O’Conall Street

Have to run out the door to lecture some District Policing Partnership Managers on marketing now. Before I go I wanted to express an official protest at a poor budget for Northern Ireland.

No incentives, in fact only significant relief for business will be on capital gains which has the perverse effect of benefiting those who invest for a living rather then those who create jobs or produce something. Great news if you are a developer or a hedge fund manager but pretty crap if you are just about anyone else. That’s the thing with Mr Darling’s approach. It’s designed to keep the home counties happy and frankly stuff the rest of the UK.

Rant over. Was involved in a lively debate about the future of communications last night with Queens University Students here in Belfast. There was a lot of discussion about the impact of social and digital media.

The racing post says the greatest two days in racing history start today. After yesterday’s abandonment, 65,000  can be expected at Cheltenham for the serious business of world class national hunt racing. Chris is off to the bookies with our kitty. I hope he remembers there is a thing called an each way bet.

Finally I watched Austin O’Callaghan’s lovely documentary about the Irish Cricket team’s journey to the Super Eight stage of the World Cup last summer on the BBC last night. Big Weber Shandwick connection. Our Ali’s fiance Iain Knox is the team physio and made a number of notable contributions to the documentary. Check it out on IPlayer.

It’s a big bonus when you get to work with creative clients who have embraced advocacy and are exploring new ways of using social and digital media to communicate their message. Tourism Ireland has provided us with a great story to communicate on their behalf. I am sure it will capture press attention here in Ireland and abroad.Tourism Ireland will host the world’s first virtual St Patrick’s Day parade on Sunday 16th March, in the internet-based, virtual world of Second Life. The virtual parade will include 20 Irish and Celtic themed floats and will be the highlight of a three-day Discover Ireland Festival in Second Life, sponsored by Tourism Ireland.Second Life is one of the largest virtual worlds in existence, with over 12 million registered users, 3 million of whom are considered regular users. Sixty per cent of Second Life’s users come from Ireland’s four biggest tourist markets: Great Britain, US, Germany and France. Half of those users are aged over 30 – a key demographic for tourism to the island of Ireland. These “residents” can explore, socialise, and participate in activities and services using Second Life’s currency, the Linden Dollar.

As well as the first virtual St Patrick’s Day parade, Tourism Ireland will organise a range of events and activities during the St Patrick’s festivities in Second Life’s replica city of Dublin. Events will include a live broadcast of the largest ever contemporary Irish music expo – “Snakes and Ladders” – from the World Financial Center in New York; a treasure hunt which will involve visitors exploring Dublin to find clues that will enable them to collect points and win prizes (clues are located on www.discoverireland.com; as well as live bands and DJs.

The virtual cruise ship the “SS Galaxy” will visit Dublin during the festivities and will host an onboard digital exhibition of Irish artists’ work. Guided helicopter and bus tours of Dublin in Second Life will take place throughout the weekend, giving visitors historical information on the many famous Dublin landmarks that are recreated in Second Life.

Tourism Ireland’s objective is to encourage those who visit this virtual world to come and visit the real Ireland during 2008. “Dublin” in Second Life is a well-established destination – frequently making the Top Ten list of the most popular places to visit there. Tourism Ireland launched the first ever tourism marketing campaign in Second Life last October, with a Discover Ireland music festival.

Some experts predict that the web will be three-dimensional in a decade’s time and virtual worlds such as Second Life give us some idea of what the web may look like in the future. Second Life is one of the biggest virtual worlds in existence and many major brands, including Coca-Cola, Vodafone, IBM, Toyota, Sony and Adidas already have a presence there.

Anyone can join in the St Patrick’s Festivities by getting a free Second Life account through www.secondlife.com or at the virtual Dublin website: http://www.dublinsl.com
For those of you wishing to party online here’s the programme (all times GMT):

Saturday 15th March
17:00 Grand Opening
17:01 Treasure Hunt begins and will run for the next three days with instruction and clues at 30 locations
17:15 Saturday Swing
- Irish/Celtic rock by live DJ (2 hours)
20:00 Carraig
- Irish/Celtic rock by live DJ (2 hours)
23:00 Highland Marching Band parade and concert
- fully kitted marching band with kilt and pipes (2 hours)

