For US clients particularly those tech companies in Silicon Valley, we can offer strong domestic PR capability integrated with seamless and scalable international campaigns without the high cost associated with traditional multinational PR firms or the hassles of managing multiple agencies. For clients based outside USA we can now offer strong US public relations capability covering consumer, corporate, digital, IR and technology, all as part of their international campaigns. Read more

So what is interesting about Disk Storage? Well, a London-based visual effects house Cinesite, a Kodak company, carried out artistic rendering of animation and scene development for the  Warner Bros blockbuster “Clash of the Titans” using a storage system from BlueArc. Also Cinesite is currently working on the following forthcoming releases, “Marmaduke” (Fox), “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” (Fox/Walden) and “John Carter of Mars” (Disney/Pixar), all of which are being produced on the same BlueArc system.

And other customers include: Double Negative Visual Effects (the FX studio behind movies like “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” and “Batman Begins“), Eidos Interactive, Mill Film, Photon VFX and Redchillies.vfx. Most recent success in the sector was when four-time Academy Award® winning New Zealand based visual effects creator Weta Digital relied on a BlueArc storage solution for artistic rendering of groundbreaking animation and scene development for the film “Avatar.”

So its not that you think you have a great product but who is using it and what for that can make it interesting. More on this story

For successful international PR campaigns, it is very important to have PR professionals who understand the local market, know the local media, live the local culture and speak the local language. But this does not have to mean you have to have a retained PR firm in each country.  Much of the management can be handled at a regional level,  for instance campaign coordination, creating regional content and measurement of success.  So  in-country teams focus on personal media outreach and monitoring.

There are also benefits for certain campaigns that may only need to reach an English speaking audience such as in South East Asia,  Middle East or Southern Africa where there are number of regional media in English or in Latin America where Spanish and Portuguese dominate.

Now that we are working in 50 countries and with Regus in 30, it was time to move forward with our plan to establish 10 regional hubs that can cover the whole world. These regional hubs will be

1. London: Western Europe
2. Paris: Southern Europe
3. Munich: DACH region
4. Prague: Central & Eastern Europe
5. Dubai: Middle East
6. Johannesburg: Africa
7. Singapore: Asia
8. Sydney: Australasia
9. Buenos Aires: Latin America
10. San Francisco: North America

Apart from London and Paris, which are owned offices, BondPR regional hubs will be joint ventures with independent local PR firms or experienced professionals who are already working with us. Where possible we will concentrate resources and activity at the regional hub level and bring in any of our established team of local delivery partners in over 80 countries as required.

The aim is to offer one point of contact for the world or the region, so reducing the hassle of coordinating multiple agencies or managing separate campaigns at a country level. This means clients retain control centrally or regionally, ensuring consistent messages, topical content and cost effective use of budget.

So if you want to talk to the world, talk to us, global campaigns just got easier…….. more info

As Regus grew to operate in over 75 countries, so too did the number of PR agencies and it became a  management nightmare. Regus still maintain agencies in 10 key markets  such as UK, USA, France…., but for 30 countries where there were 20 agencies, there is now one. Regus wanted the best support in local markets but through a single point of contact, they selected BondPR, as we offer “a unified cost-effective and results orientated approach, as well as good chemistry and significant global reach.”

The campaign is being built around Regus’s key messages which are particularly relevant at this time of globalisation, cost review and changing work patterns.  Regus  already generates a significant amount of content in the form of news, articles, briefing papers, surveys and research reports. BondPR is tailoring, localising and translating this content to meet the needs of key business and management media around the world.

So being in PR we wrote a news release about this.

We  were already a customer of Regus and look forward to making a significant impact on their further success.

Actually we have been handling international PR campaigns for PR firms in the UK, USA and Germany for a while but now want to extend our partnerships and also offer white label service if required.

BondPR only has direct employees in three countries but has put in place delivery partners in a further 77 countries and is currently active in 30. We add value by making multi-county campaigns simple. We manage the international team and take care of consistency and quality of service, offering one point of contact. However if a PR firm wants just one country we may put them in direct contract with our local office.

As more clients look to manage international campaigns centrally partially due to budget constraints, then this option makes sense, they have their main PR firm whether it is in USA, UK  or wherever and they can use BondPRNet to deliver the campaign and the message as if it was their own team. Yes, it makes multi-country campaigns simple.

So we thought we would help here, to get you started Bond-i has set up its new Bondcast service, driven by our very own Neville Hobson, who has got to be one of the most experienced podcasters on the planet, having presented a show called “For Immediate Release” for four years and also co-written the definitive book on Podcasting. Corporate podcasting should be an integral part of any organization’s PR mix, it’s a valuable medium for communicating your message to a targeted audience - whether that’s customers, prospective staff, media or other key influencers. So listen up, podcast your message……now, you may be heard and eventually seen by the people you want to influence.

So just take the “news” release for what it is, a release of news to everyone. Craft it carefully so your key words and phrases are included and get it out online. so when a real journalist or blogger is researching your field, they find you by hitting on the content you created. And don’t just do one release a month, write more short pieces, even very week, just updates on your company, comments on the market, agenda setting thoughts on your sector. Also make sure your international offices get them too so that it gives ideas they can adapt and amplify locally. But don’t send them unsolicited to journalists, just the online news sites, journalists deserve the personal approach. So create the buzz, then you may get the bang.

So it was interesting to note that BondPR is currently handling campaigns for tech companies in 30 countries through its team of offices and established delivery partners. So does that make us Number One for global reach!

