Slattery Communications’ affiliate Ketchum has been a pioneer in food communications for 40 years. @ppetite is Ketchum’s global food and nutritional practice blog; it covers how food is grown, sold, studied, cooked, talked about, and of course, how it tastes.

The most recent post on the blog is the video above, an interview with Marc Matsumoto, the man behind the blog No Recipes. Marc is an external advisor to Ketchum on food and social media and here he talks about creating compelling blog content and building an audience online.

Steve Dempsey is the social media guy at Slattery Communications.

As you may have read, some of Slattery Communications’ most dedicated members of staff were at the Electric Picnic, manning the Bacardi Arena.

We also had a team of snappers photographing whoever else was there, enjoying the music, rum and rain. We’re currently in the process of uploading them all to the Bacardi Ireland Facebook page. And we’re hoping to put names to some of the faces. At this year’s Glastonbury Festival a panoramic photo of 70,000 enthusiastic fans was taken at halftime during the England V Slovenia match at the world cup. It was like an online version of Where’s Wally, that invited revellers to tag themselves and their friends via Facebook Connect. Now we’re doing the same, albeit on a much much smaller scale. And you can help. Please visit the Facebook site and get tagging.

Colm O’Riagain is an Account Director with Slattery Communications.

7,832.28 = Number of Victoria Beckham’s Twitter followers per tweet.

The former Spice Girl is has amassed over 7,500 followers for each of her 14 tweets since joining Twitter on September 1. She had 109,652 followers at the time of publishing. But her follower-count is increasing rapidly. You can follow her yourself here.

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I’m surprised that the launch of Microsofts Kinect, the long awaited arrival of internet TVs, and the expansion of cloud based services has not generated more debate about the potential impact on PR and social media. In the not too distant future instead of the collection of different remote controls and console controllers you’ll have a large screen with a built in sensor that can pick up and interpret your movements. This will have an ultra-fast broadband connection that pulls down different services from entertainment channels, social media platforms, your photos, home videos and music collection. The lines we draw between different media, storage and internet access will become completely blurred.

Instead of thinking PC for internet access, TV for news and programmes, stereo and radio for music, we’ll consume it all through one screen. For alot of people this is already a reality as they access TV via RTE’s iPlayer on their PCs or laptop. We will probably spend more money on sound systems and bigger screens as ultra fast broadband via fibre becomes more of a commodity.

But what about PR?

This technological wonderland has seriouly implications for the PR industry. Picture this: You’re sitting on your sofa, to change a channel, increase the volume you merely waving your hands. You’re watching the 9 O’Clock news or PrimeTime and see something about a company. You wave your hand another direction and your collection of social media appears, along with a virtual keyboard. As the piece is still running on split screens you visit the company website for more information. You also decide to check out their facebook page and decide that what was reported is worthy of posting a comment or you just check what others are saying. You go to the personal sites of the spokesperson via LinkedIn or another to see how credible they are. You tweet your comments on what is being covered with your own personal networks and make judgement calls on it. If it particularly irked you, you DM friends and organise for a coordinated response to the company. DMs will naturally switch to video chatter where you see the people in your network and the debate leaves a less trackable footprint. Parodies of the crisis/spokespeople performance will appear instantly as people create their own mocking content. The phone number pops up in the company search and you call the organisation to register your view point – all from your couch. Finally you organise a flash mob to appear at the company or outlet to register a protest, video record it and upload to keep the debate going.

A lot of this actually happens at the moment. Anyone checking out twitter at the weekend will see lots of comments by people about whats on TV and radio. This ranges from mere obervational to wide ranging debates. At the moment this is a trickle as you need to have a reasonable smart phone, be working on your PC or feel motivated enough to go online. Once people have access to all of these on one ease to navigate screen its set to explode. Most companies have a reasonable feel for the increased importance of social media and have started down the line of building a social media strategy. This will move it from a nice to do to a must have.

Here are some of the changes I can see:
• Social media monitoring and responding becomes a 24 hour job.
• Debate will be swift and much more far reaching.
• After-hours online chatter will have matured by the time most people get to the desk the following morning.
• Social media tombstones which have not been updated will be highly visible and reflect poorly.
• The expectation that there will be a company representative at all times will grow (via social media or phone lines).
• Big launches and crisis may need to have experienced teams working on them on a 24/7 basis.
• The weight attached to traditional media will continue to be extremely important but debate will take place else where.
• Local issues will get even more global exposure and debate.
• Messaging will morph and adapt as the temperature of debate rages.
• Expectation of an active presence on a broader range of channels.
• Ability to rapidly create content to match particular platforms will increase from Video – YouTube, Photography, Pix.ie, Facebook etc
• Traditional PR outreach will need to be integrated into social media outreach.
• Communications, marketing and online teams will need to be synched.
• Close community debate will be harder to track especially if video or DM orientated.
• Coordinated action will spill over into real life organised action.
• Nature and tone of online debate and chatter will change as it moves from early innovators to mass audience.

