GREEN team fight it out among themselves

Just back from a wonderful break in Sicily with family and friends staying at a villa near Selinunte - I don't usually recommend businesses but Think Sicily were fantastic.

Usually the first day back a work is a bit of a chore (2,000 emails to go through - of which 80 per cent was spam). However, two of our colleagues at GREEN have been shortlisted in the PRiDE Awards, which is great.

GREEN's Lindsey Ramsay and Simon Collister are among the four short-listed candidates for the award which aims to celebrate the leading lights among PR professionals under the age of 30 in the Young Achiever Awards.

GREEN are also short-listed for their work in the Corporate and Financial Category. So expect hangovers all round on Thursday morning.

If you don't look at anything else - look at this

The complete evolutionary works of Charles Darwin, one of my heroes, has gone online, including the stolen notebook he carried in his pocket around the Galapagos Islands.

Tens of thousands of pages of text and pictures and audio files are available, including some previously unpublished manuscripts and diaries of the great man – who more than anyone transformed the world of science.

The notebook used during the Beagle voyage which would later forge his scientific arguments is fascinating because of the domestic incidents rather than the scientific import. According to Reuters it was stolen in the 1980s, but Darwin's great-great-grandson hopes the publication online, thanks to a transcription from a microfilm copy made two decades earlier, will persuade whoever has it to return it.

Other items in the free collection of 50,000 pages and 40,000 images are the first editions of the Journal of Researchers, written in 1839, The Descent of Man, The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle, which includes his observations during his five-year trip to the Amazon, Patagonia and the Pacific, and the first five editions of the Origin of Species.

Absolutely brilliant. I wonder what he would have made of all this internet malarkey.

Anyway that’s it from me for the next week – I’m off to Sicily sans Blackberry and the internet.

New social media network at SlideShare

I’ve just been invited to use the beta version of SlideShare, a new social network hosting and sharing service for PowerPoint, Open Office and Keynote presentations. I think it rocks.



You can upload slideshows of up to 20 Mb, share them with a link or even embed them in your own blog. Shows that are already on SlideShare can be tagged and commented on and there is a lot of sensible stuff about social media and Web 2.0.

The people at SlideShare have created a really easy to use website that’s not a million miles away from YouTube – although it has a rather more grown-up feel to it. I can see a lot of corporates making use for this and already have a few ideas on how we might use it at GREEN.

We're all blogging now. Aren't we?

According to The Guardian, one in four UK internet users are now blogging.

Really? I’m not sure. I have a wide circle of friends – professional and social – and, other than my colleague Simon, I don’t know anyone else who powers a blog. A lot of people visit mine but have no inclination to create their own – it does seem rather solipsistic after all.

Indeed, most of the people I talk to are rather incredulous that I actually blog. More than that, they are amazed that we are running various corporate blogs for several clients – why bother they ask. My answer is because you can build a business and make money! Although I use rather more industrial language than that – see Gaping Void for a more candid response.

I don’t have a poll here – but what’s your experience? You’re a blogger – how many of you friends blog? Pass it on.

From the always brilliant Gaping Void. I think this sums up the whole Edelman/Wal-Mart blogging debate

McNairn and the future for Web 2.0

I know. I know. I promised this last week. But time is tight so I am reduced to writing this after eating my wife's moussaka (on my own, in the kitchen - again!) but I did promise to say something about the conference I attended at the CIPR.

This is the second blog I've done on this - apologies - but I saved it as a draft so it's dated ealier than I intended. Tip to the guys at Blogger.com.

To be honest I didn't learn that much, although I will send GREEN padawan for insight in the future, but the most informative of the speakers was Ian McNairn from IBM. What got me about Ian is that he believed what he was talking about and argued very cogentley with a French lady who just did not get it. And what shocked me most given the number of PR prefessionals in the audience was how ignorant they were about Web 2.0 - wikipedia, blogs, podcasts, videocasts etc. You name it, they didn't have a clue.

Ian McNairn is Web Innovation & Technology Program Director for IBM. He acts as a catalyst between the innovators and implementers IBM, facilitating the flow of ideas, best practices, standards and leadership. His current 'hot' focus areas are the 'Web 2.0' tools such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, tagging, rss, atom, podcasts and mashups to name a few. However, he did hint the next big thing was mash-ups.

