Man Bites Dog is a finalist for the ‘Freshest Consultancy Team’ award. In addition, the consultancy is nominated in the ‘Freshest Business to Business Campaign’ and ‘Freshest Corporate Campaign’ categories.

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, said: “We’re thrilled to be nominated for these awards which showcase the strength of our unique proposition and the outstanding work of the Man Bites Dog team.

“Being recognised in this way is incredibly important to us and we look forward to building on this success throughout 2012.”

The win follows a string of awards in 2011, including B2B Marketing’s PR Agency of the Year, PRCA’s Specialist Consultancy of the Year, and CIPR’s Outstanding Consultancy of the Year 2011.

The winners of this year’s 2012 Fresh PR Awards will be announced on 1st March at the Hilton Deansgate, Manchester.

Though many of these ‘modern gurus’ are spending time building and nurturing their own personal brands, corporate communicators can also channel this enthusiasm. Especially for those in professional services, the ability to foster well known, content-rich and influential spokespeople, could be hugely beneficial to overall brand building. Likewise, where ideas are often the only source of differentiation, propagating your company’s deep insight across the web is invaluable.

So what are the key factors to consider in creating the modern guru?

1) Time

While corporate communicators can take on a lot of the legwork themselves, always-on social networks like twitter require active engagement. This means any spokesperson must be able to commit time to the strategy. Getting this included in their objectives, or even job description, is a great way of securing a spokesperson’s time. If this isn’t an option, giving them the taste for fame through relevant examples is another good strategy.

2) Ideas

The modern spokesperson is built upon ideas and content. This means producing substantial amounts of useful and interesting content for your target audience. Trying to undertake this process with a spokesperson that has nothing to say simply won’t work. If your spokesperson is an ideas machine and you can access and wield content from across your business, you’re probably on to a winner.

2) Enthusiasm

spokespeople also need the enthusiasm to give the programme the effort it needs to succeed. This means creation of regular blogs, articles and multimedia content, regular tweeting etc. While you should look to share copywriting loads internally and externally, becoming a true ‘brand’ is a long-term process, which requires staying power from your spokesperson.

4) Focus

As with most online B2B communications, you aren’t aiming to speak to everyone, just a niche audience that matters. Likewise, trying to cover everything relevant to your audience will inevitably reduce impact and not help your SEO. Work to understand that audience, how they find and consume information and focus your ideas and the content you produce accordingly.

5) Engagement

Engagement – engaging with appropriate communities around the content and ideas produced is a must to building your spokesperson’s profile. Identify top target groups, for example within twitter or LinkedIn, and focus your efforts on engaging in useful, interesting conversations and sharing content where relevant.

6) Tools

The proliferation of tools and channels to promote and propagate content is at the centre of the personal brand trend. These tools help share ideas in more ways than ever before and allow people to find them and be influenced. Some of the top tools and channels are: twitter, LinkedIn, Slide Share, YouTube, Vimeo and iTunes.

7) Media

To truly increase a spokesperson’s profile, the use of different media is a must. Don’t try to do everything, but consider the best opportunities based on your audience and your spokesperson and start there. You might, for example, want to create a regular video interview hosted by your spokesperson to share via your blog, website and email to communicate directly with your audience.

8) Risks

There are inherent risks in the ‘guru’ approach for example, what happens when people change jobs? Organisations should ensure they recognise the opportunities and risks of this approach before undertaking an active guru building programme. Things to think about here include the ownership of online pages, twitter handles etc. and ensuring the overall company benefits from your efforts. Getting these questions out of the way in advance will help avoid any conflict later on and help smooth the path to spokesperson success.

The list recognises award-winning agencies that have demonstrated strong growth and turnover and created top-notch work.

Managing Director, Claire Mason, said: “2011 was a really exciting year in which we doubled in size and were named top dog at various awards ceremonies for our campaigns and company culture.

“Being recognised in this way is incredibly important to us and we look forward to building on this success throughout 2012.”