And that made me think about how much our choice of words matter.  Hidden meanings can communicate a message completely different from that which we wish to convey.  As a PR person, I ensure our client’s message is received in the way it was intended, and help to “translate” the words to diverse cultures outside of the client’s comfort zone.

And yet here I was, making a mess of naming our furry friend and insulting a number of my not-so-furry friends in the process.

I originally chose the name Aisha because I love the song by Algerian Rai artist, Khaled, called Aicha. I’ve always been attracted to Arabic culture, fascinated by the Islamic religion, and when living in Paris I fostered very close and dear friendships with some wonderful Muslim people.  Naming my dog Aisha was – in my mind -  a show of respect and honor, as our family pet is very much a revered part of the family.

When a Muslim friend of mine expressed her surprise, saying I shouldn’t name my dog Aisha because it’s a girl’s name, not a dog’s name.  I thought it’s just because it was a little silly, the equivalent of naming a dog Tom or Susan.

What I didn’t know was that it’s relatively unheard of for Muslims to even have a dog as a family pet.  Canines are considered not just unclean but downright vile and contaminated.  It is said that angels do not enter a house which contains a dog.  Calling someone “a dog”, while odd in Western culture, is amongst the worst insults you can give to someone (up there with throwing your shoes at someone’s head ).

Not only that, but Aisha was the favorite wife of the Islamic prophet, Muhammad’s, and referred to as the “Mother of all Believers”. Amongst the most prominent of Muhammad’s wives, Aisha became an educated spokesperson for the teachings of the Prophet and has been revered as a role model by millions of women.

 Had it not been for that lovely Parisian taxi driver, I never would have known how offensive my innocent act was perceived in the very culture I was intending to honor.

A useful reminder of stuff I already know (but apparently need to be reminded of!):

Know your audience. Know the cultural translation of the words you chose to use.

Words matter.

Ana aasif !

During a 10-day period, a groundswell of commentary and opinion about Kryptonite locks spread from enthusiasts talking on bike forums to the mainstream media, to a product recall that ultimately cost parent Ingersoll Rand $10 million.

CNN Money has a good summary and created the graph that shows what happened in such a short time (click to see larger size in new window or tab)

What’s not factored into that dollar figure is the cost to reputation.

Wind forward four years to this past weekend and an online storm that has erupted over Motrin, an over-the-counter painkiller sold in the USA, and an advertising video produced by the brand owner McNeil that very quickly offended some mothers.

The storm of protest that has embraced so many different online communication channels – from blogs to video and especially to social networking micro-channels like Twitter – has already prompted an apology from McNeil on the Motrin website and the withdrawal of the video from that website.

And all this has happened in less than 48 hours.

So what’s this all about? Well, take a look for yourself – the pulled video is on YouTube and plenty of other places (including links from blog posts like this one).

What’s most compelling to me isn’t the video that McNeil produced. It’s not especially remarkable: it’s a good example of a marketing message in audio-visual form, nicely produced and quite watchable.

What’s really compelling is the content angry mothers have created themselves, using tools and channels that largely weren’t around four years ago – YouTube, for instance, and definitely Twitter – but today are accessible and easy to use by anyone with an internet connection.

It’s what we tend to label today with the impersonal phrase “user-generated content.”

For instance, check this video out:

I don’t know about you but I can’t help but feel almost overwhelmed by the emotion expressed in these images and the words shown in the various Twitter messages.

And look at what you get if you do a Google search on the brand name “motrin” as I did early today.

The first result is a link to a Google News page where this story has already made the mainstream media across the US and beyond.

You’d expect the brand website to be the first result in a Google search – and I’m sure it was before this storm broke out.

Remember Kryptonite’s 10 days? This has happened for Motrin in less than 2 days.

As with Kryptonite, this eruption of critical opinion hasn’t been formally organized: it’s happened spontaneously, enabled by technology that gives you the means to very quickly and easily articulate and share an opinion on a scale and with a speed that was unimaginable as recently as even a decade ago. Clay Shirky would be proud.

It’s the scale and speed that still takes many people in the PR business by surprise, used as we still generally are to things developing at a more leisurely pace (let’s call it “analogue speed”) attuned to the traditional news-gathering and reporting cycles of traditional print and broadcast media.

Those days are gone. We no longer have that luxury. As communicators, we must enable our attention all day every single day. And that includes the weekends, something it seems the Motrin communicators weren’t doing.

Of the many blog posts published by communicators and pundits with opinions, one of the best I’ve seen comes from Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang and lessons learned:

• Always test your campaign with a small segment first
• Always have staff on hand to be prepared to respond during the weekend
• Don’t launch a campaign right before the weekend unless you’re prepared to respond
• The participants have the power, so participate
• For better or for worse, more influencers are talking about Motrin than ever before

I’d add one in the middle:

• Ask yourself: what is our plan of action if a viral effect develops around our brand/product/service, especially out of our normal business hours?

But it’s the last two of Jeremiah’s bullet points that are especially important.

What these angry mums represent – and as this is America we’re talking about, it’s ‘moms’ of course; more specifically, MotrinMoms – is an enormous self-organized focus group, providing the brand owner with amazing feedback on their product.

My podcasting partner Shel Holtz and I discussed this Motrin storm in yesterday’s FIR #398 podcast. We’d love to know your opinion about this kerfuffle so do contribute a comment after you’ve listened to the show.

Meanwhile, I hope McNeil are paying very close attention to all the commentary out there. They’ve already apologized. Now they can grasp a golden opportunity to listen and engage.