Whether you believe from reading his autobiography that Black is a wronged man or not, there is no doubting the unshakable love he and his wife Barbara Amiel have for each other

What they all have in common is that they all have biographies that are absolutely cracking yarns. I’ve read all three back-to-back in the last couple of months and want to highly recommend them to you.

A Matter of Principle is an autobiography by Conrad Black, published in 2011, in which the disgraced media tycoon describes his indictment, trial, subsequent conviction for corporate fraud, along with his imprisonment and appeal. Though the absolute accuracy of his account is disputed by some, Black had many of the charges against him curtailed on the appeal and comes across as a believably heroic (if not entirely clean-as-a-whistle) titan in the morally dubious world of billion dollar deals and boardroom coups.

Sam Goldwyn’s biography, written by A Scott Berg, called simply Goldwyn, is a Jeffrey Archer-style rags-to-riches tale of a determined penniless Orthodox Jewish boy living in the slums of Poland at the turn of the 19th century, who is determined to get away, cross the oceans and live the American Dream.  Goldwyn goes on to become one of Hollywood’s most famous and respected producers, but never quite manages to knock off his rough edges, a subscriber to the Groucho Marx philosophy about never joining any club that would have him as a member.  He fell out with as many people as he entranced – including the biggest Hollywood directors, writers and screen icons of the day.  Goldwyn is a simply fascinating character you just couldn’t make up, complete with thick Eastern European accent, malapropisms and a magic “Goldwyn touch” for producing hit films of notably high artistic  quality.

Frederick Douglass: "I have no accurate knowledge of my age... and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves ignorant."

The third book is an autobiography, penned by Frederick Douglass, called Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. It charts the story of an African American slave (whose father was probably his cruel white Master) in the 19th century, which became a bestseller on publication in 1845.

It is so powerful and gripping that I can only do it justice by simply repeating a passage from it:

Aunt Hester had not only disobeyed his orders in going out, but had been found in company with Lloyd’s Ned; which circumstance, I found, from what he said while whipping her, was the chief offence. Had he been a man of pure morals himself, he might have been thought interested in protecting the innocence of my aunt; but those who knew him will not suspect him of any such virtue. Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked. He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d—-d b—h. After crossing her hands, he tied them with a strong rope, and led her to a stool under a large hook in the joist, put in for the purpose. He made her get upon the stool, and tied her hands to the hook. She now stood fair for his infernal purpose. Her arms were stretched up at their full length, so that she stood upon the ends of her toes. He then said to her, “Now, you d—-d b—h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from him) came dripping to the floor. I was so terrified and horror-stricken at the sight, that I hid myself in a closet, and dared not venture out till long after the bloody transaction was over. I expected it would be my turn next. It was all new to me. I had never seen any thing like it before. I had always lived with my grandmother on the outskirts of the plantation, where she was put to raise the children of the younger women. I had therefore been, until now, out of the way of the bloody scenes that often occurred on the plantation.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the three very sweet present givers, who opened my eyes to these three fascinating characters: Mrs Brown (an afficionado of 20s and 30s Hollywood) who presented me with her copy of Goldwyn as a Christmas gift; and to my lifelong friend, Tom Youldon, who gave me Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; and my darling wife Catherine, who bought me  A Matter of Principle.

They are well worth the read, each unforgettable.

It was predicted a few years ago that by now QR codes would have exploded in the UK. Sure, you now see them on cereal boxes, posters, TV ads – but how many people are pulling out their smartphones and scanning them? Well, about 19% of UK consumers according to some stats. But, how many find the experience satisfying if they have gone to the trouble of getting out their smartphone and scanning? I’d suggest a very small proportion, with most experiences being very anti-climactic!

Many are saying QR code usage will take off when Apple and others include QR readers within the preset package when you buy your smartphone. I would argue that while this change will assist moving QR codes being just a gimmick to a more consistent part of people’s everyday lives, it will not make a massive difference. A step change in QR code usage will only in fact come when brands, advertisers, PRs (and the like) are able to start coming up with QR code initiatives that offer non-techie people more than they could get by simply typing in a URL to a browser.