Ian’s earlier IBM career was in a marketing role, and before that in a technical sales role in IBM South Africa. Prior to IBM, he was the Global IT Strategy Director for Sedgwick Insurance Brokers and previously in various roles in academia.

Nothing Ian said was new to me - although he did elicit gasps from some of the audience - and it is always nice to know that your own paricular prejudices and beliefs are confirmed by someone who knows what he is talking about.

He left us with this:



I'm not sure I agree with the thesis. Indeed, I doubt it very much. I saw this about two years ago and laughed at the time, but you never know...

You can watch it at: The New York Times has just gone off line or this at EPIC 2014

Comments please...

Ladybank: Co-creation & open-source business

As promised an update on Ladybank.

GREEN has been appointed to help raise the profile of The Ladybank Company of Distillers - the world's first Single Malt Scotch Whisky distillery to be owned by a unique membership club.

This is a wonderful story. A 'co-creation company', Ladybank has evolved from an on-line community of single malt enthusiasts from across the world with members in the UK, US, Russia and Europe. It is the brainchild of entrepreneur James Thomson, who has worked in the Scottish whisky industry for many years - he is responsible for the online whisky resource scotchwhisky.com and the Islay Whisky Society.

James says: "What has been so exciting about Ladybank is how passionate the membership has been about the whole exercise. Ladybank evolved from an online proposition when we created a virtual community of whisky lovers who could come together via the internet to talk about their passion for good single malt whiskies.

"That community has now turned into a movement in the real world to create a real company in Ladybank. Work has already begun on the construction of the distillery and we now expect to start production in 2007."

As a co-creation company Ladybank enables a group of like-minded people to create a product, service or even a community that is free from the normal rules of commerce, because it is driven by their shared passion and shaped by their lifestyle choices.

Membership, which now stands at more than 340, will be capped at 1250 and thereby guarantee that membership value will increase in time. As owners, members of Ladybank, are entitled to annual allocation of malt whiskies from each vintage and will have also access to the distillery and its reception facilities in an idyllic setting between Gleneagles and St Andrews in Fife.

True enthusiasts will also be able to witness, and even assist, in the entire whisky-making process with the master distillery manager and sample their whiskies from different casks as they mature over the years.

When complete the distillery will provide a range of private function rooms for fine dining and private celebrations to which members will be ably to bring their family and friends - as well as enjoying the myriad other activities that can be enjoyed in the surrounding area.

What excites us - beyond our own membership of Ladybank - is the mash up or new and traditional media in the promotion of our client to a wide range of audiences. We are currently drawing up a strategy to create some traditional media coverage (good old press releases and selling in the story to clearly targeted journalists) and move web-savvy social marketing.

The latter will draw on the blogging community, wikis, forums, e-bullets, podcasts, PRX, YouTube and, potentially, a presence in Second Life. For those of you interested in Ladybank post your comments below - James would love to hear from you.

Join the Social Media Club

Have started a conversation - or rather joined in a conversation - with the guys at the Social Media Club in the US via Chris Heuer.

This is a great idea and, as usual our ex-colonial friends, are leading the debate. Social Media Club is organised for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media. They say this is the beginning of a global conversation about building an organization and a community where the many diverse groups of people who care about social media can come together to discover, connect, share, and learn. And you can't argue with that.

The idea for Social Media Club originated in the autumn of 2005 with the Web 2point1 BrainJam. This led them to create the non-profit BrainJams organization to promote the idea of unconferences and ad-hoc collaboration to a broader audience of non-geeks. Over the course of the last year, BrainJams has brought Social Media Club together with people from all over the world.

Social Media Club aims to bring together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaboraters. Essentially the people who create and consume media who have an interest in seeing the ‘media industry’ evolve for everyone’s benefit.

As they say we are more than just USERS, we are the reason the tools exist - we are the people who communicate our thoughts and ideas near and far.

Join in the conversation.

Hacks, flacks and new media

A call from my old pal Tom Johnston, who says he regularly reads my blog but never leaves a comment (note to Tom enter the blogosphere and leave a thought, critism or graffitti), to tell me that he's read a piece in Simon Hoggart's column in The Guardian about Debbie Weil who has written a book about corporate blogging.

You can check it out at Weil and it seems like good solid advice, laying down the rules on what it appropriate in blogging and rather re-assuring for me, given that I have just written something similar for Revolution magazine. But hey ho - I reckon that in the next six months the book might be out of date... and good luck to her as I suspect she can make a lot of money on the second edition.

