My Dad died a few years ago. After over 50 years of marriage Mum depended a lot on him especially for all financial matters and bill paying. With early stage dementia she is muddled at times and relies on my sister and I to handle all bills and paperwork etc. We do worry about her living alone but she hates the thought of living with either of us (doesn’t want to be a burden) or going into a home (that is for ‘old’ people). With good neighbours and regular checking she keeps going. But that is another story.

Why blog about it? Because of some sales tactics which must have been used by an energy company to get Mum to change gas suppliers. She has no idea where her gas and electricity comes from and leaves the details and bills to my sister. Mum is very careful who she opens the door to. Yet somehow a sales person from her electricity supplier gained access. They must have realised within minutes Mum is a little muddled at the best of times. Yet somehow they convinced her to sign a contract for gas supply and give them her bank details. The first we knew of it was when British Gas wrote to Mum to say ‘sorry you were leaving us’. Mum showed us the letter as she was distressed and said she had never seen anyone or signed anything.

When my sister found out she rang both British Gas and the offending electricity supply company. The later said they would cancel the contract and re-connect Mum to BG. Fair enough (and for their prompt action I have not named them here)....but it still leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.    

So what has been happening in the last few days?

Over on Scoble I think we are seeing a new trend. Senator Edwards used ‘A List’ bloggers and the blogosphere the other day together with traditional media to announce his run for the 2008 US Presidency. At the recent Le Web 2.0 conference in Paris the second day had a number of presentations by French politicians participating in their Presidential race.

My prediction for 2007 – blogging will become a mainstream communication tool for UK politicians. Why? Bloggers are mainly aged 16 – 35+. This is the group that is least likely to vote and most immune to traditional marketing communications (TV and press adverts, party political broadcasts and posters). But is most connected by the use of social media. Smart politicians know that. To get them engaged and active in politics will pay dividends at the next election not only for the system generally but for whichever party wins their ‘hearts and minds’. One interesting aspect is the ‘long tail’ and its relevance to party funding. Will an active blogging strategy mean new potential funding sources or ‘e-foot soldiers’ to mobilise the vote?

The big unknown - will blogging become 'mainstream' for business? My prediction - no - but well on the way to becoming so.

I often wonder if we buy presents we would rather we got ourselves?

This year was a case in point. While the kids (aged 10 and 13) were upstairs watching the Vicar of Dibley the adults were downstairs signing their hearts out to a karaoke machine that was a present for the kids. In a 100% turnaround it was the kids who had to tell the adults to ‘keep the noise down’ as they couldn’t watch their programme!!

I hope you got the present you wanted or at least got to play with it!

Best wishes for 2007.

(Sorry. This post is late - my Christmas present of a webcam somehow clashed with my laptops software and stopped me gaining access to my desktop icons or the internet. The result was days of frustration.) 

Just back from a walk in the woods to collect holly and ivy. Christmas carols playing, we are now decorating the house to make it welcoming for friends and family next week.

This traditional approach contrasts with the modern way we are approaching shopping this year.

For the first time we have bought most of our presents online. It’s not that we dislike the experience of going out shopping. Far from it. We do. But at this time of year you face increasing traffic congestion, jams and hard to find parking spaces.

So what are we doing? Amazon gets our custom for books, DVD’s, PC games and some electronic goodies. Other specialist sites will be getting our custom too this year. We use customer and magazine reviews to help narrow choices and then look at what places have good deals and availability. Car parking fees and the cost of petrol now matches or exceeds the price of postage and packing when buying online so it is a financially neutral decision.

The power of search engines, online stores and payment was highlighted just before we went for our walk.

Someone said they wanted a bow and arrow for their Christmas present! Now that was a totally new one on us. Where do you go for this? Traditionally I would have looked in Yellow Pages and possibly driven miles to find a specialist site or even given up and got socks, DVD and books!

The solution. Google it! (Note: Now Google is officially a verb as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as at June 2006) Result? Lists of shops and information sites all over the country. The second shop we looked at had a great web site and a phone number to ring. In three rings it was answered – not by a call centre but someone working in the shop itself. Small and specialist it was using a web site to increase its visibility and presence. Rather than simply sell us one of the kits they had on offer they talked us through all the options. This involved talking about the physical characteristics of the person we were buying the present for. This impacts the size of the bow and arrows and weight of pull. A new world of archery technology for us novices! Using the web site pictures they guided us through everything we needed. Within 5 minutes the order was placed, money paid and shipping arranged. We know one person who will be really happy this year – even if a little short on socks compared to normal.

