TalkBlog - The official Talk PR Blog

Earlier this month Facebook launched Home, an Android-based software that takes over users’ home screens and puts the social network at the centre of a handset’s functionality. Messaging, chat, email and even free VoIP calls are now possible without accessing any other applications. With the average mobile user checking the home screen up to 100 times a day, yet the Facebook app just up to 12 times, Home is all about creating a more immersive experience (aka more opportunities to deliver advertising). The so-called “Cover Feed” means great visuals will be key to engagement as visits to brand pages may drop off. One way around that, at least for local search, could be to ensure brands make it into a user’s Timeline through sites such as Yelp, Foursquare or maps. However, with only half a million downloads and very low ratings since its launch two weeks ago, it remains to be seen if the digital giant’s latest move will live up to the hype.

Talk PR had a big reason to smile last week: In a year that saw a record number of entries, we’ve been shortlisted for two EMEA SABRE awards.

The nominations are in the community relations category, for our work with P&G on the P&G Beauty & Grooming Digital Awards 2012, as well as the fashion and beauty category, for the James Bond 007 fragrance launch.

We’re delighted to be recognised for our hard work and we’ve got our fingers crossed that our entries are winning ones on 30^th May! Stay tuned…

The next in our ‘In conversation with’ influencer series of talks will be with Susie Forbes, Principal of the new Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design this Thursday 18th April 2013.

We’ll be discussing how Susie made the transition from magazine editor to college principal – and how she’s approached turning Condé Nast’s authority and influence in fashion into a distinctive fashion education curriculum. Susie will outline what courses will be on offer, who will attend the College and why, who will be lecturing and her vision for the future.

We’d love you to join the conversation at 5pm on Thursday using #TalktoCNCollege and tweet any questions you have for Susie in advance to @talkpr using the hashtag.

If you have any questions about the event please contact katie.brafman@talkpr.com.

Last week the company behind music app Shazam announced it would be launching a fashion app that enables users to identify clothing worn by individuals on-screen. Consider what this means for the way we search information, in creating an app that provides users with real time results, which are specific to their request; the company are removing the need to trawl search engines in search of specific information. Shazam has been doing this very successfully with music, and a move into fashion could turn the way consumers conduct search when shopping online on its head. As such, it perfectly illustrates one of 2013′s major marketing trends, the rise of the omni-channel consumer, and offers insights into how shoppers seemlessly move between platforms.

Turns out it wasn’t video that killed the radio star after all. The latest research from Global Web Index shows that in most countries, time spent online and on mobile devices exceeds a combination of offline media including watching TV, radio and print. In fact, accessing the internet via a mobile device alone accounts for an average of 1.28 hours per day, marginally trumping the average of 1.18 hours per day spent listening to radio. Yet, while this trend is certainly impressive it’s worth remembering that for specific sectors and demographics high-quality influential print media is still an essential route to reaching consumers and influencing opinions. For example, to research beauty products 32% of consumers rely on offline research while only 20% rely on online tools, according to Google‘s own consumer barometer. And despite the rise in online food shopping only 9% of consumers browse for products on the internet before ultimately shopping in-store.

Keen to showcase their speech-to-web API (a tool which allows internet users to use voice commands instead of typing), Google have created The Peanut Gallery - and it’s great. It gives users the chance to create short, shareable silent movies, complete with their own tailored title cards. Selecting from a series of classic silent black & white movie clips, users commentate at various points of the action, and the title cards get automatically added into their film. It leaves plenty of room for users to get very creative. Have a [Play]!

By encouraging a wide user base to come into contact with the tool, Google will be hoping to drive demand among developers, who are the real focus of the campaign.

Last Friday was Red Nose Day and Talk PR got into the spirit of ‘Funny for Money’ by donning our pyjamas to work. There were some great initiatives this year, from David Gandy’s Blue Steel Appeal fashion auction to the Hell and High Water challenge and Jessie J’s hair-o tactics and it’s been fantastic to see so many people getting behind Comic Relief.

Along with the usual bed time attire we were also joined by Sean the Sheep, a dog, a zebra and leopard print onesies were aplenty – which were the subject of some amused stares at lunchtime and on our PUBjama crawl. Altogether Talk PR managed to raise £160 for Comic Relief, so thank you to everyone who took part!

The latest M&C Saatchi Inspire event invited Shazam’s vice president of advertising sales, Miles Lewis to talk about the growing impact of Shazam on TV and Social, the creative opportunities available for brands and his plans for the future of Shazam. Most people recognise Shazam as the mobile app which identifies songs and artists through their ‘tagging’ technology. But nowadays, consistently in the iTunes app store Top 10, Shazam boasts over 300 million users globally, 12 million of which are in the UK, and it offers huge untapped potential for brands…

A 30 second TV advert which includes the Shazam logo, on average, translates into three and a half minutes of interaction on the Shazam app. This means that the potential for prolonging interaction with consumers who Shazam an advert, show, or song, is huge. Add to this that 100% of people who see Shazam-enabled ads remember them, 79% bookmark the ad for later and 55% share them with other people and you’ve got a pretty powerful combination. So it’s rife with creative opportunities for brands and their products.

