How important is trust to you?

Trust. A quality imperative to any good relationship, be it business or personal. A quality which can take years to build, but can be lost in a matter of seconds. Once lost, the process of regaining it can sometimes be impossible. Oh the importance of trust.

In terms of business trust, one could talk of brand loyalty. You buy something because you trust the quality and experience of it. But where does this trust come from? A friend or colleague? A magazine? Facebook? A newspaper? This is where PR can come in and help start and then build this trust to gain a market share of voice. But what happens when trust begins to fall?

Bankers. Do we trust bankers? What do we think of BP? The government? Nestle? Primark? The BBC? Well thanks to the recent launch of Edelman’s 2011 Trust Barometer; banks, financial Services and media are all stuck at the bottom of UK Industry Rankings. Are we surprised? Um probably not after the financial crisis and the ever-growing bonuses earned by the tax-payer’s money…cue RBS. Cuts here and cuts there and still graduate unemployment at its all time lowest – god society sounds so miserable! No wonder with the media headlining all things negative. According to the Barometer, in response to “How much do you trust media to do what is right?” The US is down to 27% and the UK 22%. How low can you go? But in contrast, and perhaps surprisingly so, trust in the CEO has significantly increased since last year’s survey.

All things aren’t as doom and gloom as society can sometimes make out. Trust is evidently an important issue because it can be detrimental to a business’s reputation, to a person’s reputation. Therefore transparency and honesty are becoming more widely practiced – that’s a good thing right?

Find out more at http://www.edelman.com/trust/2011/

Making a difference in Healthcare

And so another one bites the dust! Four rotations down, two more to go. The finishing line is in sight. Yet again, it’s been a learning curve five weeks, working in an environment completely separate in terms of specialty and overall culture. For one thing, it is incredibly female dominated. No wonder the Healthcare team is the favourite amongst other departments! Some seemed rather jealous of me working here – I wonder why…

Well it could be due to the all-round personality of the team. They are the most supportive I’ve come across so far – you even have two line managers, and workload has never been a problem. They are an incredibly friendly, intelligent bunch and are always present at the bar on Thursday – now that’s my kind of team! Happy to help with any questions, but what is most striking is that they are always on call to help each other. Teamwork to a Tee.

Maybe it could be due to their clients. Healthcare is the ‘big bucks’! With leading pharmaceutical companies as clients, the revenue this department brings in is phenomenal, especially being run on a global scale. I guess this makes one more diligent and cautious in any task, however routine or new. It heightens the importance of your work. I certainly felt it!

Or it could be down to what this work actually encompasses. How many people can say they make a difference to peoples’ lives through the work they do? Not many. Seeing and understanding the effects of medical treatments created by the Edelman pharma clients makes your work all the more worthwhile. From helping to raise awareness of pneumococcal disease, to the ever-growing concerns of mental health diseases, these are just two examples of the many treatments which Edelman has seen grow successfully.

Or finally it could be due to their Gleedelman performance! For some, maybe this is the case, but personally, work which is challenging, stimulating and potentially life changing – who wouldn’t want to be a part of that!

Find out more at http://www.edelman.co.uk/what-we-do/health-and-medical-education and http://maryfizzy.blogspot.com/

Jumping into a World of Politics: A Must for a Graduate

December saw the end of yet another rotation at Edelman. Here are my thoughts on public affairs...

Coming to public affairs with very little experience in this field, I thought my background in PR would see me through, but it was certainly a jump right in at the deep end. They always say a challenge brings out the best in people, and I guess this is exactly what the graduate programme is all about.

Remember how at school and university you’re always advised to keep up with current affairs. To know which politician is in trouble, which company has caused a national disaster and who won X-factor (maybe the latter is just a consumer conversation, but important nonetheless). Well public affairs was in a way a bit like being back at university in a very good light. I found myself doing ‘extra reading’ inspired by the enormous database of knowledge of the colleagues around me. Their enthusiasm and dedication to the job is second to none which is of course obvious in their work. I’m hardly ever intimated, but at the start with all the serious faces, I must admit, I thought this might be tricky. However after roughly 54.23hours I felt at home thanks to a wonderful pod and two incredibly welcoming MDs.

The public affairs team at Edelman is hardworking, intelligent (of course) and actually hilarious. Out of all my rotations so far I don’t think I’ve laughed as much as I did here. Seriously. They work longer hours that’s for sure, but in a somewhat surprising way, it was a pleasure. I looked forward to the day ahead, what challenges it would bring and what jokes would spread.

