PR and the Social Web

Looking for information on the web about the protester that disrupted the boat race today there was nothing via Google News and the in-depth report on the Daily Mail gave no clue as to the swimmer’s identity.

A twitter search revealed his identity in a trice.  His name was spreading across twitter less than an hour after the race was finally completed.  Despite the less coiffured hair in the pictures taken after he was dragged from the Thames, there’s an unmistakable likeness to this image from a conference in Zagreb.

Oldfield had planned his protest meticulously and had prepared a long blog post explaining his ‘anti-elitist’ act of “civil disobedience”.  I’m not going to bore you with his reasons (he does that very well in his post if you are inclined to read it).  A quick search will also tell you that he’s a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and studied at the London School of Economics.  He says in his post  that “part of my inspiration for today’s action comes from a protest action that took place 99 years ago – when Emily Davison ran into Epson (sic) Derby race. On the 4 June 1913 Emily ran into the horse that the king had entered.”  Ironic really considering that Emily went to Oxford.

If you are casting a biopic and you can find a high profile actor that looks  remarkably like the subject of the film then you have a great PR story from the off.  It’s even better when the subject of the film is perhaps the most iconic figure in a generation.

I had never considered it before but the resemblance between actor Ashton Kutcher and Apple founder Steve Jobs is really quite uncanny.  Kutcher at 34 is only three years older than Jobs was at the career defining moment when he was ousted from Apple for the first time.

Two films about Jobs are in planning, and this one needs a boost as the other is based on based on Walter Isaacson’s bestselling biography of the Apple founder, backed by Sony with Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing and The Social Network) rumoured to be the screenwriter.  Not much is known about this version other than it will follow Jobs  from “wayward hippie” to Apple co-founder “where he became one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of our time”.  It will have a  screenplay by Matt Whiteley and is slated to shoot from May.

One obvious challenge will be maintaining the likeness as Jobs ages and succumbs to ill health, which prompted a dramatic weight loss over the last few years of his life.  That said, many actors, including Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and 50 Cent have lost substantial amounts of weight where the screen role has demanded it.

The current UK public panic at the petrol pumps started me thinking about the certain similarities with social media.  Before you decide that’s a stretch  bear with me

Some years ago when I took my first look at analytics I was shocked to discover there was no ‘long tail’ when it came to traffic stats.  When you  post on a blog or add something to a social network site the impact usually last for a very short time, it’s quite normal for 90% of hits to be in the first 24 hours.   That basically means that if you want to engage through social media you need to do it regularly and preferably on a daily basis.  Pioneer PR blogger Richard Edelman knew it with his daily ‘6AM’ blog.  The founders of BEBO knew it (Blog Early Blog Often).

There are some exceptions, traffic from search tends to increase over time, but it’s no substitute for new content, and without new content your page rank will decline.  Social networks, where the content is ephemeral, are on course to drive more traffic than search: for a few days if February Facebook drove more visits to The Guardian than Google did.

The message is simple – if you wanted to fuel traffic you have to make sure that sure that you are providing new content all the time, if you don’t your visitors will fill up somewhere else.