I believe QR codes will come of age as a meaningful communication route at some point, but only if creative mental leaps are made by those incorporating them into campaigns and initiatives, not because of a fast forward in technology.

It would be a start if those employing QR codes in campaigns could remember not to place them underground (at least until there is WiFi down there!) or point them towards sites that aren’t optimised for mobile phones.

A rare example of an initiative with enough creativity – and value to the user – to be worth scanning a QR code for, comes from South Korea with a virtual Tesco store for busy subway users:

The current concern of Procurement is with the cost per hour and the number of billable hours; and the agency’s concern is with getting the SOW fulfilled or “job” done in a way that will create strong enough results for the client to keep employing them year after year or project after project, for a worthwhile price.

The current way Procurement and agencies come to an agreement is very confrontational entirely focused on placing an agency rate card against how long each person on the rate card will take to complete the proposed work. The procurement officer then argues that each item of activity will take less time than the agency proposes it will take and therefore the proposed overall price needs to come down.  If this fails to result in a conclusion, both agency and client will try and erode the mandate of the SOW to justify or create the lower price. Then against this lower price are placed higher KPIs than the agency initially proposed, which can either be argued against or accepted.

If still no conclusion is reached Procurement will point out (true or not) how they may be aware of other agencies with a lower rate card and may ask to see timesheeted evidence of how long certain activities took in previous years; in return, the agency may press the client for disclosure on what their PR / social budget actually is for that year, and come armed with old timesheets full of over-servicing evidence.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that Procurement are dealing with the “billable hour”, when the billable hours are less and less useful for modern PR/social agencies, and the focus on them involves this inherently confrontational haggling over hours here and hours there.  Industry leaders such as Coke and Proctor and Gamble, have moved to the value-based billing model; entirely replacing hourly rate proposals. This value-based model involves the agency saying from experience how much it believes work will cost (rather than by the hour) and also factoring in the value the work will bring to your business.

http://www.leewashington.com/objects/little-man-paperclips/

As I looked to the Ghost of Christmas future, I’d be thinking “What an earth now?” as I realised that Tesco could cut prices no further.  It has simply cut prices for punters as low as possible, by squeezing suppliers every which way and cutting (then raising again) staff salaries, but to no benefit. Punters don’t notice that prices are significantly lower than Sainsbury’s or Morrisons, because the difference is so negligible, and as such, Tesco are facing a 2012 of declining market share.

This price problem is a key reason why Tesco are losing market share, because it is a brand built around the “Every Little Helps” best price implication, so cannot afford to start losing out on price to its major competitors.   Over the last five years, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons have focused a solid amount of resource around building brand personality with ideas of supporting mums on a budget; tasting the difference; buying British; and replicating the local street market, respectively.  In contrast, whether this is the reality or not, it appears that all Tesco have focused on is growth – and international growth at that.

There is nothing wrong with international growth (as long as you don’t go down the K-Mart route) and Tesco’s scale is, generally, a crucial competitive advantage.

However, in the years leading up to the boom of online retail, was it really the right move both commercially and PR-wise, to desperately pursue bricks and mortar presence globally?  Meanwhile, it has a clunkier web and social media presence than key competitors.

Tesco must realise that now is the time to take lessons from its competitors, including Amazon, seriously investing in overhauling its online retail capability, if it wants to maintain a leading market share (of I’d imagine about 50%) for UK grocery purchases online.  It has had a serious advantage in the last five years, due to its scale of brand recognition – largely because of its number of stores – so people looking to do their weekly shop online have automatically turned to Tesco.  Now that online shopping is de rigueur, other factors though, such as the ease of the experience and quality of the service, are much more important, which should be worrying for Tesco.

Tesco must accept that people appreciating it (for being close by / low-priced / well-stocked), or indeed admiring it as a British corporate success story, is not enough to make it “future-proof”.  It must recognise that the best things to do for the health of the business in the nineties and naughties, are no longer helpful for the decades ahead, namely:

Remorseless focus on price

Why not?

As competitors have proved, price is only part of the equation (especially when there is nowhere left to go on price, without the terrible PR that would come with squeezing suppliers etc even further)

Growth of store footprint

Why not?

