Hugh MacLeod over at Gaping Void has been asking for mini-manifestos – or Change The World in 500 Words - and has received quite a few on a wide range of subjects.
Mine is based on the Ten Commandments and you can read it below.
I was very gratified to see than my missive inspired Hugh to do a cartoon on the back of a business card on the content.

Ten Commandments Manifesto

I like the Bible – it’s a great piece of literature – but needs some contemporary context for Hugh's manifesto concept. So here’s my manifesto based on Exodus 20:1-17

1. God may, or may not exist – you decide. Does it matter if you believe in God? No, but if you do believe, believe in a good one.

2. Don’t mess about with symbols – Swastikas, Crucifix, Crescents, it all ends bad. Avoid them

3. If you mess with any of the above – you’re fucked.

4. Best to forget a Supreme Being, chill out, have a beer, scotch or claret, and treat everyone the way you would like to be treated.

5. Get a life and concentrate on being nice to others even if other people are assholes.

6. Stop being stupid – you’re not as smart as you think you are. But remember neither is your boss nor are all the other people who tell you they are smarter than you.

7. Put one day aside a week for your self – your deserve it.

8. Don’t be a slave and don’t make slaves of others.

9. If your Mum and Dad love you – give it back in spades.

10. Don’t do any bad stuff like murder, adultery, theft, lying, or fucking a donkey.

By and large life is good, people are good. Keep a song in your heart and the truth on your tongue.

How peculiar at Old Peculier

Up in T’Yorkshire where I live people are very old fashioned and are still suspicious of the T’ternet so I was amazed to discover, via Techcrunch, that Theakstons has opened a virtual pub in Second Life.
Most people in the UK will know that Theakstons is based in Masham and makes a wonderful range of cask ales from Old Peculier (sic) to my personal favourite, Black Bull Bitter.
This company was founded more than 150 years ago and still employ their own Cooper, hand crafting casks in which the ales mature.
Personally, I was always a bit suspicious of Second Life although I could see the buzzy appeal of it for companies like of IBM, Reuters and American Apparel, which were very early adopters.
But the fact that Theakston has opened shop there moves Second Life to a new level, when traditional old world, commodity producers are now convinced of the merits of SL.

Wine by word-of-mouth

The always excellent Hugh MacLeod – who also does the social marketing for Stormhoek wine - has highlighted an interesting innovation over at Threshers.
In the run up to Christmas they are offering a stonking 40 per cent discount on their wine and champagne. So what? A great deal of course but having worked for discounters in the past this is nothing special.
Until you realise, as Hugh points, that Threshers are doing absolutely no promotion on this special offer. None whatsoever – other than the post I discovered at the Stormhoek website at the weekend where you can download the coupon.
To me this seems like a pretty clever marketing campaign with no costs involved other than generating word-of-mouth from bloggers and others on the internet. It will be pretty interesting to discover how well this works as it is one of the few word-of-mouth marketing initiatives I can think off where the retailer will be able to a true understanding of the ROI almost instantly.
I notice Neville Hobson has already commented on this too and is calling on people to spread the cause. “Tell your friends,” he says. “If you write a blog, blog it as well.”
Meanwhile, I can thoroughly recommend Stormhoek wine as I had a couple of bottles at the weekend.

From Banksy

At last - a glass of Stormhoek

I've been a big fan of Hugh MacLeod for ages now and have been really impressed with what he has done at Stormhoek but have never tasted the damn stuff - tip to the men at Stormhoek please post on your site where you can buy it!
However, today when I wandered into the Waitrose in Otley, West Yorkshire with my old mum, there it was. So now, my wallet is some £130 lighter, we are now quaffing the Pinot Grigio and the concesus from my parents and wife is very positive. I'm actually cooking haggis, tatties and neeps for dinner so I am not sure this is the best accompaniement but we shall see.
Must go now as I am also making a treacle tart - which will take longer than the rest of the meal but I have a bottle of Stormhoek to consol me.

Condom company blog

Oh Dear! A recent request from a journo using Response Resource.

QUERY: I've been commissioned to write a newsblog for a site produced by a condom company, with an aim to writing articles/llinks(sic)/news that would appeal to young people of both sexes across the age-group. Admittedly, this is a little vague, but I'm thinking along the lines of gadgets, health, sex, relationships, music, TV, fashion, soaps, films, reviews and all those funky, whizzy things that those young whippersnappers are into ;)

I can’t wait!