Breaking down barriers

None of this is massively different from what PR companies are faced with every day but the scale, speed and timing are very different. 9-5 just wont work and ill thought comments will spread much faster and to wider communities. At the moment this is contained due to technological barriers, once these disappear a regular tidal waves will appear. Consider the difference between 20-30 tweets from a few influentials which can network out to a few thousand via retweets versus the 600,000 people who view PrimeTime. How well resourced would an Irish or international company be to that larger figure but also a much broader profile. Some Irish companies I have spoken to can be dismissive of what they view as a small Irish Twitter community while they are consignant of the impact of high profile programmes. Merge the two with sufficent numbers and you enter a whole new arena. Of course its not all bad, and with all this come huge opportunities but the the reality is its not that far away.

Eoin Kennedy is the Director of Engage Online, Slattery Communications’ online & digital division. You visit his own blog here.

Music festivals have changed. Gone are the Feile days of a packed Semple Stadium, rough and ready campsites and the roughest of facilities. Today’s festivals have become more of a spectacle. Anyone visiting Stradbally this weekend will witness how revelers are embracing this shift; forgetting normal life and going all out with whacky wigs, make up, fashion and fancy dress. Brands and sponsors are getting in on the act too, creating experiences for consumers that leave the real world behind.

This year at the Electric Picnic Slattery Communications is helping Bacardi host a 1920s Costume Party. We’re bringing the Roaring Twenties alive on Sunday afternoon in the Barcardi B-Live Arena. 20s Fashion will meet festival chic and anyone in 20s gear will be treated to a complimentary Bacardi Mojito and photographed by the Bacardi judges. The best costume will be presented with a shopping voucher worth €500 and a Bacardi Mojito Kit.

Why the Roaring Twenties?

The 1920s saw American fashion begin to assert itself internationally, with Hollywood instrumental in providing the world with the latest glamorous looks. Women the world over became followers of the Hollywood icons and began to mirror their styles in their own lives. Famous screen and style idols who are credited with heavily influencing the fashion scene onwards from the Twenties include among others, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and the ultimate ‘flapper fashionista’ Louise Brooks. One of the most famous fashion icons of the 20th century, Louise’s distinctive dark bobbed hair with a blunt fringe was one of the defining female haircuts of the era. A gifted actress and model, she captured the jazz age with her signature flapper looks. The flapper look came to the fore in 1926, embracing a new modern movement for fashion with short shift dresses and dramatic make-up. Despite forming the first modern women’s movement, the flapper style didn’t dominate for very long. However, its influence on the fashion industry has continued down through the years and is widely acknowledged. With style, glamour and a more than a hint of decadence, the roaring 20s are a perfect fit with Bacardi and the Electric Picnic.

Online Inspiration

Wellies, flapper dresses, and embellished head pieces are all that’s needed to get into the Twenties spirit, a golden era for fashion and cocktails. The winner will be announced on Monday, September 6 on Bacardi Ireland’s Facebook Page. And in case anyone’s in need some inspiration on what to wear, we’ve added a collection of photography from the 1920s to the Bacardi Ireland Facebook page.

Niamh Hopkins is a Senior Account Executive at Slattery Communications

Uneasy bedfellows

SEO and video have always found it hard to get along. Because search engine spiders only understand text, traditionally they haven’t been able to determine the content or quality of a video; they only understand the the links to it and the content around it, like the title or tags. As such video and SEO are uneasy bedfellows.

As video becomes less of a multimedia bauble and more of a communications centrepiece, it’s increasingly important that it is optimised for search. YouTube alone has more than one billion page views per day. Cisco Systems projects that video will represent 90% of all consumer IP traffic and 64% of all mobile traffic by 2013. And interestingly, E-commerce sites featuring product videos sell up to 45% more product, according to Internet retailer ReelSEO

There are plenty of tricks and tools out there to optimise video. Here are some ranging from the obvious to the innovative.

Some video management basics…

• Each video you upload should get its own page, therefore, its own URL.
• If you’re going to upload a lot of video, you should consider a dedicated video directory.
• Tag and title well. Videds should be given the same type of descriptive titles as any typical HTML page. YouTube, Vimeo et al. have tagging options. Use them.
• If you’re uploading video to your site – rather than to youtube, or another video site, make sure your video title and the title tag match.

That’s all pretty simple and self evident. Below are some more advanced options which can help get your video content trawled and indexed by search engines.

Sitemaps

A Video Sitemap is a link to each video, along with some additional information; title, description, thumbnail Image, that sort of thing. This info can them be displayed in search results. Here’s what google has to say on the matter.

Captions and Transcripts

Captions and subtitles appear in the video itself, along the bottom of the video window. You can see them in the video above from Google. This text isn’t embedded in the video. It’s called in from a separate file that can be searched and indexed by search engine spiders. In addition to the SEO benefits, these techniques also make the video accessible to those with hearing impairment.

