MarCom Professional

I have been blogging at Pudding Relations for 2 1/2 years ago – not a bad run at all. But the irregularity of blog posts appearing there made me think that what I was writing about didn’t interest me as much as it used to. A change of direction was needed.

After a conversation one night with Stephen Davies from PR Blogger, rather than writing about an area that is pretty crowded – Digital PR and Social Media – it made sense that I should write about more personal subjects. Bright One has taken off in recent months, Twestival (led by the magnificent Amanda Rose) was a worldwide success story and has become a social media case study, and I’m becoming more interested and involved with other projects outside the world of PR. More...

Mass excitment in the 33 Digital office today as it was announced that Foursquare had launched in London. As CNet reported:

“Through a tweet, Foursquare announced that it will be bringing the service to London this week. This is Foursquare’s second European city. Amsterdam was first, but London is a whole different animal. London is the top Twitter-using city in the world, so people may be open to a new social service like Foursquare.”

We’ve written about Foursquare before on the 33 Digital blog and Drew Benvie covered it in the run up to launch way back at the beginning of August, but if you’re not sure what all the fuss is about, here’s an explanation from Foursqaure itself: More...

I often find that it can be difficult to find ideas and inspiration for your PR campaigns if you only read within the PR industry. It could be argued Online PR is even harder to find inspiration, as ideas spread so quickly that by the time one campaign has used a tactic effectively it is instantly copied by sveral of others to the point that it becomes almost worthless doing it yourself. So how do you combat this problem?

In order to really differentiate campaigns from competitor’s ones and to create that added value for clients that comes from original inspiring ideas, I keep track of what is happening in other sectors who have a strong and vibrant online community, which they use to create interesting and inspirational campaigns. More...

We’re currently going through the process of redesigning the Bright One website.

It’s been an interesting project, both from the point of view that this is one of the very few times that I’ve been client-side on a project like this and because it’s the first time that I’m in direct control of the budget.

We’ve been working with the lovely team at Dharmafly and the finished site is shaping up to be fantastic, but I came across the below article and wish I had read it before we got started with the project.

I’m cringing at some of the points as I know that I made several similar requests, so I suggest you do too if  you’re about to embark on a new web site project!

You can read the original here. More...

Jonathan Brigden from Porter Novelli got in touch to let me know about the first ever London Digital Week , which is taking place 21st – 27th September and looks like it’s going to be a fantastic inaugral event.

With the Digital Industry getting ever more cosy with the greying of the boundaries between Marketing, PR and Advertising, the week’s conferences, workshops, meet-ups, presentations, networking, parties and exhibitions should bring the digital-related industries even closer together.

The events aim to “further the understanding of digital, to share knowledge within the industry and to showcase the best work of companies in London and the UK to the rest of the world.”

To make the week as inclusive as possible, the organisers of London Digital Week invites anyone who wishes to include their existing event as part of London Digital Week 09, or is interested in creating an event specifically for the Wee More...

This post has been cross-posted to the 33 Digital blog. Read the original post here.

At 33 Digital Towers, we’re always playing with the next big things on the web, looking for the latest tools and services that might add value for our clients and eventually become an integral part of the Digital PR we do every day.

One of the services that has caught our eye recently is foursquare. For those of you that haven’t heard of it, foursquare is all about helping you find new ways to explore the city. As 33 Digital’s Drew Benvie describes it, “foursquare is a new social networking application that has been getting the early adopters spending a little time away from Twitter of late. More...

My previous post was quite a coincidence as the agency I work for, 33 Digital, is hiring. Details below or see the original post here!

“We launched 33 Digital just two months ago and we’ve been fortunate enough to take on some awesome and exciting work since then. With the world generally the way it is, we’re lucky blighters indeed.

Our much-loved clients we love more every day, not only because they continue to expand our remit (although that is one of the reasons we’re hiring) but they ask us to push boundaries too, and that makes for fun work. We’re also doing some barmy new digital type stuff, like train people, audit brands, optimise them on search engines, build their websites, that kind of thing. More...

I was asked by Richard Bailey, editor of Behind the Spin and blogger at PR Studies, to contribute towards inaugral ‘All In A Day’s Work’ feature.

The idea is for PR practitioners to submit diaries of a ‘typical’ day to give students some idea of the challenges, tensions and excitement involved in actually managing public relations campaigns. The diaries will also hopefully give some sense of work and social commitments, with my typical day below.

You can read the orginal article on Behind the Spin here, and if you want to take part in the feature why not get in touch with Richard?

All In A Day’s Work – Ben Matthews

7am: More...

This week sees the deadline for entries to PR Week’s ‘29 under 29′, an annual feature that showcases “the brightest, most inspirational PR professionals from all corners of the industry”.

I admit that I’ve been thinking of entering. 500 words on why you should be featured shouldn’t be too bad, and with projects like Bright One that I’ve worked on alongside the award-nominated client work I’ve been doing, I would hope that I’d be in with a chance of getting in there.

A few industry friends were thinking of gaming the system. Not in a ‘4Chan takes over Time’s 100 Most Influential list‘ way, more a ‘how many of the 29 can we make sure are people that we know?’ kind of way. More...

From a new series of programmes from the BBC - Digital Revolution.