However, given that Hoggart was blinging up his friend I was a bit surprised by his sign off about blogs being for one reader - ie the blogger.

I was going to write about this later but my experience at a recent event at the CIPR backed up Hoggart's prejudice - and I do believe that journalists are running scared of the whole blogging proposition (I've got loads to say on this so wait for later posts... as I simply do not have the time to put it down in html at the present time.) Also I'm trying to listen to Django Reinhardt covers on YouTube and keep flipping over to see the chord structures (sad I know) which makes this post very confusing - for me at least - are you still with me?

Anyway, the same point about bloggers was made by another print journalist turned Web 2.0 evangilist - Guy Ruddle from The Daily Telegraph (a newspaper, which seems to me to be clutching at straws at the moment by embracing new media given their circulation). He was part of a panel at a recent CIPR event I attended in London and was most fulsome in his views.

I didn't take shorthand notes (I can still do about 30 words a minute at a push) but he argued that "citizen journalism" - his phrase - was a bad thing because they were not trained journalists or objective (like Simon Heffer I suppose!) - but surely this is how journalism began? It was about people with a cause who issued pamphlets in the 16th, 17th and 18th century - who probably didn't call themselves journalists at all. He cited the bombing in London on 07/07 as an example of the bad blogging that went on. Well basically he slagged us bloggers all off.

However, what was heartening was to hear Paul Brannan from the BBC News Website offer a re-joinder to this rather old media view. He said that the posts, texts, pictures and emails sent to the BBC on 07/07 immeasurable enriched the content of the newsgathering operation on that day - remember the webcams coming up from the Underground? Paul is obvisouly excited about the potential of Web 2.0 and as a license payer I tip my hat to him.

Interested in single malt whisky? Visit Ladybank now

McNairn and the future for Web 2.0

I know. I know. I promised this last week. But time is tight so I am reduced to writing this after eating my wife's moussaka (on my own, in the kitchen - again!) but I did promise to say something about the conference I attended at the CIPR.

To be honest I didn't learn that much, although I will send GREEN padawan for insight in the future, but the most informative of the speakers was Ian McNairn from IBM. What got me about Ian is that he believed what he was talking about and argued very cogentley with a French lady who just did not get it. And what shocked me most given the number of PR prefessionals in the audience was how ignorant they were about Web 2.0 - wikipedia, blogs, podcasts, videocasts etc. You name it, they didn't have a clue.

Ian McNairn is Web Innovation & Technology Program Director for IBM. He acts as a catalyst between the innovators and implementers IBM, facilitating the flow of ideas, best practices, standards and leadership. His current 'hot' focus areas are the 'Web 2.0' tools such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, tagging, rss, atom, podcasts and mashups to name a few. However, he did hint the next big thing was mash-ups.

Ian’s earlier IBM career was in a marketing role, and before that in a technical sales role in IBM South Africa. Prior to IBM, he was the Global IT Strategy Director for Sedgwick Insurance Brokers and previously in various roles in academia.

Nothing Ian said was new to me - although he did elicit gasps from some of the audience - and it is always nice to know that your own paricular prejudices and beliefs are confirmed by someone who knows what he is talking about.

He left us with this:



I'm not sure I agree with the thesis. Indeed, I doubt it very much. I saw this about two years ago and laughed at the time, but you never know...

You can watch it at: The New York Times has just gone off line

Comments please...

Building a social media news release

A new 'widget' has been launched - PRX Builder - which, it is claimed, provides a one stop shop for pulling together a Social Media News Release.

The PRX Builder service enables PR & marketing professionals to easily create Social Media news releases through a series of guided steps.

All releases are developed in Portable Release XML (PRX), a simple, distributable XML document format. Once a news release is created using PRX Builder's toolset, the content creator can preview the news release in "Social Media" format. PRX promotes a "write once" model for release distribution: users can create the release, post the PRX file to the corporate website, and then send the PRX link to distribution services for processing.

The PRX Builder system can automatically include Technorati tags, a Digg button, and can also auto-download users' selected del.icio.us account links and Flickr photos, to provide instant context for anyone viewing the online version of the news release.

All releases created using the PRX Builder system are also optimized for RSS. As ongoing industry initiatives such as the Social Media Club have been struggling with this for a while so it will be interesting to see what PRX Builder can deliver.

It’s not clear from the stories I’ve seen who is behind this but I have seen that PR Newswire is involved.

