I saw a story on GMTV this morning about how we apparently all hate our colleagues. A new report says millions of us get annoyed by our pesky work ‘mates’ – bad news when you’re having to sit in a room with them for the majority of your life!

The list of annoyances include using other people’s possessions, pulling a sickie, talking loudly and leaving desks in a mess. I’m guilty of at least two – I have unfortunately become renowned for my stapler steals and my fog horn voice gossiping about last night’s TV across the office. But messy desks really do grate on me.

I’ve just done a quick poll in our office and the main gripes are loud desk eaters and people who don’t make brews (guilty as charged on the latter, in fact Big Chris recently nicknamed me ‘Nina No Brews’). What are yours? Mine is definitely people who moan, who, according to the report, are lost causes and you should just do your best to avoid them.

Have to say it made me feel quite lucky as I like all my work mates at Brahm – in fact most of them are friends outside the office. There’s a lot of love in this room (got to stop nicking their staplers though).

Stapler: property of Chris Hughes, not Nina Hands!

 Posted by Lady Nina Hands

If a few people discuss your brand’s latest campaign around the office watercooler, perhaps someone two desks down might overhear the conversation.

But the same number of people posting their views on the net (via blogs, forums and uploads) can in theory be ‘overheard’ by everyone with web access worldwide. Not only that, but their views will remain visible online indefinitely.  

Even if your brand’s marketing activity takes place entirely offline, it’s still likely that it will be discussed online.  And the online environment is about as easy to control as a swarm of bees.

Which means that any marketing activity, however routed in traditional media channels it may be, needs to keep a watchful eye on how it is being received by the online community.  Because not all online buzz is positive.

posted by GemmaT

Facebookers are perhaps unaware that when they upload to the site, according to new terms of service technically they transfer all rights to their content over to facebook.

Facebook made it clear that they had never claimed ownership of material that users upload and the terms were intended to protect content on other users pages should a user delete their own, e.g. in wall to wall conversations.

However this does raise a real question about the ownership of material uploaded to the internet.  Creative Commons licences only go so far in protecting the copyright of uploaders such as bloggers or facebookers and the terms of use of many social networking sites may override any efforts to protect ownership of content. 

In addition, it turns out that the whole thing can still be subject to Human Error as Sweetney found out when a ‘low level production assistant’ at Fox TV, ‘borrowed’ a photo of her dog Truman from her blog and used it in their NFL holiday broadcasts.

Even brands and businesses who chose to upload content to sites such as flickr and facebook need to be aware that they may be technically relinquishing their ownership of this content. 

More importantly, lack of understanding, misinterpretation, ignorance or blatant disregard of licensing by internet users will inevitably result in branded content turning up in entirely unexpected ways and places…

posted by gemmaT

Update, 20/02/09: 

Following a lot of fuss and upset across both online and offline media (including a facebook protest group that gained 121,000 members in just a few days), facebook have returned to their old terms of use.

So (at least for now), the company’s right to your original content expires when you delete your account.

There’s a massive array of social media tools and networks out there and it seems to me that there’s also a perceived pressure among digital natives to be actively involved in all of them.

But perhaps we are starting to enter an age of more Discerning Social Networking.  Which means not only sharing our lives and interacting only with the groups we really care about, but using and integrating only the social networking tools that really work for us.

For example, I tried out Twitter 18 months ago but at the time it didn’t really do much for me.  So although I still keep my eye on a few Twitterers via RSS feeds, I’ve deleted my account.  I have profiles on facebook and LinkedIn with links to my personal blog, but I’m not on myspace or bebo.  I use flickr, but mostly via a feed into my blog’s sidebar as well as using RSS to view my friend’s latest pics. 

In short, I’m choosing to use the tools that work for me and interacting with them in whichever way suits my needs best.  Maybe the ways in which we chose to interact with social networking sites will become as important as the actual social interactions which happen via them? 

posted by gemmaT

One of the Swampies emailed me about my post on spring cleaning in social media, commenting that it had made her think about how the whole concept of privacy is actually becoming outdated.  She reasoned that if privacy is being replaced by a more open, online society happily broadcasting their lives via flickring, facebooking and twittering, the politicians of the future will be digital natives, used to both sharing and seeing outrageous content online.  Which might make the tabloid ‘splash’ a mere footnote in history in a more permissive online society.

