Man Bites Dog, the multi award-winning B2B communications agency, has scooped the EMEA Silver Award for ‘Research for Publicity’ and been shortlisted for a Gold Award in the EMEA SABRE Awards 2013.

Man Bites Dog has been nominated in the ‘Business-to-Business Marketing award’ category in recognition of its ‘Putting Prosperity On The Map’ campaign for The Legatum Institute Prosperity Index.

This annual global assessment of wealth and well‐being has been running for five years. Minimal annual movement in the Index’s global rankings, combined with an overload of indices and league tables in the media, meant the Institute faced an uphill battle in gaining traction and placing this issue firmly on the policy agenda.

Man Bites Dog addressed this with creative visual content, which demonstrated that ‘soft’ factors, such as education, health, personal freedom and security, are essential predictors of future prosperity alongside economic performance. The campaign led to more than 25,000 downloads of the 2012 report – a 400% increase on 2011 – and generated significant international discussion.

Claire Mason, founder and managing director of Man Bites Dog, said: “These accolades highlight our ability to breathe fresh life into existing intellectual property and spark conversations at a global level. We relished the opportunity to reinvigorate this highly respected Index with a new creative slant, which captured the imagination of the media, policy makers and the public alike.”

The win follows another award-winning year, including Silver and Gold at the EMEA SABRE Awards 2012.

The winners of this year’s EMEA Gold Awards will be announced at the SABRE Awards dinner in Barcelona on May 30^th.

It may have started out as a version of Hot or Not for Harvard University students, but Facebook is now undeniably a serious business tool. Likewise, twitter is no longer just for knowing what Stephen Fry eats for breakfast.

Social media often comes from humble beginnings, but can quickly evolve into a communications channel for the masses – including all B2B brands. For example, it has the benefit of real-time interaction with an engaged audience and can help to position you as a real thought leader in your field.

There is a lot of hype around social media, and this is where B2B brands can often come unstuck; it is tempting to jump on the bandwagon, but a poor social media presence is worse than having no social media presence at all.

It’s essential that brands take the right approach to social media to give them the best chances of success. On that note, here are eight top tips to getting started in social media:

1. Strategy

Before getting started, it is vital to have a clear strategy in place based on a rigorous analysis of the social media landscape you are operating in. This should tell you where your audience are, how they are using the various channels, what competitors are doing, and the opportunities for your brand.

Your strategy should also include key messages for every channel and a list of short, medium and long-term objectives based on what success looks like for your business.

2. Style

As any communicator knows, styles need to be adapted for different forums. For example, on twitter you need to learn how to communicate in just 140 characters and appreciate the ins and outs of short URLs, memes and hashtags. On Linkedin, you need to know how to capture a Group audience and encourage members to share their ideas and experiences.

B2B brands need to research and understand these new styles of communication, and ensure that everyone appreciates the subtle nuances that can help you to cut through the noise.

3. Sustainability

Setting up a social media account is one thing; having a social media presence is quite another. Before getting started, you need to know you have the resources and commitment required to keep it going.

Help yourself by creating a calendar of content and make sure you always have something to talk about.

4. Substance

As with any medium, content is key to a successful communications programme. There is a vast amount of information out there and people will quickly tire of feeds that are of no use to them.

Content must be fresh, unique, interesting and engaging. If you’re using social media to demonstrate thought leadership it must be new, or at least add value to the existing debate.

People often ask us how many followers they should have and how to increase their following, but perhaps there’s a better way of thinking about this. If you have the right content and promote it in the right way, the right people will come. It’s better to have 1,000 engaged readers of your blog than 10,000 disengaged followers and the right content will ensure that the high value interest keeps coming back.

5. Spokespeople

Getting key spokespeople on board is vital if you are to create a compelling social ‘product’. Some will be more familiar with the channel than others, so training needs to be tailored. They will also have varying perceptions of how much time they need to put into this and what they will get out of it, so you need to set reasonable expectations up front.

6. Stamina

It takes planning, dedication and perseverance to make a success of social media and to start seeing results. This needs to be built into your strategy and objectives, so that your targets are achievable and to manage expectations internally.