Dave Armon, CEO at PR Newswire says: "The Social Media News Release is a very practical adjunct to the standard release format and has the potential to be an exciting step in the continuing evolution of public relations and business communications.

"We look forward to supporting its growth, as well as interest in Web 2.0 technologies and the expanded communications options that they offer."

We shall see...

Top Ten Tips for a Web 2.0 Makeover

I've been asked to write an idiot's guide to corporate blogs for Revolution magazine. It can't be too technical the brief is for only 280 words.

This is what I have come up but would welcome any other suggestions. (Is this citizen journalism or open-source journalism?) Anyway let me know what you think:

Top Ten Tips for a Web 2.0 Makeover

1. Web 2.0 is all about having a conversation with your customers so be prepared to engage. And remember, the best way to control the conversation is by improving the conversation.

2. Before you develop a blog set out your long term business goals or marketing strategy and stick to it. This should inform everything you do as a social marketer.

3. Find the most influential bloggers following your company. Read them every day. This will inform you future blogging activity.

4. Once your blog is out there you're an open target to everyone who loves your service/product – and those that hate it. Live with it and deal with it.

5. How different is Web 2.0 from Web 1.0? Not much other than the fact that it's about creating a community around your brand. Expect Web 3.0 soon.

6. Avoid the corporate look – you have a website for that. Web 2.0 has more of a Dress Down Friday feel about it.

7. Invest some time in ensuring your install Really Simple Syndication feeds, links, tags, and trackbacks to other blogs (these are all free).

8. Register with aggregators like Technorati, Del.icio.us and Digg to ensure your blog gains visibility.

8. Add links to other websites and blogs that support you core business proposition.

9. Try to publish a comment every day. This is easy if there are more than one person in an organisation who are blogging – but ensure you set guidelines.

10. Don't fake it. Fake blogs are created to promote a service using a fake character or name. McDonalds did it and got roasted by the blogging community.

Read All About It: Yes please

Just back from London.
I went to the "Read All About It" Media Conference organised by the CIPR with something of a sinking heart as the early morning session was dedicated to such chestnuts as - Selling-in Your Stories (been there, done that); Writing for the Press (did that for 17 years - literally) etc.
In fact the presenters - Justin Hayward and Annie Noble - were very good and I would recommend them to all people starting out in PR for "learning how to suck eggs".
However, the afternoon sessions was rather more interesting given my penchant for Web 2.0, social media, open source communities, pull-push marketing, blah, blah, blah.
We had Ian McNairn, with the rather grand title of Programme Director, Web, Technology & Design, IBM (and this deserves a separate post - TBC); Jude Habib, former BBC Third Sector Champion (another post to follow on this passionate advocate of pod/video casting); and a panel session with Guy Ruddle, Podcast Editor, Daily Telegraph (blogger agnostic), Katy Howell, the well-worn advocate of blogging and social media and Paul Brannan, Deputy Editor, BBC News Interactive (some fantastic insight).
At the moment I am a bit shell-shocked from the GNER train journey back up T'North but will be posting some stuff about what they had to say and what I agreed with, and violently disagreed with, including the debate about citizen journalists.
Needless to say it was not a wasted journey... more to follow.

Wiki, wini, wendi - apologies to my Latin Master

Further to an earlier post by Simon and myself (see Is Wikipedia the first stop for social media strategies?) I've come across this:

MyWikiBiz is taking further Simon's original thoughts and actively attacking the possibilities of social media and, in due course, throwing up all sorts of ehtical questions what you can do on Wikipedia without contravening the precepts it was set up with.

Here's their sale pitch:
Wikipedia is perhaps the most influential Internet phenomenon to emerge in the 21st century. The global, cooperative free-content encyclopedia is now the web’s number one Reference site, and businesses shouldn’t be left behind on this information opportunity.

If your company or organization already has a well-designed, accurately-written article on Wikipedia, then congratulations – our services are not for you.

However, if your business is lacking a well-written article on Wikipedia, read on – we’re here to help you!

An article on Wikipedia about your business will generate more traffic to your web site. It’s hard to believe, but the Wikipedia domain garners more Internet visitors than the web sites of the New York Times, the Weather Channel, MapQuest, and InfoSpace

All of this is true of course. As Simon has pointed out if you do a Google search on a brand then Wikipedia and the brand's definition will always appear in the top ten search results.