Now for the Christmas dinner food and drink. Can we Google that?

At a recent conference StrategyOne, an Edelman subsidiary presented interesting data on the state of text blogging in Europe. Whilst the research looked at political engagement rather than B2B or B2C communication it did give an interesting overview.

The highlights:

• 23% people in the UK and 22% in France read blogs weekly (US is 27%)
• Almost 3 in 10 people took action after reading a blog  (in this research that resulted in attending a meeting, writing to newspapers or a politician etc)
• On average in most European markets twice as many males as females read blogs (US only 25% more male)
• Except in UK age (younger are more active) did not mean more action taken (US is reverse – older take more action)
• ‘Influencers’* are 50% to 300% more likely to blog than others.

For politicians this shows that one way to engage with disenchanted potential voters is to use blogs and social media tools.

In the UK active membership of all political parties is falling and so the average age of members is increasing. Mobilising the ‘youth vote’ is critical.

What does this mean for business?

1. HR - blogs are a way to engage with potential future employees. Current employee blogs are a great way to showcase what it is really like to work for you and ensure you attract the type of person with the right ‘attitudinal’ fit.

2. Marketing/Sales – depending on your target market there are active prospects out there! 22% of people in Europe say they blog. Younger people more so. These numbers are growing fast.

3. Customer Services – blogs are a great tool to build and sustain customer relations. With this platform up-sell and cross-sell becomes easier.

* Defined as people already engaging in a number of dialogue type activities (attend meetings, write to newspapers and politicians)

The traditional graduate recruitment programmes such as 'Milk Rounds', advertising and 'open days' can take a lot of effort and budget to manage.

HR departments are looking at inventive ways to maintain recruitment activities but reduce costs. A few years ago we produced a multi-media CD 'Open House' for an NHS Trust. They used it to supplement their actual recruitment 'open days' as part of the pre-information pack. Whilst it worked well at the time new technology would allow us to deliver content in a different way today.

Jim Stoud in a recent blog highlighted what Accenture are doing with blogs to help the recruitment process. Whilst I am not totally convinced that the web site design would really appeal to new graduates it does show how podcasts can be used.

We are aware of a number of companies that are starting to use audio and video podcasts as a way of helping senior management communicate regularly with employees. Whist 'face-to-face' meetings and presentations are always prefered the size and geographic spread of offices and employees makes this impossible except for big set-piece annual events. Podcasting is a great tool to keep employees informed in an engaging way while being cost effective.

It's always fun we we get access to new kit to use on video shoots. Underwater lighting is no exception. (Not so sure about the trunks though!)

Anyone out there want to get creative in a swimming pool or ideally 2 weeks somewhere hot in the next few weeks?

Caption suggestions always welcome!

I remember my time in corporate marketing when we spent a fortune on customer research. How did customers regard us and our products and services? What issues did they have? How did they rate the competition? What did they like and dislike about our product and services? 

We spent time and effort setting up and supporting user groups and incentivised the return of warranty cards to get input. We never seemed to have enough. The Customer Services teams had feedback that was incredibly useful to product development. Our Market Research and Ad Agencies organised focus groups to get feedback. Now just how valuable having 6 people each in Germany, France, UK, Italy and Spain - 30 people in total - help guide a multi-million £ campaign I am not sure? Ofcourse we wanted more - many more people - but the expenses were huge!

Senior management was always pushing to set up customer visits for them to ensure we were 'on the pulse' of what was happening. Did they not realise how carefully the customers were selected? No sales person when asked to nominate a name would put foward someone who would be brutally truthful. Would they really risk having a customer 'rant' to senior management? Even if they had said they wanted to hear it - 'warts and all' - very few people would be brave enough to do just that.

Fast forward to today. The internet and now blogging and social media tools like YouTube have changed forever the relationship between customer and manufacturer or supplier.

Whether you want it or not people will voice an opinion - good or bad - on your product and service. Others will join the conversation and within short order you will have a group of people providing far more comment than years of research will have ever provided. If the customers feel ignored or worse still somehow dismissed thenyou had better be prepared for 'rants'. 

What can companies do?

1. Ignore it and hope it will go away. (It won't)

2. Fight it and hope it will go away (It won't)

3. Join in the conversation

Those that have joined in have had their moments but overall the experience has been beneficial for everyone.

For an interesting comment on this whole area check out the Church of the Customer Blog and see an interview with Ben Mcconnell on YouTube.

Tomorrow is the end of an era.

The Open University is stopping broadcasting as new forms of distance learning such as the internet and DVD's takes over. These have been integrated into many courses already so the 'switch off' had to happen some time.