So what did all these stimulating challenges encompass? Stakeholder maps, tick. Briefing papers, tick. Daily monitoring, tick. Monitoring of Parliamentary committee meetings, tick. According to the other teams, ‘all very sophisticated sounding tasks’ apparently! Public affairs boasts of big name clients such as the British Virgin Islands, Sainsburys, Starbucks, Network Rail, Microsoft and The Open University, all of which I was lucky enough to work on. The most exciting task to be involved in was pitching for new business. A great opportunity to understand all the behind the scenes work involved in generating new revenue.

Skills learnt during these few weeks are those that I will proudly and happily take away with me. Organisation, rhetoric, diplomacy and above all, attention to detail are imperative to any progression. So thank you PA team for sharing your incredible knowledge and talent with me. A ‘must-do’ five weeks for any graduate seeking to learn and improve.

To find out more, check out their website at http://www.edelman.co.uk/what-we-do/public-affairs and my blog at http://maryfizzy.blogspot.com/.

Aspiring Career Girls

During my time at Digital at Edelman I worked on an incredibly innovative project: Levi’s Shape What’s to Come. A community for all girls seeking advice in many exciting and challenging career paths. With ambassadors from fashion, design, media, film, music and social entrepreneurship, a network has been created to share ideas and experiences. These ambassadors are not celebrities, simply talented human beings like you and me. This makes them both approachable and inspiring. Go and sign up at http://en.shapewhatstocome.com/ to ask them questions and get connected to all those other Levi’s girls who you find interesting and relevant to your career aspirations.

Check out the Traveling journals which take you through a sort of mood board of each fashionista, filmmaker, musician, designer and many more. A great insight into their creative process – worth reading I assure you! The visual is pretty cool too.

At Shape What’s to Come you can build your own profile as it is indeed a social networking platform for us aspiring career girls. Highlight your experiences, your goals, your favourite things to do and connect with those alike. And guess what it’s not UK-centric…it’s international! Excellent point.

Furthermore Shape What’s to Come is always evolving, finding new features for us lot to enjoy. For example, check out this exclusive livecast from the lead singer of the Noisettes http://en.shapewhatstocome.com/live-video/ and download their brand new single at http://en.shapewhatstocome.com/goodies/ - simply awesome. Oh wait, awesome is exactly how I would describe this whole project. 

The Nightmare of finding a graduate job

When leaving university I had always thought I’d have a nice little job lined up.  A dream job that would earn me a mint with great hours, oh and start in September, giving me the whole summer off to go and do the travelling thing. Wrong. Oh how naive I was. How idealistic! In reality I graduated (one box ticked!), but with no job even though I had done all this experience – unpaid internships, working abroad – you name it, I probably did it! Instead I managed to book up all these summer holidays (you can see the priority here) and declare to my parents that I was moving home, but just for a bit. The thought of having to adhere to parent rules was enough to get job applying, and quick! In comes the research, the CV tailoring, the cover letter writing, the interview preparation – wow you already feel like you’re back at uni.

I have to say I was lucky, very lucky. With Edelman it literally happened with the click of a finger. Research 10am, CV and cover letter 12pm, phone call from Edelman HR 6pm, interview set up for the following week. It’s as easy as that. So my piece of advice is to be pro-active. Search for the opportunities and apply speculatively. What have you got to lose?

With the student protests of late, the problem of tuition fee increases and continuing graduate unemployment are becoming more and more explosive. It’s not just the public who have noticed, companies have too. So here I’m going to praise our good office friend, can’t live without the computer, MICROSOFT. Microsoft has taken it upon itself to tackle youth unemployment by creating 100,000 opportunities for young people seeking work – brilliant news! Through a range of work experience placements, training vouchers and IT Apprenticeships, Microsoft aims to get 500,000 people into jobs by 2012. I like those sorts of figures!

To find out more visit the Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/britainworks#!/britainworks  and tweet about it at http://twitter.com/britainworks#

Let’s get graduates back into work! 

The World of Digital: Don’t Listen to the Stereotype

I've come to the end of yet another rotation and boy how fast that went. They always say time flies when you're having fun! At the end of each section I am entitled to write a blog post for the Edelman Graduate Website http://www.edelmangraduatescheme.com/2010/11/19/the-world-of-digital-don%E2%80%99t-listen-to-the-stereotype/. Here's what I wrote... 

So I thought I was pretty set after my time at JCPR, but oh how I was proved wrong.  Well I guess that’s the point of the graduate scheme – to explore new departments which you wouldn’t have contemplated on liking, only to find out that you in fact love them. I’ll say it…I’ve been converted to the world of digital. Just in case you’re wondering though, this doesn’t make me a geek. In fact, no one seems to be a geek at Edelman Digital and First and 42^nd, just intelligent, creative and switched on! Don’t listen to the stereotype.