The web age asks serious questions for those building new stores further and further afield. How valuable will this physical outlets be in ten and twenty years time when even more people do their weekly shop online?

Biggest investment in social responsibility packages of any UK brand, as primary tool to overcome haters

Why not?

Tesco certainly needs to continue to evidence its role in building a better world – as a largely defensive piece, but it is not a case that by flashing the most cash in this area, it will get the most back from it, either in terms of PR or anything else.  It should consider this before a consultant wanders in, suggesting spending extra millions in some grandiose social responsibility program, which might reach the ears of marketers and CEOs, but leave the great British public untouched

So what would I do if I were a Tesco UK board director right now?

a)    Take some beta blockers

b)    Write a 5, 10 and 20 year plan, forbidding myself to write the phrases “cutting prices” or “increase store footprint” and see what this results in

c)    Focus remorselessly on injecting brand personality into Tesco, similar to the way Bolland helped to make Morrisons associated with traditional values and a “northern warmth” in the last few years

d)    Invest heavily in the latest online innovations and platforms, ready to rule supreme in the age when brick and mortar are less important in grocery retailing

e)    Gather together all the genius data monkeys, strategists and marketers you have working in the organisation, and say:

“We are entering into an age where everything Tesco thought was most important to our success is no longer going to be.  An age where Tesco clubcard users think it is creepy thing that we know what sausages they like best, instead of a cool thing. What are we all going to do about it?”

f)     Construct a framework for CHANGE (I know that sounds wanky, but working out just how much Tesco needs to change is more important than gung-ho trying to change a whole business culture at once)

Rosie Siman won't lets up walk blindly into SOPA

A great piece of investigate blogging by my friend Rosie Siman on why SOPA is so bad (that was featured on http://socialfresh.com today):

“Working in the digital world, it’s hard to miss seeing the SOPA drama. Tweets, blog posts, news articles, petitions… It’s everywhere. But the articles about SOPA are pretty jargon-heavy, even for geeks.

And for those outside of the digital/technology industry? I’ve spoken to several people who haven’t heard of SOPA and countless others who have heard of the acronym, but aren’t sure what it stands for or why they’ve heard it.

If SOPA is passed, it will drastically change how the internet exists. It will affect each and every one of us, regardless of the industry we’re in, but the world of social media will especially be affected.

What is SOPA?

SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act. Essentially, it is a bill that was created to protect American intellectual property. When someone in America tries to re-distribute intellectual property that isn’t theirs, they are often prosecuted. But what about those people who live outside America’s jurisdiction who are sharing copyrighted material that belongs to an American? Even if they are charged in a US court, our laws don’t apply to them.

Why is SOPA A Bad Idea?

While the intentions of the bill were good (to protect American intellectual property), the vague language of SOPA will empower corporations to censor the internet. Which is not good. If the bills were passed, the attorney general could create a list of sites that were essentially blacklisted by search engines, service providers, payment providers, etc – without a court hearing or trial. (Um hello, first amendment violation, anyone?!)

Here’s where it gets messy. Because the bill has been designed much like China’s system (though again, without the same intentions), companies would be responsible for users’ actions. Well-put from an NY Times article:

“The burden would be on the website operator to prove that the site was NOT being used for copyright infringement. The effect on user-generated sites like YouTube would be chilling.”

Currently, sites are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which means that they are protected from prosecution as long as they take down the content that has infringed someone else’s copyright as soon as they find out. For example, let’s say you upload a video to YouTube of a Family Guy episode you recorded. The copyright does not belong to you, but instead to Fox. If Fox sees that you posted the show to YouTube, they can ask YouTube to take it down.  As long as YouTube quickly complies, there are no problems.

However, if SOPA came into effect, the onus would be on YouTube to check every single video – to vet each and every one – to make sure that there aren’t any copyrighted materials being shared. As of February this year, YouTube said 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in nearly 8 years of content uploaded every day. Just think about how many people would be needed to monitor content submitted. Even if they began charging users, the cost of the changes they would need to make would likely be unbearable. Even Google would be liable for copyright infringement!

Pair that with the idea of free speech and we’re looking at even more trouble. Studies on global internet censorship show that when the liability/onus is on companies, the employees that are tasked with monitoring are found to play it safe. They tend to over-censor so that they don’t have to worry about getting in trouble.

