the graph in future years.

3.     The dial shows the percentage increase or decrease in searches since the same period last year.  With more people turning to the web for information – thanks to broadband, greater PC usage and awareness – you’d expect this to have increased for everyone.  So unis with lower volumes must have some explaining to do; and perhaps they can learn from those who have experienced a huge leap in volume.

4.     The final pie chart shows the share of searches from each country within the UK.  Here it’s significant that the older unis attract searches from a broad mix of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, irrespective of location.  But newer unis, in the main, draw attention almost wholly from the country in which they are situated.  There are some obvious geographical exceptions: Liverpool’s universities have a high percentage of interest from Northern Ireland; Exeter, Plymouth and Southampton by searches from the Channel Islands – almost 50% of the total in some instances.

Although this is a very simple set of data, it has tremendous potential for anyone concerned with communications.  Look at De Montfort University, for instance.  As a newer university, based in Leicester, you’d expect its searches to be exclusively from England, but in fact around a quarter come from Scotland.  And searches increased around 84% over the previous year – the third highest rise for all universities. 

It so happens that De Montfort has undertaken an impressive TV advertising campaign – I’ve noted it myself – on Channel 4, E4, Film 4, ITV2 and Dave, almost certainly broadening its normal search range.  It also has a steady stream of press releases, compelling enough to make me, a total outsider, want to click through.   So hats off to De Montfort’s communications department – if your aim was for wider and increased interest, you’ve achieved it!

With savage cuts predicted for universities in the coming year, it’s going to be even more important that a communications budget is carefully targeted, spent well and reaches its objectives.

Back in the commercial world, we now have the ability to take any industry sector and see who’s doing well and who has near invisibility on the web.  Google searches are increasingly taken as an index of PR and advertising success, and we can share that knowledge with you – at a far higher degree of sophistication than the university example above - and to help tailor your own budgets carefully.

We may be emerging from a global economic downturn, but many newspapers and magazines the world over have layed off their own in-house photographers with a view to keeping costs down. Naturally this presents a perfect opportunity for PR's to polish their photography skills.

It may be an old cliché, but it’s absolutely spot on and deep down we all know it’s true – a picture really is worth a thousand words – and goes a long way in catching the reader's attention. If there’s one thing that can increase your company’s chance of making the editorial cut and receiving valuable publicity, it’s a good supporting picture.

So here we go, some useful pointers for the next time you’re asked to provide an image or two:

• Flick or click through the publication or website you’re targeting to get ideas for the type of images used.
• Pick up the phone and enquire about the exact size and formats suitable for the particular publication.
• Don’t be afraid to get in close to fill the frame with the person's face.
• Avoid overcrowding the picture – max three people for a close up.
• Don’t be deluded – there is definitely such a thing as too much corporate branding.
• Don’t be afraid to use the flash during the day.
• When using the flash at night, aim the frame just above the subject’s eyes to reduce the chances of red eye.
• For print – never underestimate the importance of hi-res images. They should generally be at least 300dpi or around 1MB each. For web, the size can be smaller but it’s always best to send a larger image and let the web production team resize the image as required.
• Avoid scanning images from printed sources as the quality tends to be rather poor.
• Photos for local newspapers can be fun and at times a little cheesy. Be sure to get subject’s names too.
• People will always be the story – they bring new product launches to life.
• Get the subject to smile – the camera won’t bite and flashing those pearly whites gives a softening and approachable effect.
• Stick to colour photos – if a B&W image is needed, the magazine or website’s production team can strip out the colour.
• Remember that there are very few times when graphical artwork is interesting to a publication. Pictures of real products being used by living, breathing people in the real world are preferred.
• Working with a private photographer? Be very clear in the brief you provide explaining exactly what kind of shots you’re after and make sure you buy the rights to the photos.

Do remember that these are only guidelines, not absolutes, but please do drop me a line if you have any other great tips you’d like to share.

Wishing you all the best in securing those lovely column centimetres with your Picture Perfect PR images.

Happy snapping!