The win follows a string of awards in the past year, including B2B Marketing’s PR Agency of the Year, PRCA’s Specialist Consultancy of the Year, and CIPR’s Outstanding Consultancy of the Year 2011.

For further information please visit thedrum.co.uk

In an effort to boost the UK economy, government schemes like Project Merlin and the Business Finance Taskforce set out to improve relationships and increase lending to SMEs, often described as the engine of UK growth.

Yet, despite such good intentions, the banks and SMEs have failed to hit it off with the British Bankers Association (BBA) recently announcing that lending volumes continued to fall in Q3 2011. As a result, the government is beginning to realise that the ‘build it and they will come’ strategy just isn’t going to cut it.

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PRoactive approach

Encouragingly, the UK’s biggest banks are meeting soon to discuss the PR requirements of the collective Business Finance Taskforce and appear to be coming around to the idea that proactive communications, targeted at SMEs, could help salvage the situation.

So far, it seems that the Business Finance Taskforce hasn’t gone far enough in proactively promoting the range of funding available to SMEs. Initially, it laid out principles to provide information and promote understanding but these were vague and not directly focused at engaging SMEs or communicating the message far and wide.

A focused, targeted, well-strategised PR campaign could be what’s needed for banks to restore their battered reputations – or at least start to make amends.

Taking the lead

In an interesting and positive move, several banks in the taskforce (including Santander) appear to have taken the lead and shifted their focus from government SME lending schemes to focus on their own offerings and tailored PR campaigns.

This effort could be beneficial to both banks and SMEs. It offers the banks an opportunity to sell their product while hopefully boosting lending figures by giving SMEs an understanding of the types of finance available.

In light of this, it’s encouraging to see banks hiring PR companies for awareness campaigns and taking the initiative to reach out to SMEs. From an SME perspective, it shows a genuine concern about boosting lending and makes SMEs aware that they are open for business.

More generally, it’s great to see banks acknowledging the impact that effective PR has on their reputation.

We’ve outlined some top tips on how banks can better engage with SMEs:

1. Shout louder

SMEs can’t know what the banks are offering unless they tell them. Banks should shout about their offerings, rather than whispering to the converted.

2. Make it count

Use data and statistics based on surveys to get to the issues that keep business owners and directors awake at night. This will provide an insight into the SME mindset and engage a wider audience in the process.

3. Make them think

Robust, research-based thought leadership never fails to engage and interest audiences. Make sure the research is targeted and create press releases and marketing materials based on facts, rather than just opinion.

4. Cut the jargon

Give clear, concise, sound information. Try not to be too self-serving and instead offer information of genuine value to the SME audience. Keep it simple with a consistent tone of voice to ensure it is effective.

5. Go direct

Retail banking is rapidly gearing up for direct customer interaction via avenues such as social media, mobile apps and online banking tools. Business banking has yet to fully seize upon this opportunity. Banks should connect with SMEs through useful content and bespoke platforms, as well as engaging SMEs in areas they already visit online.

6. Meet and greet

This is one area where the government already has it right. Banks should take their offerings to the SME’s front door by arranging roundtables and advice-based events. This will enable the banks to better understand SMEs’ needs and discuss bespoke arrangements to help their businesses.

The words ‘survey’ and ‘fatigue’ are increasingly heard in close proximity. But a five-minute scan of the headlines on any given day will reveal an enduring media appetite for research-based stories.

Even at a time when the news, business and political agendas are dominated by unprecedented events, surveys continue to fill column inches, as the headlines above from the past week or so demonstrate.

With so many surveys filling news pages and programmes, it is worth examining which are genuinely robust studies, aligned to an organisation’s sales proposition, and which are simply ‘noise’, providing nothing more than a name-check. For the latter, look no further than the car firm that ran a poll on Christmas gift-wrapping habits.

Showing Not Telling
Intelligently conceived and skillfully designed opinion research can be a highly effective lead generation tool in the professional services space.