“Some critics have charged that such language could blacklist the next YouTube, Wikipedia, or WikiLeaks. Especially in the case of WikiLeaks, which has posted internal documents not only from governments but also copyrighted documents from U.S. companies and has threatened to post more, it’s hard to see how it would not qualify for blacklisting,” writes CNET.

Finally, SOPA would create conflicts with DNS servers. If you don’t know what a DNS server is, watch the video below – It’s quick, pretty and painless (and tells you exactly what you need to know and no more.) These conflicts would make all of us more vulnerable to hackers, identity theft and cyber attacks.

If you’re thinking “Wow, I had no clue SOPA was such a bad idea… I don’t want our internet to be like China’s,” you should sign this petition and consider calling your local representatives. It  may sound daunting, but read Reddit’s “Idiot’s guide on how to contact your congress person or senator by phone” and it will give you the power! Gizmodo even put together a list of all the companies supporting SOPA and how to contact them.

If you want to read more on SOPA and the mess it could cause, here are 5 of the best resources:

• Here’s a great one-pager by EFF (electronic frontier foundation): https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/One-Page-SOPA_0.pdf
• My personal favorite, A letter from legal professors (110! who all teach and write about IP, internet law, innovation and, of course, the first amendment): http://politechbot.com/docs/sopa.law.professor.letter.111511.pdf
• Hillary Clinton’s “Remarks on Internet Freedom: http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm
• The NY Times article I quoted earlier, “Stop the Great Firewall of America” can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/opinion/firewall-law-could-infringe-on-free-speech.html
• CNET’s FAQ on “How SOPA Would Affect You:” http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57329001-281/how-sopa-would-affect-you-faq/
• BONUS LINK: YOU ARE NOT ALONE! Check out Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Facebook, AOL and Zynga’s opposition to SOPA: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57325134-281/google-facebook-zynga-oppose-new-sopa-copyright-bill/?tag=mncol%3btxt (PDF of the letter they sent to congress here: http://politechbot.com/docs/sopa.google.facebook.twitter.letter.111511.pdf ”

1. Unprepared to drop ego in order to work with other big digital players - With every PR / ad / media-buying agency claiming to “do digital” these days, the natural reaction can be to go into battle mode.  Looking to prove to clients that whatever the digial scenario ‘we know more and can do it better than them’.  But the wisest agency, will act as a connoisseur of the digital talents and strengths of other agencies and consider what they would like to team up with agency X on that would be mutually beneficial? Can sometimes playing the bashful partner to another agency result in amazing case-study or an award-worthy / pride inducing piece of work that would otherwise not naturally fall into your office?  Also, you can learn a lot that will sharpen your own offering from casual conversations with heads of other digital agencies or those looking to move increasingly into the space; as long as you are prepared to ditch the constant battle mode.

2. Just talking about digital innovation - most digital innovation will involve making things, whether they be new tools or apps or aggregators, or automated processes. So if any agency doesn’t have a capacity to tinker in these areas it can’t really validly claim to be inherently innovative - even one innovator/developer/technologist is a start, you don’t need a whole Innovation Lab initially!

3. Dabbling with social media monitoring / insight tools - I don’t care what tool you favour, it can be Meltwater Buzz, or Radian 6, or Sysomos, you have to get to know to use any one tool inside out and back to front before you can deliver real value to a client through using it.  Dabble all you like with additional monitoring / insight solutions, but be prepared to go-along-for-the-ride and seriously commit to one tool for long enough to gain real expertise.  Only when you really get a tool, can you move on to presenting it’s data findings most effectively.

4. Disconnection between PRs & digital specialists – meaning client briefs that may or may not involve social media solutions are poorly interpreted by PRs so delivered to digital specialists in such a form that opportunities have been lost for both meaningful work and meaningful profit.

5. Inability to attribute precisely – wooly digital KPIs agreed with clients, because of a lack of confidence and experience with the range of possible digital outcomes and attribution models internally. Resulting in client and agency working too hard chasing the wrong things.

