MRMsocial media

Social media ROI: how you can demonstrate the value to your business

Michael Taggart — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:08:19 +0000

Michael Taggart, MRM’s head of social and digital, recently gave a talk to financial services businesses about how they could identify and report the return on investment (R.O.I.) of their social media programmes to their businesses.

Here are the slides. For a free consultation on this topic, please email Michael at michael.taggart@mrm-london.com or tweet him (@michael_taggart).

If you’d like to watch the film presentation in film, click here

Welcome to 2012 – this year it’s all about you

Cat Ommanney — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:02:57 +0000

This week Cat Ommanney discusses the changing attitude towards the consumer and how the power tables have taken a surprising change for the better

The old adage, “the customer is always right” seems to have been lost in the vortex of time as companies develop new ways to ensnare and intrigue their target audience. Where employees were once taught to nod and smile and to bend over backwards to help the customer, we are now seeing an increasingly less accommodating array of staff. Perhaps it’s just me, but on many an occasion I have raised a query with a waiter / shop assistant / service desk only to be dismissed sharply and told that “it’s company policy” to operate in a certain way, and that…in short, I’m wrong.

However, it seems that the tables are turning. Now, an unexpected silver-lining to the cloud of the looming recession is that the power is back in the consumer’s hands. In the ever-fiercer fight to win customers, firms are having to vie not just to get our attention, and thus our hard-earned cash, but also to keep it. The BBC recently posted an interesting article on our aversion to queuing and how it leads some to just walking away rather than face a wait. VirginMedia (@VirginMedia) have picked up on this and in order to enhance the customer experience and ensure that they don’t lose vital customers, they have made phone queuing an interactive experience – where callers can choose the music that they listen to from a monthly updated jukebox. Similarly, James Ashton’s (@mrjamesashton) recent comment in the Evening Standard called for retailers to keep shoppers interested this year or face a ‘brutal 2012’.

It’s not just the recession that is causing this change of events. The strength of social media means that consumers are becoming ever more vocal when it comes to the service that they receive. Twitter and Facebook in particular can be incredibly influential tools. It is every PR team’s dream to see a comment praising their client’s service and recommending it to others. However, this double edged sword means that it is equally easy for a business to be dragged through the mud when customers tweet their complaints and problems that they are experiencing. How to prevent this? Well, to ensure that service is not lacking and that any difficulties are resolved quickly and politely. A great example of this can be seen below with Halifax’s (@Halifax_Online) strategy of responding to each of their complaints individually, openly and politely:

While good social media isn’t a substitute for good customer service, the world wide web is a vital platform to encourage engagement between the consumer and the provider. The customer has had enough of being fobbed off, particularly in this economic climate, and has started to uprise – firms take note – or risk the consequences.

Social media ROI (part 3/3)

Michael Taggart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:13:29 +0000

This is the third and final part of our series on social media return on investment (R.O.I.).

Click here for part one and here for part two.

Social media ROI (part 2/3)

Michael Taggart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:07:33 +0000

This is Part 2/3 of our series on social media R.O.I. (return on investment) by MRM’s head of digital and social, Michael Taggart.

Click here for part one and here for part three.

Social media ROI (part 1/3)

Michael Taggart — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:58:19 +0000

How do you demonstrate the financial benefits of social media to your boss; the so-called return on investment?

MRM’s head of digital and social Michael Taggart gave a talk on how to identify the R.O.I of social media at the recent MRM Breakfast Briefing.

Below is the first of three parts.

Click here for part two and here for part three.

Social Media – Is it time to think outside the box?

Katie Jordan — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:41:46 +0000

MRM’s Katie Jordan questions whether the financial services are missing a trick when it comes to advertising through social media.

Last Sunday, after flicking through the channels with my housemates trying to decide what was better to watch – the Hollyoaks or Come Dine with Me omnibus (oh, the joyous choices) –my housemates and I got very bored and started to play the “favourites” game. For those of you who have Sky and therefore probably don’t have to lower yourselves to this form of entertainment, it basically consists of going round the group asking what each other’s favourite chocolate, drink, children’s TV programme of all time etc. is.

Thrilling, I know.

Anyway, the point of this story is that one of the questions which arose was “favourite brand” to which my answer was Innocent.

So, why Innocent? Well, I believe that they are the most innovative brand out there at the minute – especially when it comes to pushing the boundaries when advertising their products. Indeed, their recent tweet and eat campaign is an excellent example of the creative ways in which you can use new social media channels such as Twitter to advertise. For those of you who are not familiar with the campaign, Innocent has invited people to tweet using the hashtag #tweetandeat. The more people that tweet, the more money they offer off their Innocent veg pots, until eventually, the pots become free.