Good news that web aggregator Meltwater Group is taking the Newspaper Licencing Agency (NLA) to a copyright tribunal over the latter’s demand that anyone receiving and forwarding links to newspaper websites will need an NLA licence.  See more on Meltwater

What the Public Relations Consultants’ Association has described as ‘an absurd tax we believe has no legal justification’, was announced by the NLA as a fait accompli earlier this year.  Its proposals couldn’t have come at a worse time financially, but I don’t think that should distract us from how outrageous the plan is.  The NLA’s founding principle that we pay for copying content we’ve helped newspapers create has always been objectionable and here’s why.

Hypocrisy: most journalists support freedom of information across the web, and indeed some have started campaigns to make it even more available, such as The Guardian’s ‘free our data’ campaign.  And it’s totally against the spirit in which the worldwide web was founded – sharing knowledge, as freely as possible.

Again, by specifying its charges only apply to commercial organisations ‘reselling copyright material for gain’, it emphasises the cynicism of the NLA’s approach.  We mostly want to copy material where we have provided input – news, ideas for features, images, original research, and so on – helping newspapers fill their printed and web pages and probably saving them millions of pounds.

Thin end of the wedge: Once it has established the principle of payment for forwarding links, using us as a soft target, the NLA and newspapers will be in a better position to do the same with other sectors of the population.  There would be a massive outcry, of course, but the NLA would have set the precedent.

They know where we live: Because the NLA already has press cutting agencies, PR consultancies and PR departments as subscribers, it makes it very easy for it to adopt bullying tactics and say: ‘you’re already copying cuttings, so you must be forwarding links’.  There has been no debate or engagement with us - the people who pay for its existence - and it is sheer arrogance to foist this upon us without any consultation.

Aggregation aggravation: we receive much from news aggregators that we don’t want to copy, or isn’t relevant.  But under the NLA rules we’d still have to pay for it, both under our licence as recipients or in increased fees from the aggregators. 

Sleight of hand: the existing NLA licence is based on a sleight of hand.  It claims we are paying to copy specific items that are the copyright of one of its members.  But it doesn’t work out that way in reality.  When working out our subscription we literally have to ‘guess’ what newspapers, regional or national, we might copy from during the following year.  So we may never copy anything from a particular newspaper, but will still have paid for it.  Is it going to be the same with links?

Systematic: The NLA’s whole pricing structure is based on the assumption we ‘systematically’ copy newspapers, and fails totally to appreciate we are interested in items where we have provided input, waiving our own or client’s copyright in return for coverage.   In the event of actual coverage, we might be happy to buy a printed copy, or pay to photocopy or forward it.  The client would be more receptive to being recharged too.  But the NLA can’t cope with payment item by item.

Full of holes: There are, however, terrific loopholes in the NLA’s proposals primarily in that it is not extending licensing to individuals.  So maybe we’ll all forward the links from our personal email accounts instead.  Or just pass on a message saying ‘look at The Times’ website today’?

We’ll also stop recharging clients for press cuttings.  It will be lost in our fees or go through as something else.  The NLA’s implication that we are ‘reselling for gain’ is nonsense, as if that’s how we make a living.  Our business is to sell PR services and rechargeable expenses are incidental.

It also says its charges only apply to clips received from cutting agencies or aggregators.  What if we search the newspapers ourselves, or receive emailed copies regularly?  Does it then become free of charge to forward a link?

Byzantine charging structure: Every year I despair when it comes to renewal time of the existing licence.  It claims it’s simple, but the extras just keep on adding up: basic fee, plus number of users, plus number of clients, plus name all the regional papers we guess our material might appear in.  An extension for web copying will presumably work in the same way.

Licence to print money?  Well, it might as well be.  The NLA is totally supported by our money and yet completely unaccountable to us.  It decides how much it is going to charge and there is no option but to pay once on its books.  But we have no idea how much is paid out to the newspapers in question, or what it keeps back for itself, and it seems extraordinarily profligate.  It prints certificates and folders for which we have no use.  Or even more amazing – an advert in The Guardian’s personal finance section, when all the institutions mentioned in the editorial must already be aware of the NLA’s grasp.