7. Suitability

A major benefit of social media is that it enables you to talk in real time to a niche audience. It is vital that your content focuses specifically on what’s affecting them. Getting the right spokespeople on board with the necessary insight and experience is the first step to achieving this.

8. Succinct

Generally speaking, easily digestible content works best as people have a limited amount of time to spend on social media. There are various analytics tools available to determine what works best on which channels. Keeping a close eye on this and recent industry reports will help you to tailor your content in various formats to keep your audience engaged.

Multi award-winning B2B PR consultancy, Man Bites Dog, has been shortlisted in three categories of the 2011 CIPR Pride Awards 2011.

The awards recognise excellence in public relations across the UK regions. Man Bites Dog is a finalist in the Home Counties South ‘Outstanding Public Relations Consultancy’ category.

In addition, the consultancy is nominated in the ‘Corporate and Business Communications’ and ‘Best Use of Media Relations’ categories.

Jane Wilson, CIPR CEO, said: “The CIPR PRide Awards celebrate the best PR and campaigns from the profession across the UK. To be shortlisted for an Award demonstrates exemplary achievement, impact and value – immediately putting their work in the spotlight. Congratulations to everyone for reaching this stage.”

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, said: “We’re very proud that, yet again, Man Bites Dog has been shortlisted for these awards. Being nominated is a great endorsement of the team and the outstanding results they are delivering for our clients.”

The winners of this year’s Home Counties South CIPR PRide Awards will be announced on 11th November in a ceremony at the Brighton Hilton Metropole.

Multi award-winning B2B PR consultancy, Man Bites Dog, has been shortlisted for Best PR Agency and Best PR Campaign at the B2B Marketing Awards 2011.

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, said: “I set up Man Bites Dog because I felt there was a clear gap in the market for a B2B consultancy specialising in PR for the service economy. Six years on and we’re the most award-winning B2B consultancy in the UK.

“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.”

The winners of this year’s 2011 B2B Marketing Awards will be announced on 24th November in a ceremony in London’s Honourable Artillery Company.

Multi award-winning B2B PR consultancy Man Bites Dog has been shortlisted for the prestigious 2011 PRWeek Awards.

Man Bites Dog is a finalist in the Specialist Consultancy of the Year category at the annual awards which recognise excellence in UK public relations.

The consultancy has previously won PRWeek’s New Consultancy of the Year award and has been named one of the magazine’s Best Places to Work for the last two years running as well as taking home awards for client campaigns.

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, said: “I set up Man Bites Dog because there was a clear gap in the market for a consultancy specialising in PR for the service economy.

“Six years on and we are still true to our founding specialism in communications for professional and IT services companies. We are very proud to be shortlisted for this award as it is testament to the strength of our unique proposition and the outstanding work of the Man Bites Dog team.”

The winners of this year’s 2011 PRWeek Awards will be announced on 25th October in a ceremony at Grosvenor House on London’s Park Lane.

For the last few years the PR industry has been embroiled in a seemingly interminable argument with other marketing disciplines over who ‘owns’ social media. But debates over ownership are not helpful – the industry should refocus its attentions on what good PR brings to the party.

Whilst the media landscape is irrevocably changing, big ideas and great content still dominate. Mass interaction, especially via twitter, is based on and fueled by, the sharing of useful and compelling content. And quality content is, of course, the basis of good PR.

At the same time the increase in the volume of information vying for our attention and the burden this places on individuals, is fueling the need for bite-size, and increasingly, non-text based content. People simply can’t cope with the sea of business, career and life-critical information they need to digest, so communicators need to make it easy for them.

But, while ideas are still making the world go round, PR needs to catch-up with the new (and newly accessible) tools and formats for bringing their clients’ ideas to life and making them easily digestible and shareable with the widest possible audience.

This clearly presents a huge opportunity for PR to create rich content in the form of videos, images, infographics and audio that help convey client ideas easily and rapidly. By doing so they can increase the opportunities to engage audiences, both by working with the media in new ways, and by encouraging content sharing through blogging and social media.