In fact, looking around there are numerous examples whereby companies have thought outside the box when it comes to advertising using social media. Swear Jar is another great example of a company using Twitter to raise both awareness and money – this time for charity. Here, Swear Jar is linked to your Twitter account and monitors the amount you swear each week. At the end of each week, it provides you with a link that asks you to pay £1 to charity (UNICEF famine appeal) for each time you swore. F*cking brilliant!

However – it doesn’t just stop at Twitter. Let’s not forgot about the other social media channels such as YouTube. Here, even the most obscure brands can excel, such as Tipp-Ex’s advert which gained great coverage both online and in print for its innovative way to grab consumer’s attention. For those of you who don’t know it, viewers of the YouTube clip titled ‘NSFW. A Hunter shoots a bear!’ are given a choice at the end of the video – they can either make the hunter shoot the bear or let him go. After making your choice, you are then commanded to type in anything you want, to which they will respond.

It seems consumers are no longer satisfied with merely being told what brand they should buy but instead, they look for a brand they can actively engage with.

Now, I know with the recent announcement that the FSA will be moderating Twitter ads within the financial services industry, financial services may be feeling rather cautious when it comes to advertising using social media networks but, with other industries jumping leaps and bounds in front and reaping the benefits, surely it is time for them to both learn and take inspiration from these examples and pick up the pace?

How we consume media and the death of the deadline

Daniel Sherville — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:26:00 +0000

Following the FSA’s recent stance on the use of Twitter, and the government’s calls to restrict Facebook and Twitter during times of civil unrest, MRM’s Dan Sherville looks at the new ways of consuming media and how they are changing

Throughout the chaos of the recent London riots, what struck me as quite surprising was where I had turned for updates, and how I was getting information in amongst all the confusion – I had gone to Twitter.

A couple years ago I wouldn’t have even considered Twitter as a reliable source of information, but during the riots I was completely glued to my feed, franticly trying to find out the latest news and goings-on. And it seems as though many of you are doing a similar thing. Research from MRM’s very own Michael Taggart found that in a count of the weekend’s national newspapers, there were 247 mentions of the word ‘Twitter’, a good indicator that journalists are becoming ever more obsessed with the social media tool. Similarly, the public’s interest doesn’t seem to be slowing down either, roughly a year ago users were generating around 65 million tweets a day, and now the figure is closer to 200 million.

Why does this matter?

Twitter is rapidly becoming an influential force in its own right, and the media appear to be taking full advantage. All you have to do is a quick search for #journorequest to see that more and more journalists are using the social networking service for case studies / quotes / news and even job offers.

The way we search and consume media is clearly changing quickly. Ofcom recently published their annual communications report which found that nearly half of UK adults said they used social networking sites in the first three months of 2011, and just under a quarter of mobile internet users are accessed news and information on a daily basis in April 2011, compared to just 10% the year before. Similarly, where PC usage mainly consists of search engines and email, the most commonly used service accessed on mobile phones is social networking, used by 57% of mobile internet users.

However, internet usage is not just increasing with consumers, advertisers are spending more and more each year, especially the financial sector which, as a proportion of overall advertising spend, saw an 11 percentage point increase from 2009 to 2010.

The social media effect is also changing the way journalists report breaking stories. Reporters such as Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews), Paul Lewis (@PaulLewis), Billy Kenber (@billykenber) and Andrew Hough (@andrew_hough) were all seen to be tweeting live during the riots in London, and were following up with full articles the following day. On many occasions, the above journalists were beating most of the 24 hours news services to the scene and were distributing video content long before the television crews had arrived.

What does this mean for the media?

In light of this, many publications are shifting their approach from the more traditional methods of print media, to a much more technologically involved system. The Guardian for example has fully engaged itself with ‘live update feeds’ in which news is reported in a similar fashion to tweets – short comments updated on a regular basis – to keep their readers informed on events as they happen. Recent examples of this include the blogs covering the uprising in the Middle East and North Africa and live coverage from the 2011 Labour conference in which comments were being posted from competitor publications, twitter and from journalists on the scene.

Perhaps the lines are starting to blur between print and rolling 24 hour TV news, or maybe there is no such thing as a media deadline anymore because of the live nature involved with Twitter and newspaper websites. In any case, everyone is talking about Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook etc, and the UK’s most influential people are now on the social web. It is clear that the industry is evolving, and since the public has access to so much freely available information now, journalists, PRs and consumers alike need to evolve too in order to keep up.