Not only is digital the present, it is the future. With the advancements in technology, internet penetration has significantly increased throughout the world. Never before have we seen such a high percentage of people social networking, video sharing, blogging etc etc. Take the powerful players of Facebook and Twitter as two examples of this progression. If Facebook was a country it would be ranked third behind China and India. That’s proof enough.

So what about the dynamics of the Digital crew? Sitting on a fun pod across from a brilliant line manager, I felt immediately welcome and comfortable. I soon realised I should always keep my Thursday evenings free for a drink or two with the team…they are an incredibly social bunch – now that’s my kind of people!

The work at Digital was not only stimulating and varied, but it was the rotation where I’ve learnt the most. Week one highlights included being introduced to the Levi’s® team concerning their new campaign Shape What’s To Come (http://en.shapewhatstocome.com/). A useful platform for all aspiring career-minded girls to share ideas and experiences. I’ve signed up and so should you! Look out for a livecast with The Noisettes on the 1^st of December which I’ve helped coordinate. I was further able to help with website content, strategy and blogger research – the ideal opportunity to really see who’s writing what and where online.

On the subject of blogs, deciphering the art of blogger outreach is key to modern day PR. It is important to remain transparent at all times and to be personable. I quickly learnt that these two factors are integral to success in outreach when contacting various bloggers and forums for the Save 5p per litre on The Shell V-Power Fuels Promotion. Supporting the Shell Team, we achieved a huge increase in online conversation.

As well as engaging with bloggers, I further gained the opportunity to write myself with a Puma hat on. Check out their website at http://www.puma.com/social to read and converse in fun and exciting topics. Writing your own blog posts is something which can be creative, witty and simply informative. I was inspired by the Digital team so much so that I even created my own blog at http://maryfizzy.blogspot.com/.

Two of the most interesting projects I worked on were creating The Social Media Map for Europe and partaking in training on issues and crisis management. The Social Media Map for Europe was the perfect opportunity to gain an insight into the world of online activity: knowledge which I will be able to translate into future client work from pitches to building strategy. The crisis and issues management project allowed me to witness creativity at its peak and again demonstrate the power of social media in terms of both rumour and truth spreading like fire. It is therefore important to be active, to listen, respond where necessary and engage wherever possible.

So Digital team all that is left to say is a massive thank you…what an awesome and incredibly rewarding five weeks!

For more info, check out:

http://edelmandigital.com

http://www.spookmedia.com/

Social Media Mapping in Europe: Continuing the trend of Facebook (EDELMAN)

Over here in Europe we come across good data all the time about social media use and trends, so we thought it would be interesting topresent the best bits in a map of the region. The first thing to strike us was the growing dominance of Facebook as the most popular social network in thevast majority of countries surveyed.  12 months ago the picture was quite different, but today Russia’s V Kontakte, Poland’s Nasza-klasa and Dutch Hyves are the only remaining local networks to make it on to the map. So why is Facebook so strong? In my view, its versatility is an important factor. People of all ages and backgrounds feel comfortable managing their relationships in Facebook and have a broad range of options available for entertainment and communication, from videos and photos to the humble wall post. It is in a sense fashion for all ages.

In terms of internet penetration, online activity as predicted has increased with the majority of countries reaching over 75% penetration, again contributing to the growing importance of social media. So what are we doing online? Social networking and video watching continue their rapid growth over the past two years, taking the lead with up to 99% of a population social networking (Portugal) and 91% video watching (Ireland). This corresponds well with the progression of broadband. Never before have we been able to access richer content (video, audio and imagery) as quickly or as easily. Reading and writing blogs are still viable with the map clearly indicating their presence in all countries analysed, but it is video and social networking which are increasingly the focus.

Beyond the map itself, thanks to our primary data source comScore we also investigated the top three social networks for each country featured. This enabled us to identify players on the rise such as Twitter, but also those older, established platforms still attracting a significant audience. Despite Facebook’s leadership, country specific sites, for example the German StudiVZ Sites, HI5 in Poland and Spanish Tuenti continue to have large and active memberships. In many cases Facebook beats them by only a slim margin and right across the region, the Windows Live platform continues to be popular. When it comes to video, YouTube and Daily Motion very much lead the way, but lower profile platforms such as Vimeo are certainly popular and well respected for high quality content.

So what should brands be doing? It would appear at first glance that Facebook is the main platform to master in Europe; but as is so often the case, the devil is in the detail. If you delve beneath the surface there is a wealth of active online communities of a size and scale to rival Facebook. Plus, blogging, microblogging, video and photo sharing all remain popular with distinct variations from country to country. It seems that the virtual Europe is as diverse and varied as the actual one and with a versatile strategy offers plenty of opportunities for companies to connect with their customers.


http://edelmandigital.com/2010/11/22/social-media-mapping-in-europe-continuing-the-trend-of-facebook/