Universal goes after MySpace

New just in… Universal Music Group, the world's largest recorded-music company, has sued News Corp's MySpace for copyright infringement, alleging that the social-networking giant traffics in "user-stolen" content, including music, videos and other material.

At issue is the widespread presence of copyright music and video content on MySpace. In the suit, filed in US District Court for California's Central District, Vivendi SA's Universal dismisses the frequently used label "user-generated content" - alleging that much of the material on MySpace is stolen from copyright holders.

According to reports by MarketWatch and Hollywood Reporter. The suit accuses MySpace of operating a "vast virtual warehouse" of "user-stolen" content and asks for damages of up to $150,000 for each song and video.

In a statement, MySpace dismissed the suit as "unnecessary and meritless" and said it has "no doubt we will prevail in court." It claims that it is protected under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which shields Internet service providers from certain copyright violations committed by their users.

Universal, however, appears set to argue that the DMCA protections do not apply in this case for two reasons: MySpace reformats files uploaded by its members, and it runs ads tailored to the user-uploaded songs and videos. Therefore, it argues, MySpace is not a passive network operator but rather is complicit in the copyright infringement and profits from it. Should the case go to trial, it could produce a landmark ruling with far-reaching implications for internet media sites that rely on so-called user-generated content.

What next? YouTube?

I can see the arguments from both sides – but it reminds me of my yoof and magnetic tape. Can you remember taping the the top twenty countdown on Sunday evening – trying to edit out the dulcet tones of Tony Blackburn with the record/on-off switches.

Back then were called Music Pirates – which I always thought rather grand for a bunch of pre-pubescent teenages. It always conjured mages of cutlasses and doubloons, and I had neither. Anyway, I’ll enjoy listening to the arguments if they ever get to court.

Ignore blogs at your peril

A MORI survey for Hotwire warns against a blind corporate blogging frenzy in response to growing power of blogs. Blogs are becoming a most influential source of information across Europe, according to the MORI research, with more than 25 million adults in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain having changed their minds about a company or its products after reading comments or reviews on a blog.

The direct link between user-generated content and people's intentions to purchase a product or service is highlighted by the new research(1) which found that a third (34%) of Europeans say they have not purchased a product after reading comments on the internet from customers or other private individuals.

Other key findings from the research include:

Blogs are now a near second to newspapers as the most trusted information source: A quarter (24%) of Europeans consider blogs a trusted source of information, still behind newspaper articles (30%), but ahead of television advertising (17%) and email marketing (14%).

High spenders are most trusting of blogs: Of those who spend more than 145€ (£100) online every month, the proportion of people who trust blogs rises to 30%.

France leads European blogging; Britain lags: Across Europe, six out of ten (61%) internet users have heard of blogging, and one in six (17%), have read a blog. France is the most blog-savvy country in Europe, with 90% of respondents familiar with blogs. The British are the least blog-aware, with only 50% having heard the term. In Germany, 55% have heard of blogs, 58% in Italy and 51% in Spain.

Blogs are now driving purchase decisions: More than half (52%) of Europeans polled said that they were more likely to purchase a product if they had read positive comments from private individuals on the internet.

They also block purchases: Nearly 40 million Europeans have not bought something after reading comments posted online.

Gareth Deere, head of technology research, MORI said, "We all trust people's opinions in the real world. Now we've proven the same link online, and it's having a major impact on people's buying behaviour. Word of mouth is no longer restricted to close friends and family, it can have the same level of influence upon millions of people across the world."

Is this the beginning of Whisky 2.0?

Online interest in one of GREEN's clients, Ladybank Company of Distillers (see previous post), is gaining as more than 700 posts have been made about the business.

Most recently Nick Carr, former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review and acclaimed business blogger has added this to his post at Rough Type:

Ladybank has announced it is pioneering the communal, Internet-enabled production of Scotch whisky. "As a 'co-creation' company," explains a press release, "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."

The company is setting up an "online boardroom" to facilitate the harnessing of collective booze-making intelligence. Speaking proudly of a growing "virtual community of whisky lovers," James Thomson, the founder of this wikipedia of tipple, says, "At Ladybank we believe the community spirit we have created among the members will really inform what we do as a business and our online presence will also encourage members to engage with the Ladybank community and exchange their thoughts on how the project should progress.