Gorkana meets Michael Taggart

Jenny Crossland — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:29:49 +0000

MRM head of social media Michael Taggart

Gorkana recently caught up with MRM’s head of social media and former Daily Mail reporter, MICHAEL TAGGART. Here, we re-print he interview - about Michael’s mutual respect for journalism and PR and why the social web must be the battleground in a crisis – which was first published at GrokanaPR.com.

How is 2012 looking for MRM, what are you guys working on?

We’re concentrating on three things for most of the next 12 months – growing, growing and growing. To bungle a simile, we’ve been like a Cadbury’s Cream Egg (stay with me) – small but full of quality…and, erm, surprisingly tasty. But we’ve made some important hires and operational changes in the last year meaning the team has grown to 15. So there’s enough yolk to…well, you know what I mean.

What changes have you seen in clients’ attitudes towards social media – is there an unprecedented sea change in terms of it now sitting near the top of their priority lists?

I was at a comms planning meeting recently with a CEO, some senior sales staff and a fund manager when one of the more grey-haired among us piped up “obviously, we’ll have to use Twitter to let people know about this”. This was met immediately with sage nods from around the table. This sort of thing simply didn’t happen 18 months ago. Businesspeople finally get it. I don’t mean they always understand the specific tools, like Google Plus and Foursquare, but they have generally grasped that people in all walks of life are using social media to interact with people from all parts of their lives.

They know that their companies must meet their customers and clients in these channels – or risk not interacting with them at all. For me, this is a far more important revelation than understanding the mysterious minutiae of the Twitter hashtag or knowing how to share a YouTube video on Facebook. This newfound understanding has meant social media is now a major part of our new business meetings and, as every month passes, we are doing more monitoring, strategy work, community building, campaigns and content creation for our clients.

You were in charge of social media at Brighton and Hove Council and responsible for ensuring the public could communicate about the public services they paid for, how did this work out for you from a communications perspective?

Like most local papers, the one in Brighton has a dwindling readership. You’ll often reach as many people by using a loudhailer on the seafront as you will communicating through the pages of the local rag. The other major problems are that there’s very little possibility of two-way communication in traditional media – even on radio – so there’s limited value and it’s not instant. These limitations really hit home when the city turned into a large ice-rink during the winter of 2009/10. On a single day, more than 100 people were admitted to A&E with broken bones. Being a ‘digital’ city, this crisis – and the council’s role in gritting roads and pavements – soon provided fodder for hundreds of furious tweets, blogs, updates and comments.

We knew we had to join conversations where they were happening – on the social web. It was no use sending a statement to the media and waiting hours for it to be broadcast or printed. This was a kind of wake-up call and so when the crisis had subsided we went all out to find out who was saying what about public services and where they were saying it so we could try to make helpful and relevant interventions without butting in where we weren’t wanted. This was the dawn of a new relationship with the council taxpayers and by the time I left just over a year ago the public were able to have real conversations with real people in real time in a range of key council departments, including refuse, transport and public safety.

What was the move like for you from journalism into PR?

Journalists always worry that they are selling their souls to the devil when they make this move. This is, of course, poppycock. In both careers you can find and ‘sell-in’ great stories to news editors, cultivate useful contacts and unleash that elusive turn of phrase that lights up a news story. In both, you can speak truth to power, bring attention to worthy causes and effect positive change. Conversely, you can use both disciplines to mislead, cheat, bully, cajole and promote self-interest.

My own experience has been that the skills of good journalism and good PR overlap substantially but they are not the same. For example, as a PR, I will nearly always need a decent business head. Not so in journalism. As a journalist, on the other hand, I will nearly always require a little bravery and a dogged determination to root out facts that aren’t forthcoming. Not so in PR. One other significant difference: in general, the pay in journalism is criminally low, whereas it tends to be fairer in PR.

What one thing would you change about PR? And journalism?

It’s the same for both – I would like PRs and journalists to show greater understanding of and respect for one another’s crafts.

Who in PR do you most admire? And journalism?

In PR, I’m a big fan of Neville Hobson (@jangles on Twitter), one of the UK’s leading opinion formers. He co-hosts what I believe is the world’s best media and marketing podcast, despite a clutch of brilliantly informative and entertaining competitors in America. He’s both a fierce critic and a passionate advocate of public relations.