6. Lack of star quality in community management – clients believe community management is cheap and easy, thus they brief it out to agencies, but it proves almost impossible to turn a decent profit on for the agency. The only ways to increase this profit margin are to turn away community management work or demonstrate why you are charging a premium for it. To do this you need a star person, famous for running hugely successful communities or forums to wheel in front of clients and oversee any community management work at a premium price point.

7. Digital leadership at board level – junior employees are not naive about how companies work. They realise the significance of being called a Managing Partner, Managing Director or Director and they see who disappears for board meetings. They trust they are being represented- if digital specialists- or that digital expertise is being taken seriously by such subtle dynamics, not because of mission statements about “digital being central”

8. Data and presentation of it – clients cannot see the hours spent researching before something is presented about their audience, it’s social media habits, online journey or the proposed digital strategy etc, all they can see is the presentation about it. The client can go online and check out YouTube videos of Hans Roslings data visualisation work or JESS3s infographics and so the bar is constantly set by outside forces. Thus, day by day the PR agency must win over the client by taking the final way of presenting data and ideas compellingly just as seriously as anyone else, not just in the industry but outside of it.

9. Weak digital design and build capability from social media pages, to sites, to apps – If you haven’t got the resource to do this, you can’t compete in the PR big game anymore. Unless you have an almost symbiotic blood-brothers relationship with an agency that only offers this. Even if this relationship becomes weak, fraught or mistrusting, watch the quality of work, ambition of work and profits evaporate bit by bit.

10. Great people make great agencies – it only takes one person to be outstanding at one aspect of the digital conmunications skill set to start building agency specialisms. But not enough digital-ready PR agencies are investing in truly high level training or self- development time in online data analysis, developing digital attribution models, future of connected TV etc for key interested staff in order to bring them forward. They think “well staff leave”, but that is wrongheaded. One member of staffs key knowledge area has ripple effects and before you know it it has become the organisations collective knowledge and expertise.

]]> http://jonomarcus.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/10-mistakes-made-by-agencies-looking-to-do-digital-better/feed/ 0 jonomarcus http://jonomarcus.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/best-work-email-ever/ http://jonomarcus.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/best-work-email-ever/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:00:53 +0000 Jono Marcus http://jonomarcus.wordpress.com/?p=1763 ]]> After dressing up like Ziggy Stardust, complete with pink wig, for the work Xmas fancy dress party, I received this email:

Hi Jono,

 This is the one that you looked like/ reminded me of last week, her name is ‘Sarah’:

 http://www.channel4.com/programmes/my-transsexual-summer/articles/sarah

 Maybe watch an episode on 4OD to see her in action?

The documentary was actually quite touching, although Sarah did seem to have the biggest battle to overcome re. woman looking like man.

 All best,

H

Judge for yourself readers …

I think me and transsexual Sarah surely must share a relative back somewhere with those cheekbones.

Is it a case of over-egging the 'this is our philosophy' pudding?

Over some very pleasurable afterwork beers last night, with a group of very senior marketeers, the question came up “Does an agency’s philosophy matter?”

The marketeers response was a little surprising to me. ..

You see, despite the thought put in by agencies as to whether they call themselves Brand Entertainment Experts, proponents of Ideas Incorporated or Advocacy Specialists etc, marketeers really don’t often pay that stuff any attention.

Not one of the marketeers, who each work with multiple PR and digital agencies, could actually recall the straplines or philosophies of any of those agencies, or indeed any agency. Being agency side I seem to have absorbed the straplines and ‘proprietory’ approaches of most of the big PR agencies and have paid a great deal of attention to them, in a way client-side marketeers just don’t.

While the marketeers weren’t particularly concerned with the philosophy of any given agency looking to work for them, they were very concerned with on the ground attitude of an agency:
 •Enthusiasm
•Availability of key client contacts
•Willingness to resolve screw-ups (without charging more!)

I think an agency’s sense of it’s own unique approach does matter, just perhaps more to the people in the agency than those outside of it.

What was also pointed out in the course of discussion is that however “360″ an agency makes its offering, many clients simply want a straight answer as to whether they should consider you to be primarily a PR agency, media buying agency, ad agency, specialist digital agency. There is now a latent acceptance that all these types of agencies will be able to provide a level of digital work.