On its blog, the company says that its "real foundations" are not its physical plants but "the people we have and how they are behind the project and interacting with it. We are the Web. And now we are the Distillery, too.

No word yet on whether they'll open source their recipes.

We like Nick because he can obviously see the potential of Web 2.0 and now the benefits of Whisky 2.0.

The evolution of Ladybank in fact pretty much mirrors that of Web 2.0. 1. Social structure or social formation (the organisation) 2. Social construction (the facilities) 3. Social production (the making) step 4. Social media (the ongoing conversation).

PS. On the grounds of open and fair disclosure you should know I am a director at GREEN and Ladybank is one of our clients.

We've just got back from seeing Bruce Springsteen at the Sheffield Arena - with kids in tow. I've seen him a couple of times and have been a fan for years. The man just gets better and better... Not very profound I know but I am very shallow.

Behold! The Next Big Thing! Web3.0

Well it had to happen. After Web2.0 - John Markoff of the New York Times has gone and coined the phrase Web3.0. Now, I'm not even sure what Web 2.0 is - my definition always revolved around "social media" and "engaging in a conversation".
Web2.0 was all about stripping away the marketing bollocks that hijacked the web when it first emerged changing it from a push media, to a pull media and then to what it is today - a push me, pull me media.
And what Web2.0 is most certainly not about is technology as a lot of the tools we use now have been around for years and it's only recently that we have worked out how to use them to create something new.
Markoff argues that Web3.0 pioneers' goal is "to add a layer of meaning on top of the existing Web that would make it less of a catalog and more of a guide — and even provide the foundation for systems that can reason in a human fashion. That level of artificial intelligence, with machines doing the thinking instead of simply following commands, has eluded researchers for more than half a century."
That frankly is a bit scary.
Markoff notes that classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the “mash-up” — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of each rental listing.
In contrast, the semantic Web3.0 will build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of £3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.”
If I wanted that sort of information I'd post it here, or go to one of several wiki's dedicated to this sort of thing or do an email to one of the several online communities I belong to.
Our proclivity for coming up with buzz words does nothing to move things on in the world of social media and Web3.0 is just that, a buzz word signifying nothing new but some as yet unfinished technology.
Let's concentrate on getting this right in the real world first and bed down Web2.0 before we start messing around with Web3.0.

The Kids are Alright

I was in London last week to help launch my business partner Andy Green’s new book on word-of-mouth marketing.
As usual with these things the audience was mainly made up of white, middle-aged men – all of them working in the media (sorry guys but this is an accurate description). And all of them stared at me blankly when I mentioned Web2.0 and social media. It’s the same in the newspaper industry – as John Naughton points out in his column in today’s Observer – Young People Don’t Like Us. Who Can Blame Them? His main point is that young people don’t read newspapers anymore and, worse, the media industry doesn’t give a damn.
White, middle-aged editors don’t care but they are presiding over their own funeral in much the same way the PR industry is. Here are the facts:

Today's 21-year-olds were born in 1985. The internet was two years old in January that year, and Nintendo launched 'Super Mario Brothers', the first blockbuster game.

When they were going to primary school in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee was busy inventing the world wide web.

The first SMS message was sent in 1992, when these kids were seven. Amazon and eBay launched in 1995.

Hotmail was launched in 1996, when they were heading towards secondary school. Around that time, pay-as-you-go mobile phone tariffs arrived, enabling teenagers to have phones, and the first instant messaging services appeared.

Google launched in 1998, just as they were becoming teenagers. Napster and Blogger.com launched in 1999 when they were doing GCSEs.

Wikipedia and the iPod appeared in 2001.

Early social networking services appeared in 2002 when they were doing A-levels.

Skype launched in 2003, as they were heading for university, and YouTube launched in 2005, as they were heading toward graduation.

These people grew up in a universe completely alien to that inhabited by in the media business. They've been playing computer games of mind-blowing complexity forever. They're resourceful, knowledgeable and natural users of computer and communications technology.
They don’t need newspapers because they create their own content - and publish it on MySapce or in a blog. (Remember the motto of YouTube: 'Broadcast yourself!')
They buy music from the iTunes store - but continue to download tracks illicitly as well. They use BitTorrent to get US editions of Lost. They think 'Google' is a synonym for 'research' and regard it as quite normal to maintain and read blogs (55 million as of last night), use Skype to talk to their mates and upload photos to Flickr.
Some even write entries on Wikipedia. And they know how to use iMovie or Adobe Premiere to edit videos and upload them to YouTube.
Now look round the average British newsroom or public relations open plan office. How many hacks have a Flickr account or a MySpace profile? How many sub-editors have ever uploaded a video to YouTube? How many PR executive have used BitTorrent?
This is not the future – this is now. This is one of the subjects we will be covering in the Word-of-Mouth Communications event in London on Friday December 1 at the the Dental Institute, Thomas Street, London. Blatant plug I know but John Naughton does know what he is talking about.

