Piaras Kelly PR - Public Relations in Ireland

Kathy Foley had an interesting column in the Sunday Times the other weekend about the Electric Picnic and the efforts of the organisers to put on “one of the most impressive environmental showcases ever assembled in Ireland”. Foley points out that “not only does the Picnic boast recycling bins, eco-friendly loos, reusable beer cups [...]

Having failed to knock Hot Press off its perch, State magazine has changed its business model and will now be distributed for free. Una Mullally gives her two cents on the story. Personally I think it’s a smart move - there’s a gap in the market for a quality lifestyle magazine after Mongrel [...]

Interesting piece in the Guardian last week about the communications strategies employed by both camps in the US Presidential election. The race is a bit like the ‘top down’ versus ‘bottom up’ schools of thought at battle in the communications world, or as the Guardian describes it as the news cycle election versus the [...]

Congrats to Stephen Davies, who has just set up his own online communications consultancy - 3WPR.
Tom Murphy is the voice of reason in the PR industry. His latest commentary gives a tongue lashing to the emperor’s new clothes syndrome which is clearly evident in the PR (and wider marketing/advertising/social media) blogosphere.
Very impressed with Dell’s [...]

Paul Collins of Today FM fame has been keeping me up to date on the services his company Ballywire Media is offering. Ballywire is now providing video clips for the likes of Ireland.com and Breakingnews.ie and is moving in the same vein as some other companies abroad by capturing video content for clients and [...]

Before the days of Mass Media where consumers could be reached through advertising in newspapers or television ads, people would have to be directly engaged with in a bid to persuade them to buy your goods or services - whether it was over the counter in a butcher’s shop or tradesmen calling door-to-door for work. [...]

Village magazine has ceased publication after its editor Vincent Browne blamed falling advertising revenue and the loss of other publishing contracts for its demise (via RTE.) The magazine has struggled for some time now, having changed format from a weekly to monthly publication and loss of key contributors such as Justine McCarthy.
Its [...]

The Sunday Times had a feature on myYearbook the other weekend. The website is the latest in a long lineup of social networking phenomenons. The reason why the website is important to flag is that there are a host of social networking sites that some people probably haven’t even heard of that the [...]

One of the popular recommendations when it comes to use of digital channels is all about reaching out to your customer. By and large though I think that it’s a load of BS. Let’s face it most customer service complaints stem from guess what…poor customer service. A number of companies in the [...]

Clever trend that I thought worth highlighting on YouTube is using kids to parody movies. I first picked up on it when I spotted a couple of videos of children explaining what happens in movies. Here’s an example of a three year old explaining Star Wars.

Even funnier though is this version of the [...]

Despite some of my recent Apple rants about the dangers of product myopia, I recently bought a 3G iPhone and have been hooked since. What I have been amazed by is that I find myself using my mobile phone more, whether it is for calls or texts, browsing the web or simply passing the [...]

The Internet is a fantastic medium for bringing together audiences. Some organisations are now successfully leveraging online communities to build awareness, most notably Hollywood studios. For example, every year Comic Con is used as the launched pad for the following year’s superhero blockbuster. This year the event was used to start the [...]

Fianna Fail came under criticism last week for their perceived lack of advertising spend during the Lisbon Treaty referendum. I think the criticism is unduly harsh, not because of their lack of spend but because additional money would have been wasted. The poor advertising creative behind their campaign, and the Yes Campaign in [...]

Damien Mulley is going to be running a PR course for technology startups this week. John Collins, technology correspondent from the Irish Times, is scheduled to talk to the participants for an hour as part of the course. Here’s some tips I thought might be of use for tech SMEs:
Take A Deep Breath [...]

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 [...]