Videos, virals and vampires

Many aspects of social media are fun and creative and help enable social conversations that support the brand presence. Corporate videos and viral videos such as Crashproof, made by the agency ST16, look great and can get over messages either explicitly or rather more covertly. But how do you measure the impact of videos in engaging audiences and changing behaviour? Ultimately you’re looking for a strong correlation between your campaign objectives and key performance indicators. ST16, at a CIPR Midlands evening event this week at the Hilton Hotel near Castle Donington, suggested a number of ways to build up your video evaluation. These include looking at ‘product sales’, web hits, online feedback, likes/dislikes, followers, ratings, the analytics available on YouTube, and industry awards won. The agency has won an IVCA and all credit to them. You can see another one of their engaging efforts with the Northamptonshire vampire dentists. Great work.

New PWP website design preview – feedback please

PWP new website design home page

The PWP website – www.pwpcomms.co.uk – that helped launch the business back in July 2008 is due for renewal. The company has moved on and our online presence needs to reflect this. Our planned new site, being developed with partners Touch Design and Volute,will combine a fresh new look with a far higher degree of interactivity. It will provide a showcase for our client work to date, more information on the range of PWP services including social marketing and social media, and will create the space to develop online conversations. The template new home page is shown above. Anyone with any views, whether the verdict is based on the good, the bad or the ugly, please let us know. All feedback gratefully received. Thank you.

People, Words & Pictures Ltd – Nottingham based public relations (PR) specialists

How to… easily produce an animated film on a communications theme

Worth looking at xtra normal – a text to movie website and software download – for anyone interested in producing animated cartoon films to illustrate a topic in an engaging style. The site is at http://www.xtranormal.com/ and just requires a simple State download to work. The controls, writing the script and animating the characters, are pretty simple and within half-an-hour or so you can create something of a reasonable standard. One fellow comms professioal has created an introductory guide to social marketing using this approach – see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB_szszLjbA

Social marketing in the local NHS

The National Social Marketing Centre has recently published a report providing an update on the state of readiness in PCTs for their social marketing challenges. The report – click here – brings together all the initial learning from the regional NSMC managers. Useful if you want to see how early adopters and latecomers are reacting to looking at strategic and operational health objectives from a social marketing perspective.

New e-bulletin

Those interested in all the latest social marketing developments can sign up for a new e-bulletin from the National Social Marketing Centre’s new-look website at http://www.nsmcentre.org.uk/

And the winner is…

Winner of the social marketing and PR survey is Debbie Jackson of NHS Derby City who will receive a £20 Boots gift card. Many, many thanks to all those who took part with entries from NHS East Midlands, NHS Derby City, NHS Lincolnshire, NHS Nottingham City, NHS Nottinghamshire County and Nottinghamshire Healthcare Trust. Your responses have been insightful and very helpful and will inform a paper being put together for the Chartered Institute of Public Relations on the relationships between PR and social marketing.

The actual survey can be found at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ggHGF0si9f0dbpXGid3ptQ_3d_3d

Some of the comments received include:

“Still a lot of misunderstanding about social marketing – perhaps PR people could help people get it.”

“I think everyone needs to be aware that it (social marketing) is not a quick fix and takes time to affect a behaviourable change.”

“The potential problem with social marketing’s reputation is that many people believe they are doing it when they are not.”

“It (social marketing) is a new term for something that people have been doing for ages.”

“I don’t think social marketing is separate from PR – PR is one of the things that could be used if that’s what the research indicates is needed.”

“I think PR could learn a lot from SM in terms of really understanding your audience and the change behaviour that you want to see and how tailoring a campaign in a very specific way can achieve the desired effect.”

Social marketing - 100% proof?

Anyone for a survey?

At work and tired of watching the BBC Wimbeldon video stream with the sound turned down? Then why not spend five minutes contemplating your profession and the boundaries between PR and social marketing in this short survey – link below. There’s also a chance of £20 for responders if your name is first out the hat on July 11 when the winner will be publicised with a posting on this site. All normal conditions and small print probably applies.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ggHGF0si9f0dbpXGid3ptQ_3d_3d

Ambitions for Health

The Department of Health has recently launched a new framework entitled Ambitions for Health which says how they will increasingly rely on social marketing to improve public health.  PR Week this month reports on how public relations will increasingly play a role in the DH’s strategy on providing new ways of empowering people to make their own choices.  An example of a social marketing campaign that I led, before establishing People, Words & Pictures, was www.listentoreason.org – a stop smoking campaign that was recognised in last year’s Association of Healthcare Communicators awards and has seen many local people approach the local NHS stop smoking service as a result of engaging with the campaign material.

A campaign with 100% proof

If you like being social and you like marketing, then you will love ‘social marketing’.  If PWP had a top 10 list of things we love then social marketing would be right up there, along with ‘summer’ and ‘making lists’ .

Drink sensibly

Social marketing is defined (by people who define things) as the ‘systematic application of marketing concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals relevant to a social good.’  If you want to know more, please contact us – inquiries@pwpcomms.co.uk or have a look at the National Social Marketing Centre which is hosting a world conference at the end of September – www.nsms.org.uk/public/default.aspx