So, what’s to be done?   If counter-attack is the best form of defence, let’s set up a body on behalf of all PR and communications people everywhere – we could call it, say, The PRCA or CIPR.  It will raise money on behalf of its members by issuing a licence to all newspapers who receive our clients’ or our own links, and can therefore be assumed to be accessing them, forwarding them to colleagues and even alerting the general public via their printed newspapers or websites.  I think we all know where the copyright to the original material lies.

We’ll make our membership pretty inclusive, and people will want to join as it gives everyone an additional income stream.  Just think of all those providers of newspaper content that don’t necessarily spring to mind as PR people – book publishers who send review copies, theatres who invite journalists to first nights, tour operators who give free holidays, and government, police, army, local councils, charities – the papers would be pretty empty without all of us.

More seriously, I would like to see our trade bodies’ legal teams come up with a form of small print we can attach to all releases and other communications with newspapers to the effect that we or our clients own the copyright in the material but we are prepared to waive any fees for its usage or reproduction of any part of it, provided we have the right to copy free any resulting coverage or pass on web links.  It’s about time newspapers acknowledged they need us as much as we need them, and the PR industry alone can’t help cure their current ills.

Oh, and I don’t really need to remind you the above is my copyright - although I’d be delighted if you want to use it elsewhere in return for acknowledgement.

See also Francis Ingham’s lovely little fable on the topic PRCA - Leading industry thought

Anyone attending the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport seminar Delivering the UK Renewable Energy Strategy last week would have come away feeling thoroughly wind-swept.  Not from the inevitable hot air, but in terms of being a freely and widely available resource that will make Britain self-sufficient in energy, wind is the new coal. 

Apart from one significant advocate, legal firm McGrigors, energy from waste - or scrap carbon into energy (SCIE) as we now call it - was hardly mentioned.  Other neglected technologies were PV and solar, and anaerobic digestion.  Perhaps the definition of ‘renewables’ was not broad enough.  Or perhaps it is the existence of a powerful wind lobby, with funding to push its cause and pounce on all promotional opportunities.

Incidentally, the lone voice speaking against onshore wind was the Campaign to Protect Rural England, taking a sideswipe at the adoption of the wind turbine as a symbol of renewable energy or even green credentials.  Yes, Portfolio pleads guilty – as must many thousands of other bodies that have fallen for this instantly-recognisable icon of sleek environmental technology.

But as well as all putting their hands up for more finance, if the speakers had one thing in common, it was to blame ‘planners’ as the bad guys holding up our renewable future.  This faceless body of folk were not represented or even identified - too diverse to speak with a single voice on all aspects of central, local and micro-generational planning perhaps? 

The speakers are not alone.  Peter Jones, OBE, ‘waste guru’ and a director of Portfolio client Waste2Tricity www.waste2tricity.com, also has the planning system in his sights.  Only with joined-up thinking, in Peter’s vision, will energy generation - of whatever sort – take place closest to its hungriest consumers: big cities and towns complete with industry, transport, shopping malls, hospitals, universities and lots of people on broadband.

Wind is blowing all right, but not always at the right time and in dashed inconvenient places, and the infrastructure needed for its transmission is costly to build.  But waste is produced almost proportionately by the greatest energy users, and hasn’t far to travel.  What better way to use it, after the recyclates have gone to their second life, than in maximum efficiency and clean SCIE generation?  With so many different vested interests in waste, environment and energy, however, there’s way to go in persuading everyone to pull in the same direction.

As sure as the first bars of Fairy Tale of New York hit the airwaves or the Christmas decorations go up, November now brings another regular harbinger of the Yuletide - the message promoting corporate ecards.

Nothing against ecards as such, but having lost their novelty value, they are almost instantly consigned to Room 101.  Especially those where the sender has included me on the flimiest possibility of my being a valued customer.  Now, who are you again?

But what does irritate me is that most of the ecard pluggers promote their wares with a green message:  ‘Saves trees!’  ‘More environmentally friendly!  ‘Helps meet your CSR objectives!’  Some of the suppliers even deliberately target Portfolio because we work in the environmental sector, and think we will pass on their message to our clients.