You can submit your own transcript or caption files to youtube. A transcript file contains the text of what was said in the video. Happily, If the video is in English YouTube has speech processing algorithms which can determine when the words in a transcript should be displayed. A caption file contains both the text and information about when each line of text should be displayed; ie. it has a timecode.

Other companies are getting in on the act offering innovations in this area. SpeakerText helps you perform the same transcript-to-video matrimony as YouTube captions, but it also plans to roll out an interesting smart sharing service. QuoteLinks allows users to select a chunk of the transcript, copy it, and paste it in their own blog or website as a link to the exact moment in the video where the quote appears. Right now SpeakerText only works with YouTube, but the company says it plans to provide the service for other platforms in the future.

In-File Metadata

Adobe is also helping video makers optimise content through integrated metadata, which can be created automatically and supplemented manually at any stage of production. Some search engines can access this information from the file.

Adobe’s CS suite allows metadata to be added and collated right from the start of the project, Adobe Story script (available through integration with Adobe CS Live online services , While you’re recording footage directly to disk, Adobe OnLocation captures metadata coming from the camera. During post-production, you can add additional video metadata to your clips, such as file names or shot locations. Here’s an interesting demo from Adobe of this process in action.

Steve Dempsey is the social media guy at Slattery Communications.

Facebook changes it up

It’s interesting times at Facebook. Places, the social media giant’s location-based service has launched in the US and will be here soon. VAT has already arrived; from September onwards ads purchased on Facebook will be subject to Irish Value Added Tax. And there’s one other development of note. Facebook has begun cracking down on promotions that contravene guidelines published in December 2009.

Here are some of their promotional edicts:

• No promotions open or marketed to individuals who are under the age of 18.
• No sweepstakes open to individuals living in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India.
• And no promotions in which alcohol, dairy or firearms form any part of the prize.

However, the real issue that will concern many Irish brands and businesses using facebook is that now, you must get written approval to use Facebook’s native functionality in a promotion.

Off the wall

What does that mean? It means if you ask people to enter a competition via your page’s wall, or by uploading a photo, tagging a photo, changing status, or doing anything they normally do on Facebook, you’re gonna get a rap on the knuckles. To use native functionality for any sort of promotional activity, you now need to have promotions approved by Facebook before they can go live. You’ll need to submit your full designs and working application to an account executive. It seems the social networking site is trying to push promotions off the wall and into applications, which sit in a separate tab and are administered by a third party.

This is a real kick in the teeth for those of us using Facebook in Ireland. Only now are brand managers beginning to realise the power of Facebook. And now one of its key attractions has been taken off limits.

Get familiar with Facebook T&Cs now and amend your Page or else you could find your page turned off.

You can read full details here.

Steve Dempsey is the Social Media guy at Slattery Communications.

Number of mobile facebook users in Ireland: 467,000

Source, Irish Internet Association

Toyota till 2013

Toyota has announced that it is to extend its sponsorship of Munster Rugby for a further three years in a new €5.75m deal.

The new three year deal, up to June 2013, includes the title sponsorship of the Senior Munster Rugby Teams competing in the Magners League, Heineken Cup and British and Irish Cup. This will bring Toyota’s investment in Munster Rugby well beyond the €13m mark having come on board as the principle sponsor of Munster Rugby in July 2004.

James Wynne is Slattery Communications’ Director of Sport.

The rise and rise of leisure running seems to be unstoppable and not just here in Ireland… its happening all over the globe.  Most commentators say its due to the recession (how original!!) and put the surge in leisure running down to people finding a cheap and easy way to being a better person.  So its all about beating the blues by getting out there and running, what I like to call, “The Forrest Gump Effect”. 

This time around in the US it seems to be the Oprah effect however as Ms Winfrey’s tilt at running a marathon caused a surge in leisure running stateside in another show of power from the O brand.

The stats here speak for themselves – The Lifestyle Sports Adidas Dublin Marathon (12,800), SPAR Great Ireland Run (11,000) and Flora Women’s Mini Marathon (40,000 plus) are all hitting record numbers of entries in the last 12 months.

Globally the picture is very similar.  This year’s London marathon had a record number of starters and finishers, the Tokyo marathon was nearly nine times oversubscribed, and figures from the US show that 2009 was another record year of growth for road running.  Reuters reported that this adds up to a picture of a sport defying global economic turmoil.

The US figures, from non-profit organisation Running USA, show that 467,000 people finished marathons in the country last year, up 10 per cent, the largest percentage increase for 25 years. The London marathon had 36,549 finishers from 36,984 starters. The Tokyo marathon had 310,000 applicants for 35,000 places.

If you “just felt like running” there’s plenty of leisure running events on over the summer and autumn so get out there!