Year: 2014

An Norwegian underwear producer called Devold put its protective clothing to the test in a PR stunt and videoed the whole thing and then sent it to me. The workwear brand set fire to a base jumper and sent him over a cliff in something which did seem pretty scary and that’s why I like it. The thing that concerns me the most is my pilot-chute (that opens the parachute). If the pilot-chute gets burned it might not work”, says stuntman Tom Erik Heiman before he is about to jump off a 1200-meter high cliff indulged in flames. Apparently Devold manufacturers protective underwear ... Read more

Yesterday, my social media agency Prohibition held another of our strategic social media seminars and the topic was on the much discussed issue of social media ROI. However, instead of me banging on about my thoughts on this issue for once I have decided to share the full deck on Slideshare which you can see below. Obviously, a deck without me discussing our case studies doesn’t tell the whole story but you do get a feel for what I think on the matter. The event was sold out and attended by more than 30 senior marketers and bizarrely they even ... Read more

I get approached quite a lot to cover technology stories or products that aren’t particularly relevant to me but WiFi on trains, hotels and restaurants is something that I feel quite strongly about. I just have to ask myself how many times have I been on the red eye 5am train flying into London trying to use a useless connection? The answer is a lot and it is very annoying when it doesn’t work. I like many people look to use the free WiFi wherever I can as my mobile service can often be patchy when tethering to my laptop. So ... Read more

I have just finished reading Linchpin by the genius artist that is Seth Godin. He of course wouldn’t claim to be a genius but that’s the point of the whole thing. A linchpin is described as: A person or thing vital to an enterprise or organisation. In his book Godin takes you through his thinking of why most of us are cogs in the wider system and how we are all trained to be good employees through school, university and then again in our jobs. We are trained to follow orders and make the machine work in what he describes as ... Read more

As you know I have been struggling to understand the huge drop in engagement on my client’s Facebook pages recently and you may remember I wrote a detailed post about Facebook forcing us to buy it’s advertisements to maintain organic reach. I actually got criticised by one individual who claimed I was jumping on a bandwagon to which I thoroughly denied because I see it on our client pages by the day. I am obsessed with analytics anyway and looking at the insights it has got even worse in recent months and this is despite us using proactive interesting content and ... Read more

I have been writing about online crisis management for years because as you know I do love a good crisis and helping out is one. It’s actually the topic I covered in Share This Too last year and more recently in an article for E-Consultancy. Anyways I have come across this fine infographic on the topic and although I don’t like everything I thought it was rather interesting.

Guest blogging was called into question recently by Google’s head of Webspam Matt Cutts, who said in his latest provocative post that “people should put a fork in it.” A lot of people have talked about this but I have my own opinion and I thought it was worth sharing. I’m going to explain why guest posting still has its place and can provide benefits as long as it’s done spam-free and to best-practice.  Cutts said that guest writing for blogs has become dominated by SEO companies, using nasty links to increase exposure and in turn making the practice more ... Read more

Earlier this week my team and I launched a piece of work looking at the evolution of social media in 2014. I wrote a blog about the ten channels which I felt had changed the face of the social web. Some people agree and some have pointed out other platforms that could have been included. The truth is there are thousands and we picked the majority we felt had really stood out over time. If you want to see which were my top ten you can read the post here. Courtesy of: Prohibition

At my agency Prohibition you are probably aware we run one of the UK’s leading student magazines, Student Wire, and subsequently, we have become specialists in student/youth marketing, advising clients and brands of all sizes into how they can engage with this notoriously fickle audience. This has been widened even further with me lecutring at a number of Universities over the last couple of years but I actually enjoy it. Social media touches every age group, from teens on Whatsapp, Instagram, Vine and Snapchat through to an older market and business professionals on LinkedIn. With its wide spectrum of ages, ... Read more