A few weeks back, we hosted a breakfast briefing by Mark Williams, the man dubbed ‘Mr Linkedin’ by Linkedin themselves.

In the briefing, Mark covered how to use Linkedin for business development, ensuring that actions and activity which take place on Linkedin are firmly focused on acquiring valuable new contacts and business, rather than the scattergun approach of amassing lots of Connections with no real purpose – something we’ve possibly all been guilty of at some point.

Mark gave some great examples of how Linkedin can practically be used, whilst introducing us to the concept of the ‘Social Seller’ before finally sharing his top tips.

The briefing lasted over an hour, but we’ve edited it down to one session of just under half an hour, and two smaller snippets covering Linkedin for business development and Mark’s top tips.

Posted by Judith on October 26th, 2012

It has been an ongoing thread of discussion here at Finn, and on our blog, about how young talent goes about searching for job opportunities.

Unfortunately, all too often the approach is either needy “What can you do for me”, lazy (through a recruitment consultant) or lacking creativity or stand out.

So, it was refreshing to receive a fantastically untraditional and creative approach from Matt Rennie, dubbed ‘A Message From A Graduate’.

Read the full post

Posted by James on October 17th, 2012

Hitting the headlines

• Kent is set to get its own Disneyland paradise, as work begins on a £2bn, world-class theme park in Swanscombe (across the board)
• Retail sales are set to warm up, as a nippy start to the colder months explains a 1.5% rise in high street profits (across the board)
• Homeowners are being promised greater rights when defending their home against burglars, as Justice Secretary Chris Grayling assures taxpayers that he will strengthen the law in this area (across the board)
• Despite being told at school that his hopes of having a career in science were ‘quite ridiculous’, John Gurdon has gone on to win the Nobel Prize for his research into cell development (across the board)
• RBS has announced £1.5million of funding in an effort to help young entrepreneurs (Daily Mirror)

Picture perfect

• Britain’s Got Talent star Amanda Holden is pictured with her hands full, holding eight children as a part of a Picture A Better Future Campaign launch with Pampers and Unicef (Daily Express, Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, The Sun)
• The artist Shauna Richardson is pulling the wool over no one’s eyes as she poses with her woollen, wildlife creations – knitted animals otherwise known as ‘crochetdermy’! (Metro)
• Though 100 Devon residents have declared the statue by Damien Hirst as ‘obscene and disgusting’, the 70ft tall statue of a naked, pregnant woman holding aloft a sword will be installed this week in Ilfracombe (Independent, i, Daily Mail)

PR at work

• Why is a meal not complete without a glass of wine? Or a breakfast without a cup of tea? Research by food scientist Paul Breslin found that tastes at opposite ends of the spectrum please our mouths most (Daily Express, Daily Mail)
• A survey promoting the launch of the TV show ‘Modern Family’ picked out the classic characteristics of the average household. According to the research, the average modern family earns £39,223 a year, owns a blue Ford and is in bed by 10:23pm every weekday night (Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Sun)
• Pret a Manger proves to be better than sliced bread, as the British chain has won the Golden Retail Brand in Paris, nine months after it opened its first branch there (Metro)
• People are increasingly going to work when they are ill, according to The Chartered Institute of Personnel Development as a result of the threat of redundancies and worries over job security, highlighting a culture of ‘presenteeism’ (across the board)
• Yorkshire has been named Britain’s best holiday destination, with figures by Welcome to Yorkshire revealing that there has been a 12% increase in international tourists (Telegraph)

Posted by Julia on October 9th, 2012

As the rain comes down, the award season is hotting up, and at Finn Towers we’re delighted to have earned a place on the shortlist for the PRCA’s Small Consultancy Of The Year Awards 2012.

We’re up against some great PR talent, including Manifest, Dynamo, Third City, Cubaneight and Voice Communications. Looking forward to meeting the competition, in what will no doubt be a standard, raucous PR tear up at the awards do on Tuesday 13 November.

And in other news, the digital team has treated themselves to a trip to the freezer, as our digital work for Fab ice lolly has secured a place on The Grocer’s MAP awards in the Best Use of Social Media category.

Pass the Berocca.

Posted by James on September 26th, 2012

Thanks to everyone who came along to the second Finn breakfast briefing with Mr Linkedin, Mark Williams.

The size of the audience was clear evidence that we’re all keen to make the most of Linkedin and effectively use it as business development tool. Key pieces of advice that we took out were:

• scheduling status updates and accepting Linkedin connections during the golden hour – 8:15am – 9:15am – for maximum visibility of activity
• waiting until you’ve engaged with a prospect (possibly through a Group discussion) before inviting to connect
• the power of building recommendations, and not just reciprocating recommendations
• making the most of company pages (and being aware that they may well change in the very near future)

Thanks to Mark who has agreed to share his presentation, and also to our partners, Adam Recruitment and The Search Laboratory.

We’re currently planning our third event, so please keep checking the Finn site for further details.

Posted by Judith on September 13th, 2012

LinkedIn is widely accepted as the definitive networking and business development tool. However just because businesses are investing time in their presence on LinkedIn does not necessarily mean they are also getting tangible results out.  Monetising LinkedIn is tricky and most of us would admit we could do with some help.

Finn PR has joined forces with Search Laboratory and Adam Recruitment to create an unmissable event that will help you get more from your LinkedIn presence. Hosted by the man dubbed ‘Mr LinkedIn’ by LinkedIn themselves – Mark Williams; this session will combine practical help with informative advice and discussion about how to successfully integrate the platform into your marketing and business development strategies.

