Month: November 2006

Link: US journalists afraid their jobs will be outsourced.

According to Nick Farrell at The Inquirer:
The (International Herald Tribune) article cites a WAN global survey of about 350 newspaper bosses in
Europe, Asia and the United States. They expected outsourcing to
increase, although few were willing to farm out all of their editorial
functions.

Part of the reason is that advertising revenues for print media is
dropping and people are failing to buy hard copies of their news.

The article cites the outsourcing of the business pages of the UK’s Daily Express to India as an example of what could happen in the US.

The article mentions that much of the work being taken by India is the ‘crap hack’ work.

In which case, won’t we see low level ‘crap PR work’ being outsourced to India too?

This story has been the most popular and most emailed at the BBC News site since around 8am this morning.

The key point is that, whichever way you look at it, the numbers of students studying computer science in the UK is in decline. From a peak in 2002/03, numbers of full time undergrads and first year computer science students have been falling year on year. Indeed, UCAS applications for the subject have been falling as well – the applications for 05/06 are down on the previous period, so there is no chance of a reverse of the trend anytime soon.

And according to Professor Nigel Shadbolt, president of the British Computer Society, this means the industry faces a skills crisis.

Unless steps are taken now there will not be enough
qualified graduates to meet the demands of UK industry he warns.

"If we’re not careful, the UK is going to lose its pre-eminent position as a knowledge-based economy,"

So how have we ended up in this sorry state?

According to Professor Shadbolt, there are two key issues.  First, its partly due to poor
teaching – and he calls for a thorough review of the way in which computer science is
taught in schools. And he may have a point. Anecdotal evidence does suggest that what students are taught doesn’t map on to what industry needs.

However, his second reason caught my eye. Apparently, the industry has an image problem, with computer scientists often portrayed on TV and in films as "geeky", says the Prof.

Ah ha! PR to the rescue. It’s all the fault of the media for continuing to portray a stereotyped image of IT types.

But can you really blame perceived "geekiness" as a key reason for people not wanting to study computer science? And I thought geek was cool? Silicon Valley doesn’t have a problem with it.

So although it may be seen as a need for an image remake, methinks the real reasons are different, deeper rooted and more complex – and thus its going to take much more than a PR campaign to reverse the decline….

Daivd Maister’s blog has been sparking some good questions and comments of late.

Worth a look.

I leave it to you gentle reader to decide if Charlie Hoult  is making us an offer 😉

Fighting talk from well known ad man John Hegarty, chairman of BBH, in today’s Marketing Week.

He basically slams brand owners for failing to grasp the opportunity of the Internet.

Among his spikier comments are: "Agencies get kicked a lot – we’re behind the curve according to clients. We’re not. It’s the clients who are behind the curve. They’ve got to understand this is a medium where you’ve got to let go and they don’t want to."

So its all the client’s fault. But surely we on the agency side haven’t yet demonstrated clearly to client’s why and how they can and should let go?

More good stuff from The World’s Leading – this time some comment on the results of the sixth annual 2006 PRWeek/Burson-Marsteller CEO Survey.

Among other things, TWL points out that the headline finding is interesting – namely that the majority (62%) of CEOs
“indicate that gut feelings are highly influential in guiding their
business strategies, while only four in 10 cite internal metrics and
financial information.”

This is not only interesting but downright bizarre.  TWL examines this in the light of recent discussion about the increasing reporting overhead in PR. But this clearly extends to other areas of business. For example, the Narrative Reporting Provisions of the Companies Bill 2007.  Gary Simon from FSN.co.uk has just published a whitepaper on the subject. Even though the OFR never got out of the starting blocks, a Business Review is still a current legal
obligation introduced into the Companies Act 1985 to implement the EU
Accounts Modernisation Directive.

As Gary says: "In the case of a quoted company the Business Review must, to the extent
necessary for an understanding of the development, performance or
position of the company’s business, include –
            
            
             
               

                  

                  

               

               

                  

                  

               

               

                  

                  

               

               

                  

                  

               

               

                

(a)	the main trends and factors likely to affect the future development, performance and position of the company’s business; and
(b)	information about –
(i)	environmental matters (including the impact of the company’s business on the environment),
(ii)	the company’s employees, and
(iii)	social and community issues," Not sure gut instinct will hold much sway in providing answers to any of the above. Also, in the context of PR and marketing, CEOs surely need to take into account the impact of their activity in these areas that are likely to affect the future development, performance and position of the company’s business?

 

According to Latitude (Europe’s leading Search Engine Marketing agency – TWL take note) online searching in the UK financial sector rose by an average of
almost 7% on bad weather days between 7 July and 5 August 2006, but
fell by an average of 11% on good weather days in the same period.

In other words, they are claiming a direct correlation between temperature and search volumes. (And not just any old search volumes mind, but only those in the UK financial sector). May I suggest they go and read Freakonomics which will perhaps enlighten them as to the difference between direct and indirect correlations.

But it was the following quote that had me choking on my coffee:

Andrew Redfern, Director of Innovation at Latitude and author of the
White Paper, commented: “Companies should be using this type of
information to optimize their online marketing campaigns. Data from the
past can be used to predict the future and by knowing when search
traffic volumes are likely to be high and when they’re likely to dip,
companies can adjust their online advertising and use of paid search
listings accordingly.”

Er, even if they could show a correlation between search volumes and weather, that’s still predicated on having accurate weather forecasts – which as we all know, are 100pc spot on every time, right?

Says Rupert G.

According to the dictionary:

maven |ˈmāvən| noun [often with adj. ] informal an expert or connoisseur : fashion mavens.
ORIGIN 1960s: Yiddish.

Masel Tov!

Those delightful folk at World’s Leading (see what I did there TWL?) picked up on my earlier post on the PR Week feature about how PR agencies spend their time.

The full post is worth a read – I’m sure it sums up how many working in PR agencies really feel.

Also, the first time in my life I’ve been described as "Very lovely".