Professional services firms operate in fiercely competitive markets, offering almost identical services, experience and expertise. In such a uniform environment, ideas are the only source of differentiation.

Robust research is the tool that validates these ideas. It is the difference between fact and opinion.

Demand Generation
Carefully crafted economic modeling or opinion research can prove a business hypothesis and create a direct call to action for a complex advisory proposition. Robust evidence generates demand for a service by promoting the problems it solves.

We have seen this work time and again in the professional services sphere. Thought leadership campaigns can be designed not only to achieve high impact coverage, but also drive direct business leads for firms offering complex and technical advisory services.

Success Factors
There are three critical factors to creating thought leadership that makes the phone ring: the hypothesis, the research design, and the degree of sales alignment.

• Hypothesis: Thought leadership research must set out to prove a compelling, impactful and original theme that plays to the news agenda at the time. It needs to pass three simple tests journalists instinctively apply to stories: ‘So what?’ ‘Why now?’ and ‘Have I heard this before?’

• Research design: The most critical stage. News hooks have to be designed into the research. The approach must be robust, independent and credible. The sample size needs to be representative. The methodology must be bulletproof.

• Sales alignment: Thought leadership research must be closely – but subtly – aligned with a firm’s sales proposition if it is to make the phone ring. Back to our car firm polling consumers on gift-wrapping habits. What value does that generate in terms of potential sales? How does it drive interest in the car brand in question?

A delicate balance is required. The story needs to promote the problems the firm solves, without overt selling the firm or its services. The aim is to set the news agenda, not promote your own. Another journalist filter applies here: The ‘They would say that, wouldn’t they?’ test.

Rigorous, original, thought-leading research will always provide media – and target audiences – with something new. Whether or not the media is tiring of the poll, thought leadership remains a highly effective tool for organisations to not only get noticed, but create a powerful call to action and ultimately generate demand.

Cementing its position as the most award-winning B2B PR consultancy in the UK, Man Bites Dog won B2B PR Agency of the Year for the second time and Best PR Campaign for its ‘Cost Boomerang’ programme for KPMG.

‘The Dogs’ as they are fondly known received the weighty accolades from comedian Jack Whitehall, who entertained the 700-strong crowd at the glittering central London event.

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, said: “It’s a real honour to be recognised as the top dog at the B2B Marketing Awards. I’m extremely proud of the team’s achievements this year.”

B2B Marketing Awards 2011 video – featuring Claire Mason

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Business leaders are increasingly technologically engaged (in some instances seemingly addicted). The growing presence of the iPad in the boardroom and the rise of ‘Crackberry’ culture (or should that be iPhone addiction now?) is evidence of this. For a time-poor, but switched-on audience, video content is an ideal medium, especially in B2B communications.

Sites like Youtube, Metacafe, Vimeo and Slideshare each have their own unique set of socially engaged audiences and comms opportunities. Alongside this, many ‘traditional’ media outlets are recognising the opportunity to engage their audiences in new ways by experimenting and developing their own video channels.

The Guardian’s recent announcement of a ‘digital first’ strategy is pioneering, but it won’t be long before this approach becomes the norm. National newspapers are investing heavily in video with the Telegraph and the FT both creating credible platforms. From a communications perspective, it’s clear video offers big opportunities, especially when many such channels are open to external content.

Top PR agencies are now au fait with online news distribution and SMNR, but video has not yet been exploited to its full extent. Video can put a ‘face’ on a story and summarise ideas quickly and in an engaging manner.  This, coupled with the falling costs of production, makes video the next logical step for adding value to PR activities.

We’ve outlined some considerations to enhance your business to business PR video efforts:

1. Get creative:

‘Going viral’ is the holy grail of high tech marketing and the same principles apply in business. Without creativity your video will languish with minimal hits and have little to no effect. Consider striking ways of making your case, create something that hasn’t been seen before and surprise your audience wherever possible. Even if you don’t ‘go viral’, developing powerful, creative content will enhance your chances of interesting what may be a small, but high-value audience.