Mark Williams is one of the world’s leading authorities on LinkedIn. He became its first (and only) UK certified trainer in 2010, one of just two worldwide.

Join us for this informative session on 11th September 2012 at the Round Foundry Media Centre, Leeds. Breakfast will commence at 7.30am and the event will start at 8.00am sharp (for a 9.00am finish).

RSVP:
To register for a place at the event, please email hello@finncomms.com

Posted by Judith on August 22nd, 2012

Some great news for the Finn team today– we’ve been shortlisted for 11 CIPR Awards, which is a new record (according to Ian Briggs at the Business Desk!)

This is a great testament to the team and the hard work everyone has put in over the last year. We’re really proud of the broad range of categories we have been shortlisted for, which span the FMCG, finance and public sectors.

A special mention must go to the digital and social team, who have secured nominations for five of the six places in the digial and social categories.

Congratulations to everyone who has been shortlisted for awards this year.

Below are the awards we have been shortlisted for. Please click here for the full list of nominees.

Outstanding Public Relations Consultancy

• Finn PR: Changing the way the world sees PR

Public Sector

• NHS Merseyside: Merseyside Winter Health Campaign

Healthcare (new category)

• NHS Merseyside: Merseyside winter health campaign

Consumer Relations

• Vion: Put Pork On Your Fork

Media Relations

• Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks: There’s no business like small business

Integrated Communications

• Blue Diamond Almonds: Feel the flavour

Best Use of Social Media

• lovetub: Feel the love, share the love
• Morphy Richards: ‘House Proud Innovators’
• Fox’s Christmas Puddings: Smugglers Campaign

Best Digital Campaign

• lovetub: Feel the love, share the love
• Fox’s Christmas Puddings: Smugglers Campaign

Posted by Greg on July 25th, 2012

We’re delighted to announce that Alastair Gornall has joined the board of Finn PR as Non-Executive Chairman. Alastair, who was CEO of Reed Exhibitions and before that founder and CEO of Consolidated Communications, will work with our management team to provide strategic consultancy and mentoring.

Richard Rawlins, founder and MD of Finn worked for Alastair Gornall at Consolidated Communications in the late 1990’s.

As Alastair says, “I am really excited to join Richard and the team at Finn at this exciting time in the agency’s growth story. Finn is one of the few PR agencies I’ve encountered with genuine digital and social media expertise. They have an exciting vision and I’m sure will become recognised as one of the pioneers in this space.”

Richard Rawlins, MD of Finn adds, “Having Alastair on board provides invaluable knowledge and advice, helping to accelerate our growth plans and focus the board on a winning strategy. Alastair also brings infectious energy and enthusiasm, which has already facilitated some great successes for the agency.”

Posted by Richard on June 15th, 2012

Mark Ritson writes an excellent regular op-ed column in Marketing Week. Except this week, in my opinion.

His argument is  that Apple’s success  proves that the ‘modern’ measures of success for a brand (reputational factors like diversity in the boardroom, a robust CSR strategy, engagement through social media and the use of customer data and insight to create great products) are wrong.

Apple has a white, middle class, male board and no CSR strategy.  Mark, it is fair to say, is not a fan of social media for brands. That Apple famously does not engage with its fans through this channel is manner from heaven for him.  Indeed, the brand has little regard for research or insight, believing that it knows what its customers will need before they realise it.  Steve Jobs often quoted Henry Ford: “If I’d have asked what my customers wanted, they’d have said ‘a faster horse’.”

Ritson argues that Apple’s performance based on the modern indices of brand strength is poor, yet it scores brilliantly on the most traditional rule “To thine own self be true”, on in Apple’s case “Think Different”.

Does this prove that CSR, social media and diversity are defunct as measures of strength? Of course not. For some brands having a diverse board and a strong CSR strategy is being true to themselves.  So long as a brand understands clearly its role in its customers lives, then modern reputational tools like CSR could be very applicable.

It’s easy to use Apple as a prove point that modern marketing theory is hocum.  It doesn’t make it right though.

Posted by Richard on June 6th, 2012

This week’s Marketing Week has a great piece by Nicola Smith demonstrating how social media comment has a direct impact on search results.  She quotes research by iProspect  which shows that most brands aren’t thinking about the link between search and reputation.

The article lists a number of topic areas to help brands to leverage the social space to optimise search: make content king, make content social and shareable, leverage news and rich media and where possible enable and activate a community around your brand.  In other words, create content which consumers genuinely want to engage with.

No huge surprises there.  Even less surprising is my opinion, which is that proper  PR (not SEO content blah-PR) is the discipline which strategically drives these areas.

Smith’s  final tip is interesting though: focus on Google+.  Why?  Because as Gareth Jones, head of online marketing at Carphone Warehouse explains: “It is not because we expect to get 250,000 [Facebook] fans but because we know that Google, through its natural listings, disproportionately rewards social signals if they come from Google+.  Out thinking is that if we have lots of fresh content going into Google+, that content will be beneficial for us in terms of search listings”.

Yet as Smith’s article explains, “a comScore study in February found that users spent on average just three minutes on Google+during January”.

What a delicious irony that for all our efforts to create content which is genuinely useful to people, what Google really wants is to force us all to use a platform which for the moment, nobody uses.  Who said the web was democratic.

Posted by Richard on May 22nd, 2012