It’s easy for B2B brands to feel left behind with such comms innovations, but this trend actually holds more promise for engaging B2B decision-makers than consumers. The often dry approach taken by some in disseminating B2B content will benefit greatly from a fresh approach. Professional services companies, for example, have a sizeable opportunity to demonstrate its expertise – the only thing it really sells – in many more engaging and compelling ways.

Media brands have also recognised the ‘bite-size’ opportunity and are rapidly experimenting with short-form and multimedia content. The Guardian with its mass of podcasts and evolving data journalism can scarcely be called just a newspaper anymore.

To seize this opportunity however, communicators need to up-skill rapidly. The necessary transferable skills are well-established in areas of PR such as broadcast and radio specialists, but they need to become part of any PR’s toolkit.

PRs now need to be as au fait recording and editing a quick talking-head video or audio snippet as they are writing a press release. Likewise, they must consider how research can escape the comforting walls of the PDF whitepaper, via data mashups and visualisation and how they can work with media outlets to bring their data to life.

The above trends present some important considerations for professional communicators:

• The skim reader – Think about how you can earn and keep audience attention using different channels and new, text-light, ways of presenting ideas.
• Visualising data – Think about how data and client messages can be conveyed in more engaging and visually appealing ways via infographics and visualisation.
• The changing media – Consider how newspapers and other media outlets use data and work with them in the most appropriate manner. The Times, for example, has its own data team for its business dashboard whilst The Guardian uses open APIs to create and encourage data mashups.
• Escaping the page – Think about how accompanying multimedia content can support PR activity. Also, explore the opportunities presented by evolving media outlets, such as podcast interviews.
• Good to share – People don’t want to share everything but it should be made easy for them wherever possible. Explore open copyright such as Creative Commons for data and images and make videos and audio easily ‘embeddable’ using YouTube or Vimeo.

Essential viewing/reading on this topic:

Man Bites Dog’s favourite infographic sites:
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/
http://www.gapminder.org/

The Guardian and FT’s dedicated data and visualisation pages:
http://www.ft.com/uk/interactive
http://www.guardian.co.uk/data

The Guardian’s podcasting operation:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/audio

The Telegraph and FT’s nascent video operations:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraphtv/
http://video.ft.com/

Examples of combining data, graphics and video:
The cost of the Iraq war to the US by Good Magazine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OT5uw1Fb_0

Apple iPhone stats in an infographic video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyOv8wZcNfI&feature=related

KPMG, the Big Four firm providing audit, tax and advisory services, has appointed B2B PR agency Man Bites Dog to handle PR for its Performance and Technology consultancy arm in the UK.

Man Bites Dog will be supporting KPMG’s development strategy for Performance and Technology, by promoting the division’s IT and business performance consultancy capabilities.

Man Bites Dog won a three-way pitch to handle the media relations brief and devise a thought leadership programme.

Scott Parker, UK head of KPMG P&T, said: “We have an ambitious growth strategy for Performance and Technology, hence the need for powerful integrated PR, marketing and business development.”

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, commented: “The addition of such a high profile client is testament to the excellent work of our highly-driven team. We look forward to working with KPMG to support the rapid growth of the Performance and Technology division.”

PR Consultancy Wins Business Category Award for Third Year RunningMulti award-winning B2B PR consultancy Man Bites Dog has won two awards at the CIPR PRide Awards 2009.

The awards recognise excellence in public relations across the UK. Man Bites Dog scooped a Gold Award in the Corporate and Business Communications category for the third successive year for its thought leadership campaign, Credit Where its Due?

The winning campaign successfully established Roland Berger Strategy Consultants as a leading authority on the worsening economic situation by identifying a new stage in the credit crunch. Media coverage highlights included BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, the Financial Times and The Economist.

Man Bites Dog also won the Silver award in the Outstanding Public Relations Consultancy category.

Claire Mason, Founder and Managing Director of Man Bites Dog, said: “We’re very proud that for the third year in a row Man Bites Dog has been recognised for delivering outstanding B2B campaigns.”