In journalism, it’s probably Jason Burke (@burke_jason on Twitter) of the Observer, who has written three magnificent books about the rise of Islamic militancy and who was responsible for this wonderful passage in On The Road To Kandahar when he tells us he “ate noodles with Thai Muslims and couscous with Algerian mujahedeen, drunk tea with Berbers, coffee with the Acehnese, argued with hardline Taliban mullahs, mystic Sufi teachers and corrupt Palestinian politicians… drunk beer with Iraqi poets, whisky with Indian bankers and tea with suicide bombers of various nationalities.” Although I did always wonder whether it were physically possible to “drink tea with suicide bombers”.

The website you most check is?

Probably Facebook or Wikipedia.

The most interesting fact about yourself is?

At the age of eight, I starred with Nigel Havers in a 1940s mini-series called ‘After The War’. ‘Starred’ is probably stretching it. I was ‘boy with gasmask #2’ and had about 10 seconds on screen in total. I’m still waiting for a second TV role.

Your daily newspaper of choice is?

I flick through them all at various points in the day. Telegraph for news, Guardian for media news, Evening Standard for the train journey. The Sun comes in handy if I spill something.

The finest moment of your career to date – in journalism, and in PR is?

I did a couple of undercover investigations I was quite proud of as a national newspaper journalist – one involved me posing as an illegal Albanian worker for two weeks and lugging bricks around in various suburban housing estates. I also exposed the close romantic tie between a recent Prime Minister’s son and the daughter of a rival from the other side of the political spectrum. Unfortunately, the newspaper’s lawyers bottled it and decided we would likely be sued for breach of privacy so it never saw the light of day.

In PR, winning awards is always nice but I was most proud of a campaign at Westminster council, which sought (successfully) to persuade people in London to give their loose change to homelessness charities, rather than hand it to street sleepers, who would often spend the money on harmful drugs.

The next big thing in social media will be?

Customer feedback. Starbucks is probably the most famous example of how a brand can use social media to leverage the insight of customers so they can improve their business – see mystarbucksidea.com. We’re starting to catch on to the opportunities here in the UK and I note that a train operator – First Capital Connect – has just done something similar, although they’re getting a bit of a pasting for poor service. It will be interesting to see what benefits they derive from it. As a disgruntled customer, I applaud their willingness to hear my voice and to try and do better.

How do you expect social media will grow and be utilised as a medium by businesses?

We are social creatures, who crave company and the attention of our social groups. We want to listen to stories and tell people about our own experiences. Fifty thousand years ago, we did this around campfires. But now, because of our complex schedules and busy lives, social networks have become our campfires. The world has changed but human nature hasn’t and social media is just the latest means with which we fulfill our primordial needs. Businesses need to understand that this is what motivates consumers on the social web. This doesn’t mean spitting sales and marketing messages at people as though it were the Yellow Pages.

It means building and joining relevant communities and making the lives of the people there easier, entertaining and educating them, introducing them to useful people, making them feel special and giving them something to talk about. When businesses do this, a whole world of possibilities will open up in terms of using their communities to support their customer services, marketing, sales, brand management, research, online crisis management and many other business functions. Simples.

What recent financial campaigns using social media have impressed you?

I have increasingly admired the way UK insurers have used Facebook to bring to life the characters central to their marketing, such as Churchill the dog and MoreThan Freeman. I haven’t seen any figures relating to sales but these campaigns have certainly helped those companies build brands that exude accessibility and approachability.

Finally, do you have any good battle stories from when you worked as a hack at the Daily Mail?

I think I’ll have to “take the fifth” on this one – just in case Lord Leveson decides he wants to be the first to hear about my muck-raking.

Michael blogs at http://www.mrm-london.com/author/michael-taggart/

Questions and write up from Gorkana’s news manager, Doug Keighley.

A week at MRM

Katy Moore — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:56:27 +0000

Katy Moore gives an insight into a week at MRM, giving all the gossip from her working week while highlighting what news has interested MRM over the past seven days

This weekend heralded one of the greatest events in the world – the start of the Premier League football season. And with it comes the nine-month long emotional rollercoaster that is the fantasy football league. It seems like only yesterday that some of the most senior MRM-ers were curled up in a foetal position on the floor, weeping and wailing while the victorious stood crowing with joy. Oh how we’ve missed this!

We follow many footballers on Twitter and none is more entertaining than Joey Barton who has been causing more headlines recently for his activities on Twitter rather than his action on the pitch – a fact noted in this brilliant blog on social media by our in-house guru Michael Taggart.