Now this is fantastic for PRs and marketers but I do wonder if the Guerrillas (I don't use this as a perjorative term) who organise Wiki will take too kindly to any media massaging, and any brand that engages in this kind of activity will quickly come unstuck. Who can you trust. Well, from a PR and marketing point of view those who are the most transparent, honest and willing to engage in a dialogue and NOT abuse the good service Wikipedia does.

Discuss.

Men in kilts

This was from last night. Andy Grant was down from Edinburgh for a friend's 50 birthday party. Looking at the picture again it looks like Scotland's first civil partnership.

First ever UK blog and social media conference

Just came across this - Les Blogs - a conference in Paris about social media set for December 11 and 12. I think I must attend - although I will have to clear it with the wife first.

At Loic Le Meur, one of the guys behind Typepad, the following has been posted:

It's going to be huge. We had 450 people from 25 countries at the last les blogs. This year it is going to be much broader, more Web 2.0 and I have a room for... 900 people in the heart of Paris. Cool conference over two days with food this time and a party. Stay tuned.

I think something like this should be launched in the UK. All the conferences and seminars I have seen advertised in the UK so far seem to be a bit too corporate and some of the CIPR/CIM/RASC events seem a bit amatuerish or controlled by people who don't really seem to know what they are talking about - it's all a bit Web 2.0 lite! I'm not suggesting some sort of new media love in or a Sixties happening but it would be great if us Brits could pull something together.

Pass this on - I am willing to set something up similar in London, Manchester or Leeds. Why not a tour? However, I will need your help. Can you let me know of possible speakers, outside the usual suspects, you might want to put forward and any potential sponsors.

I can already count on several people to pontificate on certain subjects. I would love James Thomson of Ladybank, Hugh MacLeod, my colleague Andy Green at Creativity@Work to say something at such an event - but who else?

As I say pass it on to other bloggers and social media acolytes. We can do this! So add comments and let me know how you can help. I know we can do this because we can draw on the resources of my company at Greenblog to help us pull it together (sorry Lisa, Abi and Liz!)- or we can fall flat on our face. But hey! If you don't try...

Paradigm lost

Further to my earlier comments about print and online media colliding I read an interesting article in the RSA Journal by Tim Jones of Innovaro.

In his piece he looks at paradigm changes in the economy and points to the BBC as it seeks to compete with the likes of Google TV, Wikipedia and flickr during the second digital wave. Having been at the forefront of the first digital wave, the BBC is pursuing an alternative option for the emerging space.

As well as focusing internal resources on key new technologies, the BBC Innovation Team has embraced the principles of open innovation and made much of its content available to outside user communities. Through linking to Google’s freely available programming interfaces, initiatives such as backstage.bbc.co.uk - I never even knew this existed - have enabled core BBC content to be used by online developers so they can build new applications and integrate them into other websites.

Jones says that the BBC, fully aware of probable disruptions likely to affect the media sector, it is acting as a catalyst for disruptive innovation, whether generated internally or externally.

As disruption occurs at an ever faster rate, more companies seeking to play a role in delivering or exploiting the potential from major disruptions are recognising that they require better insight in order to do so. The approaches used by the BBC and Rupert Murdoch mesh nicely with the open source media.

Journos, bloggers and citizen journalists

Just been reading the following post on Getting Ink - Can citizen journos be trusted? – basically arguing the point that bloggers and citizen journalists will not replace “real journalists”.

To a degree I do think that is true – journalists are trained to question everything (or they used to be) and, as result, they carry an authority that Doris from Dorset probably doesn’t. They check facts, and re-check facts and ensure that what they write is as accurate as possible.

They cut through the hype and translate the jargon that the politician and big business might use into a language that the layman can understand. Indeed, they are professional laymen and women with well-tuned bullshit detectors.

However, I do wonder whether they are a dying breed and that they will eventually be replaced by an online community of citizen journalists – albeit NCTJ trained journalists. Visited The Sun’s website recently? Obviously Mr Murdoch knows where print media is headed as he appears to have invested millions in the new site. Same is happening at the Telegraph.

And I will tell you for why. Circulation decline and the growth of online advertising. It's economics and business. The Sun sold 3,154,881 copies in early 2006, (compared to USA Today, the best-selling US newspaper at 2,281,831). The daily readership is just under 8,500,000. But… it is declining.

