PR and Twitter

Social Media Club Auckland kicked off the year with a panel talk from Deborah Pead, Hazel Phillips and Dave Fisher about the use of public relations and Twitter…

Social Media Club Auckland kicked off the year with a panel talk from Deborah Pead, Hazel Phillips and Dave Fisher about the use of public relations and Twitter. It was basically around the one topic – journalistic ethics – and receiving gifts to publicise them. Follow the Twitter stream at #smcakl.

Dave Fisher is a journalist who is against journos taking gifts. Hazel Phillips is from Idealog, and Deborah Pead has Pead PR, and launched the My Food Bag campaign which faced some controversy around gifting food bags to celebrities "with lots of followers". Deborah said the bags were sent with no obligation whatsoever, just an embargo, and a hashtag should they wish to Tweet about it.

Hazel Phillips – was not sure about the obligation created when you’re sent something you wouldn’t normally buy and you feel you have to say something nice about it.

Deborah – The My Food Bag campaign "created a Twitter storm" as everyone went online on the Monday night at dinner time. A few on Twitter raised consternation, which fuelled the debate, and it took off with its own energy. Five groups – 1st group was food fans who wanted to know more. 2nd group – interested in the ethics. 3rd – out of towners asking when is it coming to my area. 4th – media who kept us amused for hours. 5th – the traditional haters who call us PR Wankers From Auckland. We have to have a thick skin in this business.

There was some deeper discussion around journalistic integrity, and the ethics of it. The standards authority ruling about having to use #ad hashtag is for PAID ads with control of the client, which this campaign (and indeed, any PR campaign) doesn’t have.

Deborah went into some detail on this, saying PR is not a paid endorsement, there’s no editorial control; no guarantees, so it CAN backfire! She said; Luckily with My Food Bag it was all a good response from giftees but we selected the right people to send it to. 12 took to Twitter, some in short-lead columns, and some did nothing at all and that’s fine.

Floor question:

A popular tweet from a NZ celeb with 35,000 Followers, loads of engagement: "Chur G, how is it?" That begs the question of there’s loads of crap out there and what value does that add? Where do we go to get quality content, as even using hashtags have loads of nonsense. And how do brands outsource/create themeselves quality content (video, content etc) – where do we go to get quality content and how do brands create that?

Deborah: It means, everyone is their own publisher through social media and it means that we no longer rely on media. We don’t have to rely on the NZ Herald anymore and have them destroy our press releases!

Dave Fisher: Content aggregation is a HUGE thing, and trust is a value that people will look to.

Floor question:

Best practice is to always mention you got it for free. My trust is reduced by 1% when I hear later that Vaughn got it for free. How do I get my 1% trust back? (from @KiwiEric)

Vaughn Davis – I understood that readers know we get this stuff given (movie tickets free etc) and that is widely understood these days.

27 March 2013