Having worked with paper companies and other members of the forest industries for many years, I usually respond with a quick lecture along the lines of:

-       Cards are made from trees

-       Communities that grow trees for paper plant more than they cut down

-       In fact, trees are quite good at planting themselves, so just leave them to it

-       If people can’t make a living out of responsible forestry, they might turn to something more harmful

-       Forests are a giant carbon sink

-       We need forests to soak up carbon, to reduce global warming

-       Carbon stays locked in the products made from trees, as long as they aren’t left to rot or burnt

-       Cards can be recycled, as new paper or board

If you want to learn more about sustainable forestry and paper, please go to this excellent website www.twosides.info

But the electricity you use to view an ecard, well, once it’s gone, it’s gone.  Can’t recycle it, or renew it, and most of it is generated by burning fossil fuels – renewable electricity just isn’t coming on stream fast enough.  Especially when sometime between 2015 and 2020 the UK risks being plunged into darkness because of the potential generating shortfall as obsolete power stations are decommissioned and new ones aren’t yet built.

So the hunt for viable renewable energy is on, and Portfolio is playing its small part on behalf of Waste2Tricity www.waste2tricity.com  Waste2Tricity has launched one of the most efficient ways to turn rubbish into power by combining plasma gasification of waste with advanced fuel cells that convert the resultant hydrogen into electricity. 

And no, I’ve not strayed off message.  Waste paper – which can’t be recycled indefinitely - makes excellent and essential feedstock for gasification.  So ironically, Christmas cards may in the not-too-distant future be helping you run your computers.  Food for energy, and food for thought.

Research we conducted recently at Portfolio found that even though a third of respondents agreed that social media is now just as, if not more, important than ‘traditional media’, only one in ten organisations currently have a dedicated social media programme in place.

This shift in importance of social media and the apparent confusion it generates within organisations opens the door for PR consultants to prove their worth. The technologies that make up the social media landscape are merely new tools for PR consultants to utilise. The PR industry prides itself in its communications expertise and there is no reason these skills cannot be applied to emerging forms of communication as well as traditional ones.

The obstacles come when PR professionals are so deeply rooted in the ways of traditional media that they are unwilling to learn the rules of the social media community and embrace the changes necessary to make an impact. Social media will only continue to grow in importance, and monitoring and utilising the likes of Twitter and blogs needs to be as much a part of a PR consultant’s role as scanning the daily papers or conducting forward features searches. To say there is no time to engage with social media is to neglect a large proportion of the influencer community.

The truth is learning about and engaging with social media needn’t take up hours of the day. I agree that to put a comprehensive social media programme together for a client, including setting up a corporate blog, Twitter account or LinkedIn group, developing the material to populate these and building an audience certainly does, and should take a considerable amount of time. There are forums, groups and blogs, however, with an audience already established and eager to digest information. Determining which of these are relevant and contributing with comments from clients is a great way not only to deliver key messages directly to target audiences, but also for communications specialists to show they understand the contributory nature of these emerging channels.

So give it a go. Start with the ususal suspects -- Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter -- and see what is out there, and how you and your clients can contribute. It's really not as scary as it looks!

It’s virtually impossible to read an online posting, open a newspaper or read a magazine today without twitter being discussed somewhere in the contents.  Some people claim twitter’s just a fad that will go away as quickly as it’s arrived, but while that might be true of twitter itself – Google is already planning a competitor and others will surely follow – it’s almost certain that the use of short-form messaging that twitter represents is here to stay in one form or another.

What’s also pretty certain is that any new form of twitter, or similar service, will bring with it the inevitable snake-oil salesmen, usually in the form of the technical nerd who claims they – and only they – understand the medium and how it should be used.  Now, we’re huge fans of social and online media at Portfolio, to the extent where we build them into our programmes on a regular basis, but let’s make one thing clear: twitter and any other form of social or online medium is a means to an end and not the end in itself.  In other words we believe  it is vital to embrace twitter and use it as a communication tool to deliver our clients’ key messages, but we do not believe it is necessary to blind them with science in the process.

So why does this matter?  It matters because using social media effectively means understanding communication, not the bits and bytes or web 2s or 3s behind them.  If you want to see how dangerous this can be, just look at what’s happening in the SEO (search engine optimisation) space, where the nerds will spout all sorts of convincing jargon that sounds impressive but is actually rubbish.  So much so that much of it will actually do more harm than good!