I’ve done a quick search on the British Newspaper Society website of the regional press – the most web-averse titles in the media – and it’s not looking good. At my old newspaper - the Yorkshire Post sells just 54,730 a day. I left in 1997 and circulation was just touching 100,000 – 120,00 at the weekend (and know the two things are not related).

And look at the Northern Echo, another old stamping ground of mine, circulation is 53,481. In Birmingham, England’s second largest city the Post sells 13,000. I repeat 13,000!! The Manchester Evening News sells 128,445. The Liverpool Daily Post, my alma mater, sells just 18,741 in the city and 39,595 for its Wales edition. In Scotland the Aberdeen Press & Journal sells 84,612 and the Scotsman (a national newspaper?) just 66,462. And, finally, in London the Evening Standard’s circulation is 313,181 – for a population in excess of seven million.

So, where does this leave the journos and all those media-wannabes at university studying Media and Journalism? Well I don’t think they are going to be writing for the printed press – the economics just don’t add up. Which leaves the web – but can the journalists take control of it now. I don’t think so because as YouTube, Wikipedia, MySpace and others have proved the lunatics (citizen journalists?) have already taken over the asylum.

Discuss. I'm off to put my kilt on (Irish of course) for tonight's annual dinner at Bradford Amatuer Rowing Club - where I don't think anyone takes the Bradord Telegraph & Argus.

Wikipedia and social marketing

Over at Greenblog Simon Collister has added an interesting post on social media. Here's what he says:

Picked up quite a mind-blowing stat highlighting the power of social media.

According to research carried out by search engine marketing firm, Spannerworks social media site Wikipedia appears in Google's first 20 results for 88% of the top 100 global brands."

This figure is based around Business Week/Interbrand's 2006 brand survey. Heavy stuff! It reinforces two things for me.

Firstly, organisations that think Wikipedia is just a handy reference tool are overlooking its vast SEO potential. Just think of the link-love and the frequency with which it is updated. Secondly, there have been many discussions on PR blogs about the first steps in developing a social media strategy.

Blogging godfather, Microsoft Ireland's Tom Murphy, suggested that if nothing else, SEO would be a good place to start. Obviously Spannerworks have a vested interest in pushing SEO but even beyond pay per click and organic optimisation look at the power of Wikipedia in doing the job for nothing.

Obviously given its omniscience Wikipedia needs to be managed effectively, but then that's where PR people come in!

Do we need new words?

Over at GREEN we have a regular competition among colleagues and clients. They have been challenged to come up with some new words. My business partner Andy believes new words are desperately needed to ensure modern-day communications can keep abreast of shifts and changes in our world. I'm not sure about this but would like to know what "Braaaapp" means - a Yoof word, apparently!

However, unless we expand our vocabulary our collective abilities to make ourselves understood and avoid abuses of power through communications could be severely hampered.

Here are some new words, we have discovered, and their meaning for your consideration:

Impropaganda - An untruth where both parties are happy to go along with, or a publicity act or media story which uses a flexibility with the facts, the half-facts and the objective focus of a situation, which is sustained by a shared value between the communicator and the audience

Punk PR - A publicity act or communication not in accordance with good sense or taste

Pseudo Relations – A communication lacking any substance (rather than the expression, ‘This is just a public relations exercise’).

Horseshit - Similar to bullshit but is defined as unjustified, flawed, or extravagant extrapolation in using a statistic to substantiate a case. Inspired by the Victorian mathematician who predicted that if the then volume of horse traffic continues London would be under nine feet of horse manure by 1970.

Flashturbation - Excessive use of flash animation techniques in design, particularly on web sites. Can also refer in general to excessive use of techniques in design which do not assist the communication process.

Hibris - The effective harnessing of positive arrogance to generate self belief in support of achieving your goals. Hibris is the opposite of hubris - excessive pride leading to nemesis. It should be noted that both words sound similar and are closely related.

A jomoore - Managing information such as with the timing of an announcement so that its significance is masked by other major, possibly negative, events. For example, ‘let’s jomoore the timing of this story’. Derived from the media exposure of the UK Government adviser whose memo was leaked advising colleagues to immediately issue bad news in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attack.

Wimbourne - To inadvertently create something new by juxtaposing two different elements. Derived from UK Press Gazette where newspaper sub editors inadvertently create humorous connections through two unrelated stories developing a common synergy by being next to each other.