Blogging equals full and fair disclosure

Over at Social Media Release they have picked up on blogging’s continued evolution into the mainstream of communications with a post from Chris Heuer on how blogs have been accepted as meeting the requirements of Fair Disclosure for the purposes of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This stems from a letter from SEC Chief Christopher Cox to Scott McNeely of Sun requesting clarification on whether the Internet adequately meets current regulatory requirements.

Here’s what Chris has to say on the matter:

• how cool that he actually posted it in the context of the post he was replying to - at first I was concerned that I did not see the coment (sic) on the original post (which is where I would have put it) - but being able to make it relevant to another point - I can just see him reading it and feeling that sense of inspiration that many of us have felt when joinging in “OMG, I ‘get it’ - all I need to do is say what I am thinking right here and everyone can listen in or even join.” Just cool - total respect for this smart move
• for us more directly, his statement is telling - his questions show a natural and deserving bias towards accepting this very logical conclusion - modern Web technology and network infrastructure, unobstructuted by discriminatory network access policies and practices, is sufficient to meat Regulation Fair Disclsoure - this is what I have been discussing with so many of the wire services over the last few months
• the other interesting thing - he still sent the letter with the snails - there is a need to have the ability for validating both the source and the content of the communications vis a vis a mutually trusted source - this is what I have been talking about for a long time around the value of the wire services fully shifting from that of being the distribution platform to being the source for validating the authenticity of the content - we will be making an announcement about this issue in the near future
• he ok’d the use of blogs and corporate Web sites - Quoting Mr. Cox “Indeed, because information that is not “selectively disclosed” or that is not material nonpublic information is not subject to the public dissemination provisions of Regulation FD, Sun and other public companies can already do this without implicating the provisions of Regulation FD.”
• It more fully opens the possibility of using a Social Media Release Microformat to distinguish between unofficial and offical corporate communications
• the timing is perfect.

These are all good points well made by Chris. What heartens and surprises me is how fast we have come to this point particularly with an organization like SEC – Sun obviously gets it because Web2.0 is their schtick – but I thought the SEC would be too corporate, too pinstripe to adopt it so quickly.

It would be interesting to test the case with the regulatory authorities in Europe and the UK particularly with the Financial Services Authority and the London Stock Exchange who are so tight-arsed about protecting their position. Is this the start of true shareholder democracy?

GREEN hosts word-of-mouth marketing event

Blatant plug for GREEN Communications – no apologies. We are hosting an event on word-of-mouth marketing and social media in London on Friday December 1 at the the Dental Institute, Thomas Street, London.

Not sure how it ended up at this venue – but it seems quiet apt don’t you think!



We have brought together a range of great speakers to answer one of the big questions facing many organisations in the age of social media: how do you master one of the most powerful communication channels for your organisation, brand and personal career?

This is the first conference organised by the public relations industry focused on word-of-mouth. The event brings together leading experts and practitioners from public relations, direct marketing, advertising, market research and academia to give you the latest insight into how to harness the incredible power of word-of-mouth, viral and buzz communications.

Speakers at the event include my business partner Andy Green, the author of Creative PR and Effective Personal Communications Skills for Public Relations and Mark Borkowski of Borkowski PR who will talk about Outstanding buzz - Dog weddings at Harrods, Elvis's teddy, and Jim Moran.

Other speakers include:
Ivan Palmer, Director and Founder, Wildfire Word of Mouth Marketing
Paul Marsden, Enterprise LSE, London School of Economics
Graham Goodkind, Frank PR
Simon Collister of GREEN Communications

For further information check out the booking form. Hope to see you there.

Who says blogs don't work?

Who says blogs don't work? Over at GREEN and greenblog we helped create a corporate blog for our client Wensleydale Creamery, the only makers of Real Yorkshire Wensleydale.