Having been an OU student for the last 4 years I can honestly say I will miss the programmes. They were a useful way of adding to information from text books and course materials even if some were looking a little dated.

I understand that there are also plans to cut back on Residential Schools and the frequency of tutorials. I think this would be a real shame as human interaction really helps with learning and understanding.

Next year - assuming I pass the assigments and exam - I hope to graduate with a Psychology degree. This will be the same year that my daughter finishes her degree at Bristol. Hopefully a double-graduation celeration! Although I am no spring chicken I will be a lot younger than the oldest person to graduate from the OU. They were 94.

One of the frustrations of using PC based software rather than dedicated kit in an edit suite is the loss of really fine tuning.

The other day that was brought home. I had recorded a contribution for the European Podcast Summit of one of their guest speakers - Dr Jo Wills of EUFIC. I used Audacity on my laptop to edit out the start and end comments and tighten one or two bits. But either my fingers or lack of skill (I prefer to believe the former but to be honest it was the later) meant I had made a 'botch' of one part.

The great news was the team in the studio were able to fix it before it was due to go live. However it did highlight again the importance of a process for quality control. I know in some parts of the blogosphere any 'editing' is frowned on as not being 'authentic' but if you care about your audience you want them to have the best experience possible.

Over on Shel's blog he provided some thoughful suggestions on how to make your blog more effective.

Wise words and worth applying.

Yesterday we tried something a bit different. Earlier in the week I recorded a podcast that will be used by Anita at the European Podcasting Summit.

Normally I drop the minidisc off at the studio and either 'help' one of the studio engineers fine tune it or usually leave it to them. It's great fun working in the studio but there is not always time and (even more important) I do know my limitations. These guys have spent years working in audio and video editing. They don't need me to supervise them!

This time we tried something a bit different. After recording the interview I transfered it onto my laptop and used Audacity editing software to do some basic editing. I must admit it was trial and error - and more of the later than I would have liked but after about 30 minutes I was happy that we had pulled together something the studio team could 'polish'. The file transfer was nice and easy as I had the studio talk me throught it.

A hour later the studio team had cleaned up my editing and done the voice-over and added the music.

As a process it worked well however the use of file transfer from a remote location to the studio did reduce the quality from what we would normally have if we had used the original file in the edit suite. 

I also learnt or re-learnt a personal lesson. When you do all stages of a job you get a much better appreciation of what others do and the skills and knowledge they bring to bear. I have got frustrated in the past when the studio engineers have taken what I consider an overlong period of time to edit a recording. Now I understand why. 

Sorry guys.  

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We get involved in some great communication projects. We are still awaiting the commission for a month long shoot in somewhere hot in the middle of Winter on an annual contractual basis. Until then we do other stuff....

One recent project we have just been finally editing in the studio is for an industrial product. Our brief was to create a communication tool that would educate and train as well as promote the product and brand. It needed to fit in with the overall corporate brand design but we were to host the video on our site.

The filming was a mix of 'in-studio' and on location shots. We also had a number of still images that needed to be included.

The final product can be seen here. You will see that the video hosting page looks exactly like the company web page in format and links back to the site. This allows total flexibility without the client having to worry about their server capacity or performance. The client can create a 'button' on their site so people landing on the home page can access it simply or just direct 'traffic' to the hosted page safe in the knowledge that people will think it is part of the main site and have 'click-access' back.

We are currently tracking web traffic and will update you in a later blog.

Make a date in your diaries - March 19th and 20th 2007, Copethorne Tara Hotel, Kensington.

This will be the first European Podcasting Summit from First Conferences. They organised the Summit in the US earlier this year.

We spoke to Anita Yaa Agyeman, the summit organiser and manager about her experiences of running the US event and planning for the European version. In the podcast she shares with us her findings on the differences between the US and European markets. She also tells us how important case studies from organisations who are already doing podcasts will be.

We will attending the Summit with two of our clients - the Company of Information Technologists and the European Food Information Council.

Check out our podcast interview with Shel Isreal. Shel is the co-author with Robert Scoble of the book, Naked Conversations - the top selling book of corporate blogging.

In the interview Shel compares progress in the US to Europe. In the US the take up of blogging has not been as fast as they both thought but he does point out that in whilst in February 2006 only 2 Fortune 500 companies were blogging - by October 2006 that had grown to 36. But this still means that over 90% are not blogging.

He sees traditional marketing and communication practies as the causes of delay but feels that the pressure from consumers will force a change of attitude.