Sunday 16th March
15:00 Sunday Riot
- Irish/Celtic rock by live DJ (2 hours)
15:00 Bus and Helicopter Tours of Dublin start (4 hours)
17:15 Celtic Muse
- Irish/Celtic sports music by live DJ (2 hours)
19:00 St Patrick’s Day Parade
- 20 Irish and Celtic themed floats (2 hours)

21:00 Sunday Slam
- Irish/Celtic rock by live DJ (2 hours)
21:00 Live Music Showcase
- Keltish live music band (1 hour)
23:00 Snakes & Ladders: New Irish Music Festival live simulcast from New York
- the largest expo of new Irish music in the world, ever! (2½ hours)
- Featuring: Green Time Ensemble, Somadrome, Amoebadoid, Deep Burial, General Practise, Toirse, Richard G Evans, Educution, Daniel Figgis
01:30 Carraigh
- Irish/Celtic rock by live DJ (1½ hours)
Monday 17th March
16:30 Snakes & Ladders: New Irish Music Festival live simulcast from New York
- Featuring: Brian O’Huiginn, Roger Doyle, Daniel Figgis
19:30 Live Ireland traditional Irish music festival live simulcast from the real world Dublin to virtual Dublin (3 hours)
20:00 Fibber Magees Grand Opening live music simulcast from the real world Fibber Magees to virtual Dublin featuring the band “World of Good” (2½ hours)
22:00 Carraig at New Fibber Magees
- Irish/Celtic rock by live DJ (2 hours)

In Dublin this morning and enjoyed my dawn drive through some of the nicest weather I have seen all winter. Things are quiet in the capital and there are reports of flooding in the South East. What does seemed to have worked is a major public information campaign on both sides of the Irish sea which has ensured we were all ready even if the worst never materialises. Back up the road in Belfast now. One hour forty each way, it makes being in an all island business very easy.

We have come a long way since Michael Fish and his infamous, storm, what storm comment on the BBC.

ps. Eddie O’Sullivan needs to go and the FA cup has gone mad. Good mad but mad none the less.

 A couple of Irish boys entered the PR pantheon of the greats for a campaign which was described by the Guardian Media Awards  judges as showing “bold disregard for conventional marketing techniques”

The creative PR brains behind Kentucky Fried Chicken’s ‘Face From Space’ are Nick Woods and James Kelly, both colleagues of mine at Weber Shandwick. James is half Ballymena and Nick hails from Holywood, Co Down. Weber Shadwick shunned the competition with a stunt designed to capture a global audience. “It enabled the brand to gain worldwide attention without the complication of language” the judges said.

The giant 87,500 square foot KFC logo was assembled in the Nevada desert last year and claimed to be the first brand logo visible from space.

The Weber Shandwick team faced huge operational difficulties which started with trying to find a supplier who could build the thing and getting right materials in the right colours. The original build site flooded two weeks before launch and the whole thing had to be shifted from Utah to Nevada. The team hired a commercial satellite to take images from space and worked very hard to keep a lid on the idea until they were ready to launch one story around the world at one moment in time.

They worked up two stories, worlds biggest logo and first logo visible from space. The trick was they could both only be told by showing the image. The story being the image meant cultural and language barriers were instantly overcome.

The story was launched out of New York via the international wires, in London via UK/Euro wires and out of Shanghai for Asia and got picked up everywhere. And I mean everywhere - every country you can think of, TV, print, radio, online, media sites, social network sites and consumer blogs. Google the image and its still there. Go onto Youtube and you can watch it being built as the clip above demonstrates.

The end result was huge opportunities to see (literally billions globally), an enormous return on investment, a number of awards in Europe the US and a very happy client.

El Alamo is nestled in the heart of Texas. The famous last stand of a band of brothers and this week Hillary’s own. Very late in the day some eminent advocates for the former first lady have piled in with their own Black Eyed Peas appeal to the wavering Democrats in Ohio and Texas.

Big Stephen at Weber Shandwick had this one ready for me on my return from the Western Front. The lad’s (Feraghal O’Boyle, Ronan O’Brien, David Leach, Fiachra O’Brien, Michael McLoughlin, Aidan Culhane and myself) are back at the day job with a weekend full of memories. Somehow youth has never seemed more precious and war more tragic. This is not the time to take a position on any particular conflict but it is worth remembering that for every 100 soldiers in an army today less then five will fight on the front line. Back in 1916 90 would have experienced the sharp end of close quarter fighting.