2. Ditch the branding:

Though online media outlets are increasingly using video to supplement their coverage, heavy branding will kill-off your chances of being featured. Think of video as an extension of your content rather than an advert – it is an opportunity to add additional perspectives and personality to views and opinions. Accept that you’ll be credited in the story and settle for a quick introductory name and title banner.

3. Add, don’t repeat:

Video shouldn’t repeat what you’ve already said in other content. Use it as an added bonus to support releases, promote your thought leadership, provide extra insight and convey interesting sound bites. If appropriate, think about interviewing customers, analysts or other relevant spokespeople.

4. Make it easy to use:

It’s great to host video on your website, but using YouTube, Vimeo or another common platform will increase your opportunities to see, search visibility and potential pass-on rates. These sites provide easy-to-use embeddable HTML code, which can be included in releases and easily added to stories by media.

5.Let people know:

It may sound simple but the only way to drive interest to your video is to shout about it. Let the press and bloggers know video is available when you launch the story. Likewise, email and tweet defined audiences with key video content. Other important social outlets include LinkedIn, Ning (for niche groups), Twitter, key message boards, and any other online space your identified target group occupies.

Some other good blogs to check out are:

PR Daily
http://prdaily.com/Main/Articles/10_reasons_PR_pros_should_use_video__8710.aspx

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/26/digital-first-what-means-journalism

Planet Content

http://www.planetcontent.co.uk/using-video-in-online-pr

PR newswire blog

http://blog.prnewswire.com/2011/04/26/using-video-in-social-media-and-search-engines/

This surge is likely due to a number of factors. The Legal Services Act came into force on 6 October, breaking down the barriers to non-lawyers to enter the legal services market. Now, there is a real need for law firms to match the creative and marketing standards of these new competitors, including today’s big business consultancies – many of which are already well-oiled marketing machines.

Business services providers are also increasingly positioning themselves as “trusted business advisors”. This presents a major challenge for typical law firms, characterised by their legal briefings and “traditional” brand image. Marketing and thought leadership in particular will be critical to this makeover. See my previous article legal thought leadership comes of age for the reasons why.

Top recruits from these adjacent industries will bring invaluable insights to these “legal laggards”. At this early stage in the legal marketing revolution, there is a real opportunity for them to raise the bar for integrated marketing and high impact thought leadership campaigns in this sector.

The road to becoming a credible, dynamic business advisor is littered with challenges however. LLP-style decision-making and the general conservative nature of legal businesses will make it hard for marketing revolutionaries to convince partners of the need for change. The business case will need to be couched in terms that are familiar to them, whilst opening their eyes to a new vision for the firm.

Then there are the usual challenges associated with being an early adopter of a new way of working. Not to mention that many firms are starting from a stand still when it comes to encouraging partner participation in business commentary for example. Marketing will need company-wide support for making bold statements, creating IP and reaching audiences through the various online and offline channels available.

It might be early days, but I am convinced that this wave of new legal marketing hires will precede a steady increase in the number of law firms talking about thought leadership and working to differentiate themselves from the business consulting crowd.

She asks where are all the young female entrepreneurs in competitions like the Young Guns and outlines five steps to help wallflower entrepreneurs increase their profile:

1) Sell yourself

Apply for awards and accolades to generate credible, independent recognition for your strengths and achievements.

2) Take your brand social

Build your online presence by connecting with reputable channels. Focus on the networks that potential customers are engaging with and keep activity aligned to your brand.

3) Networking

This is all about face-to-face networking: meeting people, giving out business cards and getting yourself known in the right circles.

4) Invest in relationships

Take time to socialise with good contacts and maintain old links.

5) Be a super connector

Once you’ve got the hang of networking and built your own brand, it’s time to help others do the same. Introducing like-minded contacts to each other will have positive ramifications for your network too.

You can read the rest of her piece in Growing Business here: Claire Mason – Where have all the young women gone?