1 in every 6 people in the world owns a smartphone, a figure which is continuing to grow exponentially. We learnt that Shazam is growing at an astonishing rate: It took ten years to reach its first billion tags, ten months to reach the next billion and just three months for the next five billion – so, there’s an enormous audience for brands to tap into here.

When you consider also that over 80% of us are ‘second screening’ through another device whilst watching TV, it isn’t surprising that many brands have already built Shazam’s ‘For TV’ service into their plans. Viewers were able to interact with the Shazam-integrated Barclaycard Toys advert by tagging it, giving users a chance to win over 700 prizes. This proved hugely successful with 30,000 tags and a 165% interaction rate (to put this in perspective, the average interaction rate is 65–80%).

Further examples of Shazam’s success are the Pepsi MAX and Cadbury ads, which ran during the 2012 finale of Britain’s Got Talent and were tagged over 50,000 times. Tagging the ads enabled viewers to unlock additional content, including the chance to enter contests to win festival tickets, an Olympics Ceremony package and free music downloads of the ads’ soundtracks.

The next challenge for Shazam is live-tagging, which would allow concert-goers to tag Beyoncé, or aspiring fashionistas to tag themselves at catwalk shows in order to gain access to exclusive content. Miles admitted that there are hurdles to overcome, but it’s an incredibly exciting prospect which will take the consumers’ experience to a new level.

With music dominated, TV tapped and live being unlocked, we wonder where Shazam will unleash its power to influence next.

Last Thursday we hosted our seventh Open Day, opening our doors to 12 students and school leavers looking to find out more about the PR industry and ascertain if PR might be the right career for them…or not. We thought that we’d write up a quick summary of the day to give you an insight into what you could get up to if you were to attend one…

In the morning, the 12 specially selected attendees were welcomed by our Fashion, Luxury & Lifestyle Board Director, Jenny Houghton, who gave an introduction to PR – how it fits into the marketing mix, the different elements of PR and what we’re expert in at Talk PR.

After this, the group were given a taste of what we do from representatives of our Fashion, Beauty and Global teams – learning everything from how to create a winning PR strategy to the fine detail and meticulous planning that goes into creating a global media launch event, to simple do’s and don’ts when it comes to handling the media. They were talked through some examples of recent work and given a tour around our showrooms and a step-by-step guide to send outs, from courier to coverage.

Fresh from London Fashion Week, we were lucky enough to have Gemma Ebelis and Will Rowley from the British Fashion Council’s press team come in to tell everyone all about what they do. This gave the guys a fantastic insight into how we work with our clients (The British Fashion Council are one of Talk PR’s longest standing clients – 11+ years!) and also, the difference between inhouse vis-a-vis agency PR and what role the BFC’s press team play in leading the fashion industry through creative influence.

Account Executives across the agency took everyone out for a spot of lunch, where they had the opportunity to ask them anything! What they found particularly interesting was how our team got into PR and how everyday can be so different in the fast-paced world of PR.

Once back at the office, our tech team’s (and resident lifestyle blogger) Nathalie Bishop, talked about the increasing importance of digital and social media in PR and why tech PR isn’t just for geeks! They were then split into two groups of six and were tasked with brainstorming a live PR brief and presenting back some quick ideas to the Talk team – cue some of the girls, presenting back to us:

The day was rounded off with drinks and nibbles in reception with the whole agency. Thank you to all who came and applied! Here are just some of the lovely comments that we received:

“It has been a really useful and exciting day. I have been to open days/ seminars before but this has been the most interesting by far and really excited me further about the industry”

”I had such a great day and relished all of the opportunities that Talk PR presented us with. I found the British Fashion Council’s talk so inspiring and it has made me realise that PR is definitely what I want to do.’’

“I really enjoyed the detailed behind the scenes insight into the thinking that goes into campaigns and events and the factors that need to be considered”.

Whether you’re straight out of college or university, if you’re thinking about getting into a career in PR, enrol now for one of our 2013 Open Days by clicking here.

Bounce, the official home of ping-pong, was last week set upon by Talk’s Social & Digital Taskforce. Fueled by an early round of cocktails, the Talk team took to the ping-pong tables for some heated rounds of singles, doubles and around the world, unleashing our competitive sides (and a chance for our Head of Social & Digital, Toby Schuster to show off his nifty moves).