Under Strict Embargo

Just watched a hilarious item on News 24 this morning on a new course which has been launched to teach IT geeks basic social skills. The programme has been developed after research conducted by e-skills a government funded body, found that employers are complaining that many IT graduates are incapable of developing relationships with colleagues and clients.

The survey found that more than 30 per cent of UK employers say there are problems recruiting IT graduates with business skills and 40 per cent claim there is a shortage candidates with strong interpersonal skills. The new course is being pioneered at Oxford Brookes and will be rolled out to 13 other universities around the country. Software company Micro Focus is working closely on the development of the course and is generating some great PR coverage today, so kudos to their agency Brands2Life.

I couldn’t find many details on exactly how social skills will actually be developed among IT geeks but a mentor scheme with local businesses will be part of it. Perhaps in conjunction with limiting private broadband access to seven hours a week?

Do you need to get out more? From Times Online:

- Are your CDs arranged in order of record label?
- Do you make notes in more than one colour?
- When you finally got a girlfriend, did you start looking for her mouse?
- Do most of your friends’ names include @?
- Are your socks embroidered with the day of the week?
- Would you be surprised to hear this also comes in a paper-only format?
- Are you in a chess club?
- Do you alternate between Pizza Hut and Dominos so that you can have a balanced diet?
- Is your only item of sportswear bicycle clips?
- Did you ask for your money back because Trainspotting was only about drugs and sex?

If you said “yes” 8-10 times :(
If you said “yes” 4-7 times :/
If you said “yes” 1-3 times :)
If you said “yes” no times, it may be of interest for you to know that the signs above are called emoticons and look a bit like faces if you tilt your head sideways

Simon Dickson is reporting on his excellent media industry blog that Sky News is undergoing a much needed makeover when it comes to its tech coverage. The Sky News website has resurrected its Technology channel but this will mostly consist of content sourced from the guys over at Pocket-Lint. Sky News has also restarted regular broadcasts of its Technofile show, presented by Martin Stanford, with shows archived and available to watch online. As Simon points out Sky’s coverage of tech doesn’t come close to the BBC’s but this revamp deserves our encouragement. You can’t have too many outlets for tech news coverage to a mainstream national audience can you!

So over the past two weeks at least 12 agencies including Mantra and Fishburn Hedges have been preparing credentials for the Facebook pitch. Now the nail biting wait is on to see which firms make the short-list. But what’s being billed as the biggest pitch of 2007 could also be its most obvious beauty parade.

Facebook has been working closely in the US with H&K owned Blanc & Otus (not to be confused with these guys) leading to mounting speculation that the decision to appoint the group in the UK is a foregone conclusion. The obvious challenge is the current tiny size of B&O UK, so some form of virtual team mostly made up of H&K staffers is seen as the most likely outcome.

With B&O having appointed a new UK MD last month, winning Facebook would really help to put the agency on the map on this side of the Atlantic. But with Lee Brooke no doubt also keen to make his mark as the newly promoted head of H&K’s technology division, things could get rather heated in Soho Square. For the other agencies ‘fortunate’ enough to be short-listed, one glimmer of hope is that Facebook has recently brought in OutCast Communications to help with media relations in the US, so B&O’s grip on the account may not be entirely vice-like.

One agency who will not have to face the dilemma of whether or not to invest huge amounts of staff time and money on the next round is Bite, which has just been appointed by LinkedIn. In many ways it’s had a lucky escape. As Brands2Life’s Gareth Thomas points out in PR Week, any UK Facebook campaign will most likely consist of crisis comms and dealing with the inevitable media backlash – not the kind of work which gets many account teams excited or which usually generates a long term agency relationship. In contrast, with a redeveloped LinkedIn on the horizon the Bite team will I think face the more exciting PR challenge and will have a greater direct influence in driving the success of the site.

The fact remains that Facebook is the hottest brand in tech right now, so I doubt that there’s a single serious agency that won’t be pulling out all the stops if invited to pitch next week - even if the odds are probably stacked against them!