But perhaps the tabloid press will be fondly viewed as pussycats compared with the cumulative tiger power of bloggers and citizen journalists (digital natives themselves), unhindered by the laws of libel and with cameraphone always at the ready.  With information (however true it might be) able to be disseminated across the globe in minutes via an electronic version of chinese whispers, the potential for inaccurate or sensational reporting is immense.  And unlike traditional newspapers, today’s blog post isn’t going to be out of mind by tomorrow as fish and chip wrapping.

So not just individuals but brands too are going to need someone to watch out for their digital reputation.  Someone to watch their digital back.  Someone like us.  : -)

posted by gemmaT

This week marks the official launch of OnVisible, and I’m excited. Very excited as it goes. I’ve been doing online PR here at Brahm for some time now, and as our expertise continues to grow, it feels great to get the chance to shout louder about it.

What makes a good online PR person?
So what does it take to be an online communicator? Go back a few years and digital whizzes and PRs were a million miles apart, in fact they pretty much lived on different planets. (You remember? When people stockpiled water and candles because of the forthcoming millennium meltdown!).

As I’m sure you know, things are very different now. As companies begin to wrestle the beast that is online reputation management, you need creatures which embrace the principles of PR and mix it with a deep technical understanding of the workings of the web.

I, and indeed the rest of the Brahm PR team, am lucky enough to work alongside the Swamp at Brahm team – over 40 digital experts who work for the likes of Umbro, Heinz and GlaxoSmithKline. Over the last couple of years we’ve begun to work closer and closer together, until we speak each other’s language and the OnVisible team could be born.

Knowing your page rank from your link juice
So now I know my raw link juice from my cloaking, and my meta tag from my canonicalisation (OK, I’m just showing off now). And my colleagues who are techies at heart understand the subtleties of messaging and how we use our unending determination to reach the information gatekeepers.

In fact we’ve even created an animation to show how we’ve fused these two types of communicators together, which we will be showing you soon.

Stronger together
So as we launch our OnVisible team as a harmonious group of unique and wise beasts, I hope you will visit us often, to join us on our journey.
Posted by Charlotte Hancock

I’ve been wading through lots of Social Media Predictions for 2009 (including Peter Kim’s excellent piece) and one of the trends that kept cropping up was Cleansing.

It seems that 2009 is going to be about streamlining, sanitising and decluttering our online lives, ‘defriending’ people on facebook you haven’t actually seen since your schooldays and hacking away at your RRS feed until its short enough that you actually have time to read the posts it turns up.

The New Year always brings resolutions to simplify our lives and it looks like 2009 might be the turning point when this kicks in online.  If nothing else, we need to future-proof our digital footprint. 

The politicians of 2030 are currently at university, happily posting drunken pictures of themselves on facebook.  The tabloid press of the future is going to have a field day dredging up digital evidence of the past misdemeanors of figures in the public eye, with facebook, flickr, myspace and twitter being mercilessly scoured for any hint of scandal.  I don’t think the message has got through to the generation of ‘digital natives’ currently having the time of their lives at uni that what you upload now may come back to haunt you years later. 

A helpful hint for enthusiastic uploaders – just ask yourself ‘would I want my parents or future employer to see this?’  If the answer is no, step away from the computer…

posted by gemmaT

From PR to digital marketing and all that’s in-between – I would like to introduce myself to the online world as a newly converted technophile. The ever-changing dynamic of the ‘www’ never ceases to surprise and intrigue me – the ‘what’s next’ factor is definitely keeping me on the edge of my swivel chair. And that’s exactly what I love about it.

I’ve recently noted that incomprehensible dots and shapes are bizarrely the latest marketing tool advocated by not just key players in the retail sphere from where it originated – Japan (such as Puma Japan), but by music artists (e.g. the Pet Shop Boys), and the film industry on an international scale. It was recently used to promote the DVD release of 28 Weeks Later in London, and the latest James Bond: Quantum of Solace in Australia.

