Year: 2013

My life is finally complete as today I am researching social campaigns that use cats – yes I know. However, I came across this campaign by Disney called #Disneyside which happened last month which basically encouraged YouTube superstars to visit the park for a day for free as long as they created their own content. I can see why people went along as everyone would love a free trip to Disney (I have never been are you listening Disney???). In this clip Grumpy Cat finds her Disney Side with the help of one of the seven dwarfs with a similar ... Read more

We have all been noticing it for the last twelve months or so, but it has now been confirmed that there is an active reduction in our Facebook page’s organic reach. According to Advertising Age the social network has starting marketing the fact that you need to promote your brand’s Facebook status if you want it to be seen by the majority. Facebook used to share your content based on its algorithm Edgerank but around this time last year marketers started complaining of content being throttled. We manage around 20 Facebook pages at Prohibition and also noticed that content wasn’t ... Read more

This PR stunt by Amazon caught my eye. The story is Amazon is launching a set of drones in several year’s time and currently testing them. You can watch the very clever video below. This stunt has been covered everywhere, so much kudos to the PR team responsible but more importantly I actually love the video which makes it almost seem like a reality. I almost thought it was April 1st when I heard this story on the news last night. And then today Waterstones has combated this to get some much needed headlines with the announcement of a new ... Read more

So I have had a lot going on recently, following my company re-brand and last night the Prohibition team ventured out into Leeds to the Pride Awards to see if we could pick up an award or two. I have been to the awards a number of times before and picked up a few but this was the first one for Prohibition and it felt quite nice. We were shortlisted for “Best Use of Digital” and “Best Use of Social Media” for the team’s launch of Student Wire which is now recognised as one of the UK’s leading student magazines. According to the ... Read more

PR is somewhat of a new thing for many SEO companies. They’ve shifted to content marketing, content strategy and the like, and because of that, they’re slow on the trigger in terms of really assimilating the skills that experienced PR companies have spent 10,000 hours picking up. Despite the many bouts of negative press many PR companies have received, for every bad egg there are several extremely talented companies out there that do an incredible job of getting pick-up for their clients through big publishers. These companies have much to teach SEO companies transitioning into content marketing, and through a ... Read more

So last week I was talking to a friend of mine who likes his tech and he was telling me all about Android TV boxes and how brilliant they are. I am a bit of a sceptic when it comes to things that deliver free entertainment but after watching his TV I was convinced that this system could really be a threat to the cable industry. For those of you that don’t know an Android MX box can easily be found all over eBay (for around £75) and other online shops. They turn a normal TV, via a HDMI lead, into ... Read more

I am proud to announce here on my personal blog that after a very busy year my team and I have changed our PR agency name to Prohibition to reflect the recent account wins and growth in team size. I am sure a few of you spotted the change to my company website earlier this week, you can get the full official news story here on the website.   This year has been the best in the five years I have been running the company and I am extremely proud of the team I have pulled together. We have been shortlisted for ... Read more

Its been a busy few months at Prohibition HQ and so I have been busy sorting out a number of new account wins. My next post will have some big news on that front but I will save that for later. However, here are two stories that caught my eye by offering a humorous and slightly worrying side to the news in the social web this week, both of which involve images of cannabis and poor regulation on behalf of Instagram and the housing brand Rightmove. Instagram,  the world renowned photo based social site that helps people share their dinner ... Read more

As you may have heard, Facebook EdgeRank is no more. A Facebook insider confirmed that the term [EdgeRank] is no longer being used internally (and hasn’t been for over two years) and noted that there are currently over 100,000 factors that go into what a user sees on their News Feed when users log into Facebook. While Facebook has not explicitly told us what these factors are, they have shed some light on  the process involved in developing their most recent ranking algorithm update. The company surveyed thousands of users, asking questions to help determine what exactly makes a “high-quality” Facebook Page post. ... Read more

So Banksy one of my personal heroes has done it again with a PR stunt to beat all others. A few days ago he arranged to have an old guy sell his really very expensive art on a random broken looking market stall in New York. He was selling them at just $60 each and as hundreds of people walked past they all clearly thought they were copies rather than £20,000 of true genius. Only three people bought one with one rather lucky customer saying: “I just need something for my walls” as he buys two of them. How lucky ... Read more