Since the launch of wensleydaleblog more than 10,000 people have now signed the Uniquely Yorkshire petition in support of Real Yorkshire Wensleydale Cheese!

It's only three months since we announced that the creamery had put forward a submission to protect Real Yorkshire Wensleydale through Protected Designation of Origin or PDO as it's more commonly known.

PDO aims to promote and protect food products in the EU and is used to describe foodstuffs which are produced, processed and prepared in a given geographical area using recognised know-how. This means that any manufacturers outside of Wensleydale cannot produce a cheese and call it Real Yorkshire Wensleydale.

Everyone at the Creamery would like to say A BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has supported them over the past couple of months.

The interesting thing from a PR and marketing point of view is how we have adhered to a strict set of rules in managing wensleydaleblog and the comments posted there. Especially so given the concerns about social media and marketing being manipulated by some of the larger corporate blogs.

The key rule is to be open and honest in all the conversations you have customers and visitors to the blog.

Sir Tim says blogs are great

There is a delicious irony about the piece on Sir Tim Berners-Lee that appeared in the Guardian at the weekend under the headline Creator of Web Warns of Fraudsters and Cheats. There was also a helpful addendum under the sub-heads: Blogging one of the biggest perils, says innovator.

My immediate reaction was to post a comment decrying the Great Sir Tim, who, according to the Guardian's Bobbie Johnson, "singles out the rise of blogging as one of the most difficult areas for the continuing development of the web, because of the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information."

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I was too busy to hit the keyboard and vent my spleen. It's just as well I was otherwise engaged because Sir Tim, the inventor of the world wide web, didn't say that at all and was a victim of "the risks associated with inaccurate, defamatory and uncheckable information". To be fair to Bobbie Johnson he has held up his hand and admitted he got it wrong following a blog post by Sir Tim:

"In a recent interview with the Guardian, alas, my attempt to explain this was turned upside down into a "blogging is one of the biggest perils" message. Sigh. I think they took their lead from an unfortunate BBC article, which for some reason stressed concerns about the web rather than excitement, failure modes rather than opportunities. (This happens, because when you launch a Web Science Research Initiative, people ask what the opportunities are and what the dangers are for the future. And some editors are tempted to just edit out the opportunities and headline the fears to get the eyeballs, which is old and boring newspaper practice."

As a former journalist I can sympathise with Bobbie but what makes this whole debate interesting is the distinction between the professional journalist and the blogger, or citizen journalist, is becoming increasingly blurred. And their has been a healthy debate about this for some time. For instance is Wikipedia less authoritive than the Encyclopedia Britannicus? Well, according to a recent survey they are equally accurate. One journalist recently told me that bloggers were blogging to an audience of one - themselves.

Perhaps. And what's wrong with that? But quality will out and while there is a lot of crap on the internet, the way quality works on the web is through links.

It works because reputable writers make links to things they consider reputable sources. So readers, when they find something distasteful or unreliable, don't just hit the back button once, they hit it twice. They remember not to follow links again through the page which took them there.

Blogs provide a gently evolving network of signpost to sites of interest and information and that's very exciting.

See you at Le Web3 in December

Registration has open for the LE WEB 3 Conference in Paris on December 11th & 12th 2006.

My self and Simon Collister from GREEN will both be attending hopefully to make new friends and learn a few new tricks about social media and how we can use it for our clients.

The first Les Blogs was held in April 2005, the second event last year attracted 450 people from 25 countries to the two-day event. This year they have booked a room for up to 900 people.

Entrepreneurs, bloggers and web2.0 players around the world will be in Paris and the entire conference will be in English. There are networking opportunities, lunch on both days and a cocktail party on Monday evening.

The programme is still being finalized but speakers include Michael Arrington of Techcrunch who will speak about Bridging the conversation: how are the tools evolving?; David Fischer from MySpace.com and Dave Sifry of Technorati.

From the UK speakers include Brent Hoberman from Lastminute.com; Danny Rimer, Index Ventures; Neville Hobson, Crayon; JP Rangaswami, BT; and Hugh MacLeod, GapingVoid.

If you would like to meet up drop us a line.

New social marketing campaign

Intel has launched The Intel Centrino Duo Blogger Challenge and given six bloggers Intel Centrino Duo laptops to seek their views.