Social media hit the headlines for different reasons this week with the news that two men were to be jailed for four years for inciting disorder during last week’s riots. And another has been banned from all social networking sites for a year for egging on the rioters on his Facebook status – a stark message to those who thought their online views could not be held against them.

Closer to home, we had a celebration in the office yesterday as Cat turned 24 (a wee bairn!) and we were treated to a phenomenal home-made Victoria sponge, courtesy of our very own master-baker, Jules. We should have birthdays every day!

And so from one landmark weekend to another. While the start of the footie season may be of interest to some, it is nothing compared to what’s coming on Saturday. Something that can unite or divide an entire nation and cause much hysteria at MRM Towers. That’s right – the new series of The X Factor starts at 8pm. I know where I’ll be…

SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDY: How KFC nailed a crisis with good communications

Michael Taggart — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 10:48:58 +0000

A few weeks ago, we laid out MRM’s eight step plan for dealing with a social media crisis.

In our short film we described how pizza firm Domino’s had suffered significant brand damage when a rogue employee posted films of colleagues doing disgusting things with the food before serving it.

Domino’s didn’t have a clue what to do and the film went viral across the globe. It was a PR disaster.

It’s amazingly easy to find case studies that highlight abject failure in handling brand crises through calm, deliberate communications (News International, anyone?).

So we’re pleased to be able to bring to you a real life ‘how it should be done’ case study that is only coming to end at the time of writing this.It’s a good one to compare to the Domino’s case study because it’s about another fast food firm that encountered an almost identical crisis.

KFC Malaysia found itself in hot water when a member of staff shot footage of a colleague tampering with the food. This film was sent anonymously to the KFC headquarters and the police were called in. An internal investigation was also launched and the issue was dealt with at an HR level.

So far, so good.

But then the inevitable happened. Three weeks ago, on June 25, the video below was leaked onto YouTube.

MRM’s first crisis communications rule is to listen, our second is to assess the level of threat and our third is to act quickly if steps one and two tell you that you should.

KFC lost no time going through this process, deciding very quickly that they needed to respond.

And, boy, did they respond.

Our step six advocates creating a dedicated online space to deal with any crisis when there is a risk of comments swamping a blog, Twitterfeed or Facebook page that is designed for other purposes, such as customer support, sales or customer feedback. The first thing KFC did was set up an area within their Facebook page entitled “KFC responds” (pictured below), ensuring they could take control of the crisis by preventing it from stifling other important communications activities.

'KFC Responds' - the crisis Facebook page

The page contains an FAQ anticipating all the questions that were likely to come up and, in a real sign KFC had learnt from the mistakes of Domino’s (or watched our film!), they uploaded two videos featuring the chain’s Director of Restaurant Operations, Mohammed Alwi, and made them available on YouTube. We said one of the biggest mistakes Domino’s made was to respond to a viral YouTube video with a press release. If YouTube is where the action is, we said, then it makes sense to respond using film.

This is why our step four is ‘fish where the fish are’ and this is exactly what KFC did.

MRM’s crisis communications kit also says “the absolute key is planning…failing to plan is planning to fail”. It is abundantly clear KFC had thought ahead about crisis communications because the video is available in both Malay and English, an obvious but essential step to ensure they didn’t further enrage customers by excluding them from their communications.

The film contains an apology and goes on to describe the steps that have already been taken in order to help reassure customers that this sort of issue won’t reoccur. They explain how (a) cameras have been installed in kitchens of all KFC outlets in Malaysia, (b) all kitchen preparation staff are now going to be directly supervised and (c) the firm is providing hygiene training for staff. Take a minute to watch it – it’s text book crisis communications.

MRM’s seventh step advises that firms redirect the anger of the mob, putting people’s passion to constructive use by asking for their advice about what to do. This is exactly what KFC has done, proactively inviting upset citizens to express their concerns on the Facebook page in a way that might help the chain learn from the kerfuffle.

The result?

A few days later, the number of negative comments are starting to fall away and it looks like this will come to a comfortable and dignified close for KFC in Malaysia.

The only step from MRM’s plan that the firm has yet to enact is to follow through. So it will be interesting to see whether we’ll hear from KFC in a few weeks or months about what it has learnt, whether the restaurant chain will thank members of the public who got involved and whether KFC’s bosses will tell us how the changes they implemented have helped the business.

So it’s top of the class to KFC for text book crisis communications management and we’re glad they were able to make use of MRM’s eight step plan