Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

There’s a lot of discussion about political reform at the moment after Fine Gael published their proposals. What I’ve seen thus far from the political parties and commentators misses the point somewhat.
In my mind political reform boils down to one thing - increased participation by the public in politics.
Here are two ways to try and [...]

I had to buy a pair of shoes in Aldo at the weekend and got a slight shock when the sales assistant handed me the shoe box. I was expecting a bag to carry them off with, but instead the shoebox had a clever piece of string to act as a handle. It’s part of [...]

Thought I’d share a couple of interesting videos that I watched over the weekend.
Spotted this video on Social Commerce on Viralblog. Companies are finally waking up to the role that our friends and peer review systems have on our purchasing habits.

Next up is Nick Bilton with a talk at Poptech on the future of news [...]

Over the festive period, like thousands of other people I ventured to the cinema to see what all the fuss was about Avatar. The five minute trailer that was released on Xbox LIVE had whetted my appetite, but having to pay two euro more for the admission price and then discovering on my arrival that [...]

So the first ad for the iPad aired during the Oscars at the weekend. Did anyone else notice anything else wrong?
I was discussing the iPad with a colleague a couple of weeks ago and he pointed out that the standard laptop lends itself to casual use in the living room because of its L shape. [...]

Here’s a selection of sites I’ve stumbled across recently which might be of interest to you. Enjoy…
Tom Reddy offers some nice insights into the world of Irish politics from a communications perspective.

Claire Butterly, Neasa Cunniffe, Philippa Ryan, Vanessa Lenahan and John Clancy from OMD are penning The Influentials blog.

Barry Hand from LastMinute.com is [...]

Helge Tenno has yet another fantastic presentation on media. Have a flick through it below and make sure to subscribe to Helge’s site.

Future Media
View more presentations from Helge Tennø.

In a world where cashflow is king, it’s been interesting to watch how some companies have adopted a model akin to a subscription service in order to get their customers to buy more frequently.
I read last week about a new company called Manpacks which sends its customers new underwear, socks or shirts every three months. [...]

I was interviewed in the Sunday Business Post about my thoughts on Digital Marketing recently. One of the topics I brought up was digital as a customer segmentation tool.
People question the value of digital marketing at times. One way to look at it is the profile of people using social media channels. Early adopters tend [...]

Adrian Weckler has a good article on the problems RTE’s news website is causing other media organisations. The point to add to this which was made by Stephen Price earlier in the year in the Sunday Times is that RTE Player will be a serious challenge to the likes of the Irish Times’ hopes for [...]

John Burns’ Atticus column in the Sunday Times caught my attention in early January. John was writing about an article in the Sunday Times which suggested that blogging in Ireland was running into a bit of a standstill. Needless to say it generated a bit of a reaction online. The interesting aspect Burns pointed out [...]

I got emailed about a short term position going with John McColgan’s Gateway Ireland proposal post-Farmleigh. Might be of interest to someone:

As you may know, a vision for a national online content hub was proposed and this was met with widespread support. This initial proposal has gathered momentum, an Advisory Group was established (it includes [...]

There’s been lots of reaction to Tiger Wood’s apology on Friday. While many people felt his performance was slightly wooden, it was an apology made on his terms. Woods’ management pointed out that he wouldn’t be taking any questions from the media and carefully controlled the event itself, which wouldn’t have endeared himself to the [...]

Yesterday saw the launch of an interesting new campaign ‘Your Country, Your Call‘, which is described as a competition to find and reward two transformational proposals that will help secure prosperity and jobs for Ireland. The organisers are offering a cash prize of €100,000 each to two winning ideas, which will then be implemented with [...]

So the Jesus Tablet arrived and given the level of hype that preceded it, the iPad inevitably was met with disappointment.
It was meant to revolutionise the computer and reinvigorate the media world. Question marks remain over both those ambitions, however, in my opinion the iPad will leave a lasting impact on the software industry.
One aspect [...]

One of the worrying aspects of the recent debate around Head Shops in the Irish media was the kneejerk reaction that they should be banned. Relatively few publications took a measured approach to the story and instead set out to warn the mothers of Ireland about the temptations that are freely available in these shops [...]

One of the annoyingly repetitive topics of conversation during 2009 was ‘Old media is dead. I read about such and such a story on Twitter first.’
To my mind hearing about something and reading an article about something are two different things altogether.
If I hear a rumour about something from a friend prior to it breaking [...]

The biggest news story this week was George Lee’s decision to quit the Fine Gael party and resign as a TD. If you’re unfamiliar with the story read about it here. Lee, ex RTE economics editor, was excellent in term of timing. Beginning with the RTE 1 o’clock news, Lee began his tirade against Fine [...]

David Putnam, director of FutureLab, recently gave a talk at the IIA about educating for the digital society. Brendan Hughes attended the event and highlighted some key areas of his talk. The event was subsequently put online and I have embedded the video below (the IIEA YouTube channel is well worth subscribing to.)

Here is some interesting commentary on productivity I’ve read recently, hopefully some of it will be useful to you also:

Leo Babauta has a post called ‘How Not To Hurry‘ and offers a step-by-step guide for how to achieve this:

Do less
Have fewer meetings
Practice disconnecting
Give yourself time to get ready and get there
Practice being comfortable with sitting, [...]

We launched the results of this year’s Edelman Trust Barometer in the Westbury Hotel last Tuesday. There was an interesting panel discussion after the presentation with Eamon Gilmore, leader of the Labour party, Pat Delaney from IBEC and Mark Little, ex RTE Primetime presenter.
I’ve included the presentation below and I’ll run through my thoughts on [...]

Any Given Sunday is worth watching for this speech by Al Pacino alone.

Here’s a video which may provide some inspiration today:

I’ve ben sitting on a post about my thoughts about the future of the media for a while now and will try to post it next week as one piece or as a series of posts. In the meantime, here’s a really interesting presentation Guido Fawkes gave at a recent Online News Association event.
What the [...]

Bit late posting this, but if anyone is around Dublin on Tuesday morning there’s a free breakfast meeting on in the Burlington Hotel between 8:00 - 9.30am. John Ring is running it and promises it will be different from your standard sales pitch. Read more about it on his website.