Like the Sprint Ambassador campaign and the many other blogger campaigns before, Intel hopes to get some grass roots juice and cred, none of which can usually be attained through traditional advertising or public relations.

There's a mystery seventh blogger who Intel describes as “… a person who many believe may just have defined the entire category of blogging itself.”

In return for the laptops, the participating bloggers agreed to contribute to a group blog over the course of five weeks sharing their honest opinions and responses to a series of questions about blogging, the blogosphere and technology.

Apart from recieving a laptop computer, none of these bloggers have been compensated in any way or asked to write anything specific about Intel. The aim of this blog is meant to stimulate discussion and bring bloggers together regardless of their “categories.”

To me this seems to be a perfect exemplar of a social media campaign – an open and honest two way conversation.

GREEN in the awards

There's a few sore heads here at GREEN Communications this morning following our success last night at the Chartered Institute of Public Relations PRIDE Awards.

We were up for two awards and won them both. First up was the Corporate & Financial Campaign category for which we pick up the top gold award.

This was for our work with Partnership Investment Finance - a £37m fund that provides loans and investments to small and medium sized businesses and social enterprises in the Yorkshire region.

Elsewhere, congratulations to our Lindsey Ramsay who picked up the Young Achiever Award beating off competition from her colleague Simon Collister.

My partner Andy Green always likes to say that we 'work hard and play hard' and that was certainly the case last night - a business is only as good as itÂ’s people and we've got a great team.

Whisky a No! No!

On the subject of whisky – see earlier post - it looks like Diageo, one of the biggest spirit companies in the world – has made a similar blogging faux pas to that committed by Edleman on behalf of Wal-Mart and Working Families for Wal-Mart.

Diageo – the company behind Johnnie Walker, J&B, Bells, Bushmills and many more – has launched Scotchvibe where your can find your “Vibe with Whisky & Music; Celebrate scotch month and come to the site where scotch & music mix.”

Great, you might think. Another company engaging in social media. However, ScotchVibe only offers whiskies from Diageo, which is all well and good as I am quite partial to a glass of Bushmills.

However, no where on the site does it state that the ScotchVibe is owned by Diageo or that all the content is theirs. It’s a great idea but any corporate crosses a very serious threshold when they fail to be transparent about who is running their blog(s) or, in this case, fail to mention it al all.

No-one would have thought any the less of them but they damage their own reputation by pretending to be something they are not. Several bloggers in the whisky community have already picked up on this, including WhiskySchool.

WhiskySchool Video Competition

Quick update on Ladybank Company of Distillers, one of our clients at GREEN.

James Thomson continues to embrace the possibilities of social media with a passion and we have just launched a "social media competition" through his other interests at WhiskySchool with the winning prize being free membership of Ladybank!

We've now issued a challenge to the internet community by calling on “social media” enthusiasts to produce their own videos extolling the virtues of their favourite tipple such as Gin, Single Malt or Vodka. Anything you fancy really - could be calvados or rum!

Entries to the WhiskySchool Video Competition will be posted on YouTube, with the top entry winning membership of the Ladybank Company of Distillers, worth more than £3,000. Three lucky runners-up will also win a selection of some fine spirits.

Ladybank encourages consumers to invest in the vision and the passion of the project and sets out to reward its members with participation, a strong sense of belonging, and the kind of exclusivity normally reserved for distillery owners or founders.

Given the distillery’s roots in social media we thought it would be great idea to challenge spirit enthusiasts to create their own videos about their passion and post them on the web.

James adds: “Social media allows people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. This chimes with our view about good drink. Properly used alcohol is the greatest ambassador the world has known. It removes difficulties; it renders men more agreeable and appreciative of one another. It makes new friendships and cements old ones.”

The WhiskySchool Video Competition is centered around fine spirits and can focus on three areas:
• Favourite Brand, Distillery or Spirit Category.
• Educational Category – including ‘how to guides’ such as how to run a formal tasting or how to mix the perfect martini.
• Entertainment Category – including spoof videos.

Clear portrayal of alcohol abuse will not be accepted and entrants must be over 18 year’s olds. All entries will be posted on social media site YouTube allowing viewers to vote on their favourite video. The winner and runners up will be decided by a panel of judges organised by WhiskySchool

To enter is simple - shoot one or more videos or recommend one and submit the video’s URL to WhiskySchool, then check out competition. Viewers can even register to sit on the judging panel.

For further information visit WhiskySchool Video Competition.