The dots and shapes I’m referring to are barcodes. The barcode concept has been jolted into the 21st Century as they are no longer being used to merely differentiate products and prices at the supermarket check-out – but to also store information on a brand, promotion, person – you name it! Once the barcode (‘2-D’ or ‘QR’ code, DataMatrix and Microsoft Tag) has been ‘snapped’ on a software-enabled camera phone, it links to digital content that can be viewed via a mobile phone’s internet browser – genius!

Umbro did a world-first early last year by placing a QR (Quick Response) code on the care label of their new England away kit. Once ‘snapped’, this led over 50,000 England fans to an exclusively accessible, mobile site - created by our very own digital division, Swamp @ Brahm.

It’s this new technology coupled with an increased demand from people to be informed and entertained that has led to many brands in the UK jumping on the band wagon.

For the first time, Pepsi will see a big PR push of the QR technology into Britain after recently unveiling its plans to print over 400 million barcodes on its products. The barcode will hyperlink consumers to websites, games, competitions etc. in an attempt to interact with target audiences. Since the announcement, the Times Online recognised that City AM (free financial newspaper) and Yell (Yellow pages) are also set to entice British consumers in such a way.

This trend cements the notion that mobile phones are being viewed as an integral platform to view information and content by consumers about, well, anything.

It’s common knowledge that third-party generated content is seen to be more credible than that generated by the brand itself as it’s deemed more objective – however, self-published content still has an integral role to play especially when it comes to informing consumers.  But, it goes without saying that perceptions held – particularly in today’s ‘search and share’ society that no matter how positive or negative they may be, they can be helped or hindered by what third-parties are saying.

Although it seems that the purpose of companies embracing this new technology is for brands to interact and engage with its consumers in a new and exciting way, as a PR it raises the question – is there an opportunity for me to use this communication method by way of reputation management? This is something I’m currently exploring for a couple of clients – watch this space!

Posted by Charlotte Brophy

After working in PR for five years, I’m always looking at new ways to promote my client, add something fresh to a campaign or just throw something different into my PR toolkit.

When I began working in this industry, social media wasn’t really mixed into the PR pot, yet now, there are endless possibilities to bring our PR campaigns well and truly into the digital age.

The changing face of the media never ceases to amaze me.  Media coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration really demonstrated the multitude of channels available to us, both as consumers and PR professionals. If you weren’t content with tuning into the live, streaming coverage on BBC or Sky News, there was always the real-time commentary from other sources.  Not only could you log on to the constant updates on news websites or click onto  camera-phone coverage on You Tube, you even the chance to see the trivialities of the day through Twitter feeds from those in the crowd, anxious to share their own experience of the day’s historic events.

It really showed that we’re living in an online world, where news travels so much faster and where stories are often broken or made online.

Now, I’m the first to admit, I’m no technology whiz.  I’ve spent years hitting the phones, selling in stories and helping clients achieve creative campaigns but have only just dabbled with social media.

Now it’s definitely time to challenge myself and that’s exactly why I’ve joined the OnVisible team at Brahm.  I’m excited about embarking on this journey into the OnVisible world and look forward to unveiling the latest wonders the web has to offer.

Posted by Jessica Davenport.

We’re finally here, after months of planning and preparation we are close to launching OnVisible to the world.

Being a mother of two young children I’m tempted to compare it to getting married and having a family.  You search for years to find the right partner, someone on the same wavelength, that shares the same vision and then when you’re settled, and sure….you procreate.  Not quite that straightforward I know, but you get the picture.

OnVisible is very much a partnership and born out of a meeting of minds between Swamp and Brahm PR. 

Brahm acquired Swamp back in December 2006 and since then we’ve been talking and sharing and working together to develop our OnVisible baby.  We’ve been working in online PR for years but OnVisible marks a real step change in how we’ll develop and implement campaigns for our clients, and how we’ll market our expertise.