For those “working from home” yesterday because of the tube strike you may have missed the fact that it was the first birthday of thelondonpaper. The publication was in rather self-congratulatory mood claiming victory in the battle against free-sheet rival the London Lite and the real target of the London newspaper wars the Evening Standard. As the graph below shows, the Evening Standard’s circulation has declined by 27% year on year to just under 194,000 copies. The latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) show that the Metro with a circulation of 550,000 remains London’s largest newspaper, followed by thelondonpaper at 500,000 and the London Lite trailing at 400,000.

From a PR perspective the paper wars have been a huge boon with a dramatic increase in potential coverage opportunities. The clearer distinction between the target readership of the free-sheets and the older and more serious audience of the Standard has also allowed for the more intelligent placement of stories. Perhaps the biggest benefit of all has been that competition has led to a slight decrease in the arrogance shown to PR folk by some Evening Standard correspondents.

Emily Bell at the Guardian however questions whether the acres of extra newsprint have actually led to a better informed London. I think that’s a difficult one to answer but the hilarious City Boy column is justification enough in my opinion for a continuation in the news battle for London commuters.

Broadcast coverage is one of the joys of PR and one of my happiest memories was having the ever-young Moira Stewart make me a cup of tea in the BBC Breakfast Green Room. However, getting broadcast coverage can be a challenge and all to often the elation of securing the Today programme or GMTV is quickly met by the realisation you are going to have to hand-hold a hapless spokesperson through the entire process.

With this is mind, the next event from the CIPR’s Greater London Group will be looking at how to get the best from a broadcast media opportunity.

Former BBC and ITN newsreader Andrew Harvey and broadcast specialists Shout Communications will be offering advice on how to pitch effectively to TV and radio editors and then how to best prepare your clients to get their message across. The event on 19 September is already proving very popular, so hurry you have until Wednesday 12 September to register, details below:

When: 6.00pm - 8.30pm on Wednesday 19 September 2007

Where: The Royal Commonwealth Society, 25 Northumberland Avenue, London, WC2N 5AP

How much: £20 for CIPR members, £25 for non-members and £15 for CIPR students

Booking: For more information and booking details click here

With continuing speculation about a possible snap October election, the Conservative Party has today launched the UK’s first online only political advertising campaign. Promoting the new Tory slogan, ‘It’s time for change’ the banner adverts will be running on Facebook as well as major newspaper websites in the run up to the party conference in October. They are part of a continuing initiative alongside Webcameron to reach out to younger voters and professionals. It will be interesting to see how well the party takes advantage of click-throughs once the adverts go live…

“This London based public relations company is a Facebook friendly workplace” so opened a report on CNN on Friday which like so many media outlets had latched on to the ‘Banning Facebook at Work Debate’ as a means of filling the dead air of the silly season. Now, as a PR person I was obviously glued to the set to see which agency had secured this massive coup with exposure on the world’s largest television news network.

Imagine my shock and surprise that even with almost the entire piece filmed in the agency’s offices and after interviews with not one but two of its staff, I still didn’t have the foggiest idea. No tickers on the screen, no branding anywhere to be seen, not even a lowly name check. I know some PR agencies are terrible at their own PR and marketing and can sometimes forget the basic rules of media relations when the tables are turned, but please! The lack of effort which seems to have been shown here seems such a wasted opportunity and a rather poor advertisement to clients of the agency’s broadcast PR skills. I have managed to find the video on CNN.com, so take a look here and if you can discern the identity of the ‘guilty’ agency let me know!

The CNN report also featured research conducted by UtalkMarketing which claims that most people actually spend just 10 minutes on Facebook a day with a mere 17% admitting to accessing the site at work. I can’t find details of the methodology but given the surprisingly low figures I suspect a cross section of the population was surveyed rather than a sample of a thousand office workers. I do share the sentiments of the findings though, that severe cyberslacking afflicts only a tiny minority of workers and that knee-jerk blanket bans will only breed resentment from the majority of employees who use such sites sensibly.

Update 4.10.07 - Thanks to those who have been in contact, I am reliably informed that the ‘Facebook friendly workplace’ featured on CNN was in fact Resonate PR…