At the Menin Gate last night at 8.00pm the local fire brigade sounded the last post as they have done every night since Nov 11th 1918. Only Hitler interrupted them for a brief few years, but the day the Nazi’s left the firemen returned. They will be there tonight and tomorrow night again remembering those who gave their tomorrow’s so we can have our today’s.

Employers across Ireland got a shock today when the results of a survey carried out by Weber Shandwick’s sister company, Inside Edge were published.

Insidedge conducted 602 online interviews with employees across ROI and NI in February. These results are part Insidedge’s ongoing commitment to researching and understanding the dynamics of employee trust in Ireland, the UK and USA.

Those interviewed included employees of large, medium and small companies, of indigenous and international parentage as well as government employees. The range of interviewees was drawn from senior management to front line staff.

The findings will be a little startling to many business leaders on this island.

Employee trust in their senior management is alarmingly low with one in every three employees in both Northern Ireland and the Republic recording active distrust or low trust in their employers according to new survey results released today by Insidedge, the global employee engagement specialists.

The survey also revealed that employees rank trust and open, honest internal communications as major contributors to their job satisfaction, organisational commitment and decisions whether to stay with or leave their employers. In Northern Ireland 38 percent and in RoI 32 percent of those surveyed expected to leave their current employment in the foreseeable future, while an overwhelming 74 percent of all Northern Ireland and 80 percent of RoI interviewees indicated that an improvement in communications would positively influence them to remain with their employers.

Keith Burton who leads Inside Edge globally thinks these results pose significant issues for local businesses and government bodies about the way they communicate with their employees–especially when measured against the millions in cash which staff replacement, absenteeism and low productivity due to employee lack of commitment cost individual companies and the economy here every year.

“In our survey, we polled some 400 employees in ROI and over 200 employees in Northern Ireland across a wide range of the manufacturing, service and government sectors. The results clearly indicate the driving impact which effective employee engagement-or lack of it - has on an organisation’s competitive advantage and success in the marketplace as well as on overall economic growth and stability.” Keith is a regular contributor to business  magazines in the US and recently wrote an interesting article for The Journal on internal branding which is worth a read.

Inside Edge is being headed up in Ireland by Brenda Boal who told me the survey reinforces the importance which employee place on trust and effective communication in the workplace. The results are particularly significant, given the unprecedented scope and scale of the structural and operational changes faced by companies and government both in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The emergence of advocacy, the many on their soapboxes arguing for a cause, a brand or a candidate creates space for those who wish to communicate against it. In Weber Shandwick we call these negative advocates badvocates.

The video below (thanks to T for sharing with me) is a classic example of how social and digital media can be used to undermine a candidate (in this case Mike Huckabee) and his/her platform. It works in the same way the Black Eyed Pea  endorsement of Obama did but clearly the originators hope it will have the opposite effect. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Just got the news that O’Conall Street has been shortlisted for the Best Irish Business Blog at the Irish blog awards.

Thanks for the nomination.

You hear me go on a lot about the shift from traditional public relations to advocacy. We have been tracking this global shift in Weber Shandwick for a couple of year and last week we launched some European research on the topic.

Richard Moss a fellow Weber Shandwck Director in Europe and the man responsible for the research gave an interview to PR Week TV which you may find interesting. More as always on this blog and from Weber Shandwick.

That is the big question this Ash Wednesday.

For the great northern press corp nominations for the 2008 CIPR Press and Broadcast Awards are now open and entries can be made online. Click here  for more. 

In the US Barack continues to challenge winning most of the states whilst Hillary continues to fight on scooping most of the delegates. The Republicans look likely to nominate the likable John McCain. More fun for us junkies and even more exciting campaigning techniques to analyse.  Will be checking in with Real Clear Politics for all the analysis.  It’s a great way to pass the dark months.

Closer to home Brazil come to a sell out croker tonight. The big question is when will there be a nominee for manager. Players are getting p…… off and I am getting bored.

O’Conall Street has been swept up in nomination fever too. We were very humbled to receive three nominations in the Irish Blog Awards. After just five month’s in cyberspace it’s great to get some acknowledgement - a big thanks to all those who took the trouble to nominate us. We are in the running for:

Best Business Blog 

Best Political Blog

Best Newcomer

Off to dodge the ashes today. Ever the catholic agnostic….