A bit of writing elsewhere and a change in focus for the blog

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Gary

A slight change of direction will be coming up on this blog, I suspect, certainly regarding the social media posts. Anything social-related will probably go on the Ruder Finn Dot Comms blog. Anything else will probably be here (yes, the dregs. Sorry about that).

And here’s the first post: an analysis of when brands should and shouldn’t piggyback on an internet meme, with specific reference to the Harlem Shake.

And I’m still doing the football writing, when time allows. Here’s me at The Two Unfortunates imagining what if Exeter City manager Paul Tisdale had landed the Swansea City job.

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A special project: A podcast on football and homophobia

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Gary

It’s not often that I use this place to hawk out my football-related work (you’d all get bored quickly, I’m sure), but the latest podcast I’ve recorded is about more than just sport.

For the last two months, I’ve been working on a special one-off twofootedtackle podcast on attitudes to homosexuality within football and what the authorities are doing to tackle homophobia in the game.

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Who owns social media?

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Gary

Social media’s pretty well established now but the question of who should take ownership for activity is no closer to being answered. PR Week have recently been attempting to answer this, making an argument for a host of different disciplines, while Econsultancy have argued that social media shouldn’t be owned by a PR or ad agency. I tend to agree with them.

Social media is a multi-faceted beast. It can be used to break stories, promote campaigns and brands, deal with reputation management, drive sales, and nurture and develop an enthusiastic community of fans and followers.

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Death of a thousand cuts for local commercial radio

Posted on July 2, 2010 by Gary

Last week’s news that Global Radio is to shut half of its local Heart stations is thoroughly depressing, not least if you’re in my old area of Devon, where the five local Heart stations in Barnstaple, Exeter, Torquay, Plymouth and the South Hams will be merged into one Devon-wide station based in Exeter. My thoughts go out to my former colleagues who will face a battle to keep their jobs.

Let’s put the sentimental aspect of a former GCap employee out of the way for a moment. This is a further blow to teenagers and graduates wanting to start a career in broadcasting.

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Journalism, jobs, and not much changes

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Gary

Heard the one about the journalism graduate offered a job for £10k in London? Yes, that is an actual position that came up in conversation with a friend the other day. The experience, work-wise, sounds excellent. The experience, life-wise, probably amounts to renting out a cardboard box under Hammersmith Bridge.

I only mention because ever since last month there’s been an ongoing debate rumbling on, started mainly by Ed Ceasar’s Sunday Times piece, Hold The Front Page, I Want To Be On It, where he details the lengths – and financial pain – journalism graduates have to go through to get onto a national paper. The picture painted was somewhat bleak and depressing.

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Bedtime for the blog

Posted on November 18, 2009 by Gary

Mark Twain once said it’s far better to keep your mouth shut and let people assume you’re an idiot than to open it and confirm their assumptions. God alone knows what Twain would have made of blogging, but it’s a sentiment I can appreciate and, for the foreseeable future on here you’re all going to have to assume I’m an idiot.

Or, to put it less obliquely, I’m halting blogging. Indefinitely. I may resume a few months down the line. It may even be a few weeks. Or it may not. But, frankly, it’s probably better to write this than do a series of half-arsed posts, all of which that start with “apologies for the lack of updates…”, an opening that rapidly gets tedious by the fifth letter of the first word.

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Predicting reality

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Here’s an interesting thing. On Saturday I, along with nearly 20 million others in Britain, was watching Britain’s Got Talent (both for work and pleasure). I also, predictably, was on Twitter, and had several trending and tracking tools – Twitscoop, Twitterfall, etc – open (because I’m a geek and I like tracking the conversation, m’kay).

Once all the acts had performed, it was obvious that Diversity were trending stronger than any other act over Twitter. “If,” I thought, “Twitter is anything to go by, Diversity will win.”

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Our survey says…

Posted on May 8, 2009 by Gary Andrews

… or why you should take Twitter lists with a pinch of salt.

There’s nothing a geek likes more than a good list and as Twitter is full of geeks, there’s nothing us geeks like more than a good list about Twitter. It’s pretty common to see lists of top Twitterers on certain topics or locations.

Of course the lists also can provide a useful guide to who’s who and who’s getting it right, especially where brands are concerned, especially as more and more companies realise it’s worth being on Twitter.

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If you’re a (radio) journalist, Audioboo is dead exciting

Posted on April 10, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Occasionally a service pops onto the internet that’s just brimming with potential for journalism (and the rest of the media). It doesn’t need any complicated explanations – you just plug and go and start having a lot of fun. Audioboo is one of those services.

Ostensibly it’s a very simple app for the iPhone that allows you to record a ‘boo’, which gets sent to the Audioboo website, where there are also the standard social networking functions. You can also embed it into your own website. This boo can literally be anything, but it’s normally short and snappy – rarely over two minutes. It’s a bit like an aural version of Seesmic or Twitter, although that’s not entirely accurate.

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Come on PR, you can do better than this

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Gary Andrews

Somehow, somewhere, one of the email addresses I use at work has got itself onto some kind of PR mailing list. How this happened I’m not exactly sure, but it’s the only explanation I can think of for the sudden influx of assorted press releases landing in the inbox each day.

Given that the address in question is a PR address, I doubt they’ll be getting coverage any time soon.

Interestingly, I’ve had a few colleagues and fellow PRs mention that they’ve been getting assorted press releases as well. There are clearly a few people out there in my chosen industry who haven’t done their homework.

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