Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Nice to see something I read about on a trendwatch website a while back has hit Irish shores - handvertising. Irish Handstamps basically puts your brand or message onto the wrists of clubgoers across Dublin. Karl McCarthy and Russell Altman, the pair behind the company, have signed up 30 clubs and counting thus […]

So you’re a sports clothing manufacturer that primarily targets fans of mixed martial arts, boxing, etc. In order to appeal to consumers, what do you do? Take out advertising or sponsor fighters perhaps? Or you could take a leaf out of the book of Affliction Clothing, who decided to become a mixed […]

I cancelled my Moviestar.ie account the other day. Simple decision to make really, I’ve a backlog of DVDs to get through so paying EURO12.99 per month for a service I didn’t use hardly made sense. Nothing against Moviestar.ie, they had lots of films I wanted to see but I don’t have time for […]

I was fortunate enough to attend a briefing by Triona Campbell of Campbell Ryan Productions, the company behind the online soap opera Sofia’s Diary. The briefing is available on the IIEA website and please find it below on YouTube.

Couple of interesting points:

Sofia’s diary is in profit before it begins production thanks to sponsorship revenue. […]

While the recession dominates headlines in Ireland at the moment and most of the attention about the Lisbon Treaty focuses on whether it will be ratified by Poland or the Czech Republic, ultimately saving face for Ireland, there has been a steady undercurrent of activity by parties involved in the No Campaign.
The […]

Mark Nagurski has a good post on Really Practical Marketing on why people hate networking. Six reasons why people hate networking include:

It’ll be full of people trying to sell me things
I don’t want to stand there and try to sell to other people either
I’m just a startup business I won’t fit in
My kind of […]

Why is it that viral marketing reminds me so much of Hans Christian Andersen’s classic tale? It seems everyone out there wants whatever they’re flogging to go viral. Interesting feedback from Ben Ayers on his Twitter profile about brands on social networks that “of the 122 major branded pages in Europe, half had […]

Ajax, a Dutch soccer club, had the best jersey launch I’ve ever seen. To announce their new shirt sponsor Aegon, they held a mass shirt swap in Amsterdam, where the club are based. Clever way to generate talkability around the shirt launch and made for a good video on YouTube (via ViralBlog.)

Great presentation […]

I love seeing organisations leverage their presence at music festivals and similar events in interesting ways. Thought I would highlight Orange’s efforts at Glastonbury this year (hattip to Gizmodo), which I think is quite innovative and also leverages the green theme. Basically Orange have commissioned Gotwind to develop an environmentally friendly mobile […]

I had to give a talk to a bunch of US university students last week. Towards the end of the presentation I was giving them I pointed out that they all have tremendous opportunities when they graduate, primarily because they are the MySpace generation. The year that’s in it with the US elections […]

DoshDosh points out some interesting research on people’s relationships and technology:
According to a recent study of 2 million people and 8 million phone calls over one year, researchers discovered that the cause of persistent relationships is reciprocity - returning a friend’s call. The more often you call each other, the longer your relationship.
The results showed […]

Todd Deffren’s SWOT analysis for the PR industry makes for interesting reading. The first thing which pops off the page for me is:
“the single biggest weakness of PR in the Social Media age is related to scale. As I noted back in June 2006, ‘[How can] PR practitioners possibly find the time & […]

Really interesting story in the Times in the UK last week about the Japanese Air Self Defence Force abandoning plans to send military aircraft to help earthquake relief efforts in China. The article purports that the request for aid originally came from China, but due to the backlash of Chinese Internet users over the […]

I couldn’t help but laugh when reading one of Martin Samuel’s latest commentaries. Here are the main highlights:
The schools are the worst. In business, I can almost understand it. At work, you might be confronted by a person from a different generation, or a different culture, and it is important to maintain an appearance […]

Anyone that wants to brush up on their presentations skills should give this BNET Video - Present Like Steve Jobs - a watch (via Mitch Joel.)

I went to the Institute of European Affairs‘ Young Professionals Network on Monday night. It’s a surprisingly good networking event with people from a variety of backgrounds in attendance. RTE Prime Time presenter Mark Little was at the event to speak about his career as a journalist and a variety of topics such […]

I was recently doing some research on examples of interviews that went every well…and very bad. Two of which I thought would be worth sharing.
Let’s start with the good. Bill Clinton versus Fox News. Despite walking into an interview with an obvious bias, Bill completely flips the tables on the interviewer Christopher […]

The funniest thing I hear back when I’m talking to people about Guitar Hero or Rock Band is “So after playing the game are you actually able to play the guitar?” Good question, but the answer is unfortunately no. Something which the makers of South Park gleefully exploit in a recent episode.
The interesting […]

Paul Dervan has an interesting post about Southwest Airlines use of Twitter. For those unfamiliar with Twitter, it’s a bit of a mix between an Internet forum and Instant Messaging (watch this video for a better example.) Paul, the interested marketeer, points out that:
Southwest have 1,212 followers (like me) on twitter. While I’ve […]

The Irish Times is gradually adopting audio reports into its website. For example, on a recent breaking news story (the free section of the Times’ website) David Duffy of the ESRI discuss its Medium-Term Review. This is interesting because it is a move towards rich content, but most commentators until now would have […]

Judging from the latest Sunday Business Post/Red C tracking poll, it’s all to play for when it comes to calling which way the pendulum will swing when Ireland goes to the polls to vote on the Lisbon Treaty.
You’ve got to give it to the anti treaty campaigners for their communications efforts. Despite what some […]

Another couple of things that caught my attention that I feel are worth highlighting.
First of which is KMPG’s ‘That’ll Never Work…’, a book about twelve Irish entrepreneurs. From a PR perspective this is a great example of a company putting its money where its mouth is and taking ownership of a space. As […]

Shane Hegarty had a great column in the irish Times the other week. Entitled ‘The ads don’t work’, Hegarty questions the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in changing people’s behaviour. As a stand alone tactic, advertising like any communications discipline (PR included) will not bring about a change in the public’s behaviour without the […]

While in Tokyo I had the fortune to stumble upon the UT t-shirt shop in Tokyo’s Harajuku district. The shop offers a fantastic example as to how to make a t-shirt something aspirational. UT’s philosophy is:
A t-shirt is more than just a t-shirt. It’s an expression of who you are. Where […]

I’ve spent some time in Japan on holidays and was working in Barcelona for a couple of days recently. Both experiences underlined the importance of the Internet for the tourism sector and reiterated Francois Gossieaux’s point that brands are defined by the user interface of an organisation.
On the first point, I spoke […]