Our good friends and clients at UC Finance kicked off the month with a campaign launch prompted by research suggesting that of the estimated 200,000 freelancers currently working through an Umbrella Company in the UK, 50% could be losing up to 11% of their annual earnings in unnecessary tax and charges. The firm reckons that a contractor earning £350 a day could save £10,000 including costs by setting themselves up as a one man limited company, and is determined to tell the market all about it.

Cue a hectic bout of social media engagement, blogger outreach and good old fashioned public relations activity …

Meanwhile, leading ICT integrator SCC announced that it has partnered with independent software vendor IIZUKA to provide the UK Pensions Ombudsman with a secure Cloud-based Case Management system via its Pan-Government accredited service. This is significant news not only because individuals complaining to the government-appointed regulator will enjoy an improved, richer service, but also because it demonstrates the way in which the G-Cloud will enable SMEs to sell innovative, flexible service direct to the heart of government. A win-win situation if ever we heard it.

To top it all off, two new contracts arrived on my desk this morning. One will see us launching an exciting new web based service in January (more of which you’ll hear in due course), while the other sees our content marketing team begin production of a twice weekly blog for a major technology company. Given that certain members of the team have been evangelising using the newsroom production model to produce high-quality, consistent online content since 1999, we’re quietly satisfied to see that particular service offering taking off in a big way.

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Generating social media buzz, press coverage and more than a few giggles, the event combined a blend of scripted action and fast-thinking improvisation that saw the invited audience drawn into – and participating in – an evening of surprises designed to demonstrate the advanced navigation capabilities and power of the M8 application.

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He predicts that within five years agencies will habitually deploy a strategic mix of paid, earned, shared and owned media, monitoring it in real time and using a slew of predictive and behavioral data analytics to hunt down and deliver messages to target audiences and stakeholders on demand.

For our money, he’s right on the button. While many of its practices and procedures have remained relatively static as the world has changed around it, the public relations business now faces a digital global marketplace where real time news and infinite reach have become a day-to-day reality, and sector leaders like Mr Weiss have recognised that while the label may remain the same, the industry’s strategic and philosophical approach will have to be very different if firms are to flourish in the 21st Century.

As the PR Week post makes clear, data-driven agencies will necessarily employ a swathe of analysts, CPC experts, SEO wallahs and syndication geeks to make sense of the evolving digital networks. At DPRi, however, we believe that this influx of numerate expertise will have to be accompanied by a new breed of Digital PR practitioner, creating a generation of highly competent, highly responsive brand journalists capable of responding to the demands of a media landscape that travels at the speed of light.

When news breaks it breaks, and in the accelerating social media world that leaves little time for the relaxed drafting and consideration of responses so beloved of today’s PROs. In five years time agencies will have to be prepared to hit the wires with appropriate information at the drop of a hat, while account managers not competent in everything from the crafting of top grade news copy and incisive data analysis to mastery of social media dialectics will struggle to remain relevant.

All of this is going to require a client side shift too. Not only will companies be forced  to evolve streamlined messaging approval mechanisms to cope with the digital media’s lust for speed, but they’ll also have to accustom themselves to a a broader relationship with their PR agency. With the public relations remit stretching to encompass internal staff and stakeholder outreach, unified communications strategies that blend the press, social, investor, B2B and B2C channels are already becoming an unavoidable reality, and enterprises will need agencies capable of delivering their message expertly down all of them.

Welcome to the future of Digital PR: Less buzz, more substance.

The post Wired, Proactive, International & Data Driven: The PR Agency of the future appeared first on Digital PR UK.

After several weeks of planning, the campaign kicked off ahead of schedule last week following Apple’s disastrous new Maps launch for IO6 users, an event that offered the company a golden PR opportunity to get off to a running start by offering iPhone users a slick, feature-rich alternative that is actually capable of helping them get to the places they want to go.

Leading app commentator Stuart Dredge kicked off with first news of the launch, closely followed by Coolsmartphone’s James Pearce with a cracking take on why M8 might be the answer for iPhone users suddenly seeking a mapping solution.

But things really got going after the official launch event on October 4, when our friends at JWT London conducted an evening of fun, mystery and high drama designed to demonstrate the app’s ability to provide users not only with full turn-by-turn navigation, but also a rich variety of local information ranging from local amenity reviews to the location of the nearest cashpoint. Featuring a menu of gangsters, molls and high-speed art theft, it was just the ticket for showcasing Telmap’s work both effectively and with a touch of flair.

Setting off the Digital PR campaign with a bang, Thenextweb’s excellent Paul Sawer produced an in-depth and authoritative review of the app that quickly caught the attention of the social media networks, picking up tweets from a plethora of highly influential commentators including @RevezNexus, @Rahimpro and @OnlineMarketeer, to name but a few. With the DPRi team working flat out behind the scenes, a slew of exhaustive but  positive reviews followed soon after from Brand Republic’s Gordon MacMillan, About London’s Laura Porter and Tech Digest TV’s Gerald Lynch.

With the online public relations strategy delivering a set of results that have sent the download graphs for M8 on both Google Play and the App Store spiralling sharply afterwards in a particularly pleasing manner, the M8 campaign looks set to be a solid success. And with further announcements and updates for the app set to be released over the next few weeks, there’s plenty more to come …

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