Crook suckers - Created by writer Julie Burchill to describe people in authority with liberal tendencies who place greater emphasis on showing tolerance to and supporting the needs of criminal elements rather than their victims.

September 10th - Used in the context of, “that’s so September 10th”. Used to dismiss anyone with a perceived petty issue, or behind the times. Obviously derived following the terrorist attack on the subsequent day which has been described as a defining moment in the 21st century.

Face off and ‘prosopagnosia'

Face blindness! Good piece about this in Management Today.
I’ve suffered from this since I left the womb – admittedly I’m also dyslexic too (had to do the spell check on that one!) and always see the glass as half full rather than half empty, which a suprising number of people also see as a handicap.
Also known as ‘prosopagnosia', face blindness means the inability to recognise faces even though your eyesight is perfectly good, However, when I’m introduced to Jim at a party – I continue to address him variously as Tim, Tom, John and Abdul.
We know it all too well from the PR party circuit, and everyone suffers from it, especially when the really important person is heading your way. At this point I break into a sweat and can't see their face at all.
The Yanks describe it as 'cutting people dead' but I am English and I prefer to think we are just being polite and, by avoiding any embarrassment, we pretend we're suddenly developed a deep fascination in the flower arrangements.
Prosopagnosia is best treated with American sang froid (do they have that?) by asking “how are you?' then moving on before they can respond.
Anyway… who are you?

From Gaping Void

Ladybank Company of Distillers Club

I was in Scotland over the weekend to meet some of the members of the Ladybank Company of Distillers Club at their wonderfully eccentric headquarters in Fife, between St Andrews and Edinburgh.

It was a lively meeting – I was there as a neutral observer – but it was wonderful to see how this disperate group of people sparked off each other. It was a cross between a union meeting and the local bowling club all resolving around a shared passion and vision.

The brain child of whisky entrepreneur James Thomson, who has been a communications consultant to some of the largest brands of Scotch, Ladybank turns business convention on its head.

It is very much a real world manifestation of the online social media that my colleagues and I get so excited about. Imagine a manufacturer owned by its consumers – everything produced by the distillery, when complete, will be produced only for the members, by the members and to their exacting standards.

This is reminiscent of the original building society or co-operative movements, whereby only those with a passion for James’ vision will benefit from the success of the business (indeed, business may be a misnomer –it’s more of a movement, albeit apolitical).

James believes that the only way for people to fully indulge their passion for whisky would be to build a distillery for a limited membership who would have the opportunity to be involved with the development of the distillery, single malt whisky production and, of course, enjoying an exclusive dram or two!

Ladybank is like MySpace for the whisky lover – they even have a blog and an online boardroom where members can swap ideas. But they are also sharing something in the real world – excellent single-malt whiskies.

The Ladybank Distillery Club is a club unlike any other in the world. At its heart is the formation of a traditional craft-scale distillery near St Andrews in Scotland, an establishment that is set on producing some of the finest—if not the finest—single-malt whisky made in all of Scotland, from the best ingredients that can possibly be obtained.

Production will be intentionally small—a fraction of that produced by Scotland’s existing and world renowned single-malt distilleries—so that meticulous care can be taken throughout the entire process. The whiskies are destined not for general sale but to become prized possessions and collectors items, available to those that take up ownership through the membership programme.

Its members are also its owners, and are therefore entitled not only to receive their allocation of whisky from each vintage, but only they can visit the distillery—which will be private and exclusive in its romantic setting amongst some of Scotland’s most beautiful and tranquil countryside—so they may, as owners, discover the magic and mystique behind the creation of Scotch Whisky and be kept closely in touch with the secrets of distilling that are rarely shared with other whisky enthusiasts.

With all the privileges of an owner, they can come to witness, and even assist, in the entire whisky-making process, have their visit personally organized by the distillery manager, and sample their whiskies from different casks as they mature over the years. They can bring their family and friends, and use the distilleries private rooms for lunches and private celebrations – as well as enjoying the myriad other activities that can be enjoyed in the surrounding area.

Ladybank was founded in early 2003. Membership, which now stands at more than 300, will be capped at 1250 and thereby guarantee that membership value will increase in time. It is likely that memberships will be passed along from generation to generation within families.

The trick now is to encourage further membership. Curiously, the bulk of the current membership is outside Scotland. James has asked me to look at this and I will be seeking to mash-up the old and the new by mixing old-fashioned media relations with online social media.

What do you think? How would you approach this task?