As I begin to write this I’m on an East Coast train with the Tyne Bridge to disappearing to my left. When heading back down south there’s always a sense that I’m leaving behind a special place. I guess many people feel a close connection with where they were born, but above and beyond that the reason I bang on (and on and on) about Northumberland to people from further afield is that I really think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the country.

So if you’ve never been, I thought I’d try and lure you with five possible reasons why Northumberland might one day win you over, with the aid of the interweb:

• PUFFINS, on the Farne Islands – who could resist? Northumberland is also one of the last remaining places in the country where you can see red Squirrels.
• A thriving regional music tradition, centred around the Northumbrian small pipes
• If you spend a lot of time in the cities, you might want to experience the empty open spaces of the Cheviot Hills or the North Pennines
• After you’ve had a Stottie, a regular sandwich will never seem quite as filling (and you can pick up a Greggs Steak Bake for 80p!)
• And finally, who can forget Hadrian’s Wall? I don’t think it’s possible to truly understand the history of the United Kingdom without standing on one of the high vantage points and taking in the scale of the construction. On that note, on 13 March the good people of The North will be illuminating Hadrian’s Wall – definitely a spectacle worth seeing.

If I can be cheeky and squeeze in a sixth, and one you can’t easily prove online, I’d say one of the defining characteristics of Northumberland and the North East is that though life is still hard for a good many people (and there are parts of the area where you can see poverty deeply etched on the faces of the residents) you’re never too far from a smile from a stranger. We were brought up proper, we were.

Thanks to Stephen Waddington of Speed Communications, Deirdre Molloy at the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and Mark Pack of Mandate for inspiring different parts of the presentation.

Presentation, with annotations

Below you’ll find a copy of my slide deck, with some explanatory notes added in red.
The digital world: ten things you need to know but never dared ask

You can also download a PDF of the presentation (12MB PDF) without annotations.

More reading

I promised some links to useful websites and agency suggestions, so here is my starter for ten:

Word of Mouth agencies

• We Are Social
• 1000heads

Digital strategy and web service agencies

• Chameleon Net
• Fortune Cookie
• Precedent

Online video production

• Christian Payne (documentally)

Measurement

• bit.ly
• Google Analytics
• Google Insights for Search
• Icerocket
• How to use YouTube Insight

If you haven’t already listened to Radio 5 Live’s interview with Sir Nicholas Winterton, which followed on the heels of a similar interview with Total Politics, have a listen to that BBC interview now.

The story which broke on Thursday was still rolling two days later, as I woke to a debate on my local radio station asking “should MPs travel first class?” It won’t surprise you that when asked the question in the context of Winterton’s outburst, most callers were of the opinion that MPs should be made to travel standard class. In fact, sod standard class, they should be dragged on a rope attached to the back of the train while working people queue up to use the toilet (between stations, naturally).

Yet, as someone who commutes five days per week in standard class, I find Winterton’s point uncontroversial when examined dispassionately.

A private environment

First – it is in the nature of many people (myself included) to look over the shoulder of people who are reading / using a computer, in any environment. We are natural nosey parkers. This is something I lamented last month while checking my inbox on the gay social networking site Thingbox, whilst on a train. (Those of a sensitive disposition should note that the screenshot contains some rather close to the bone humour, and, ahem, strident language. I have concealed the identities of the guilty.)

In first class, most train companies put three seats in to a space which would take five seats in standard class. Many customers will have their own table. Just as a point of logistics it is harder to rubber-neck the papers / screens of your fellow travellers. It could also be argued that there is a culture of discretion.  As MPs often help those who are in the most dire of straits, we should consider whether casework correspondence in particular could be read in standard class.

A productive environment

Every now and then a day comes along when every hour counts – and on those days I confess even I, pleb of plebs, have forked out the extra £20 to upgrade to first class. Why? Because you’re pretty much guaranteed a seat, it’s quieter, and you’re able to spread papers out in a way that is impossible in standard. Stephen Nolan was wrong to say “there are tables in standard class”, the trains used on my commute are one of many not to have tables in standard.

Outside of commuter peak times, Winterton is also right to say that there is more noise and activity, with families and others using the service – this tends not to be the case in the toff carriages.

These things are uncontroversial facts – they’re the reason first class exists, and why so many businesses pay a premium to allow their senior staff to travel in this way. So do I think that MPs (many of whom have to take long train journeys at least twice a week to and from their constituencies) should be able to travel in an environment where they can work on sensitive issues with a clear mind? Yes. Let them eat complimentary cake.

When should the privilege be revoked?

Where Sir Nicholas went wrong was in how he said what he said, and the attitudes behind what he said. Winterton has clearly forgotten that first class travel is part of the privilege of being elected, and not a God-given right handed down to him by virtue of his being a knight of the realm. His apparent view that no-one works in standard class is farcical, and implicitly screams just how out of touch with the real world he is. Particularly pernicious were his constant references to the millions who use standard class every year as “they” and “them.”

Sir Nicholas’s attitudes are a born out of a sense of privilege, fed by the closeted world of many MPs. Winterton can stroll under the road from Portcullis House to the Houses of Parliament without ever leaving the secure zone. In New Palace Yard a taxi (on expenses, naturally) can be called to whisk him to Euston station, and he can stroll across the concourse to his first class seat in splendid isolation. His ticket is free, the food is complimentary, and at the other end another free taxi will take him home. Only the most modest of people would be able to live like that for the best part of forty years while avoiding a superiority complex. Perhaps it is time for Sir Nick particularly, in his last few weeks at Westminster, to squeeze in to a seat in coach and reconnect with the people who put him in parliament in the first place.

The steady erosion of trust in politics and politicians, even though we know past trust has been abused, will never deliver the parliament we all hope for. My own preference on the thorny issue of travel, in what some will see as a stereotypically wishy-washy liberal answer, is for the new rules to expect that MPs should travel by standard class, but be able to upgrade to first class on a case by case basis when necessary, without question. MPs would be left to make their own choices – if not handling casework or other sensitive material, they can ride in coach with the rest of us. Some will play along, others will play the system. Coupled with continued transparency of expenses, we can hold our local member to account for their choice. That’s a system that seems to me to be responsible, fair, and realistic.

I’ll be speaking at the annual convention of the Association for Cultural Enterprises next week – if you work in that sector and fancy a session which will involve PowerPoint but also the collective creation of a small piece of social marketing collateral (despite warnings not to rely on an internet connection!), then do come along.

Francesco Mazzei launch @ Pizza Express

Originally uploaded by 1000heads

I had a great night on Monday at the launch of the Francesco Mazzei menu at Pizza Express, courtesy of Mark Pack, and the lovely ladies of 1000heads. Lisa, one of the said lovely ladies, handled my tipping half a flute of Champagne over her with admirable grace and professionalism.

Each of the Franceso Mazzei menu additions were a delight in their own way, though the Calabrese should come with a health warning. HOT. I was stunned in to silence for upwards of a minute, and that is quite something.

I believe the menu is being rolled out nationwide from today – try the Rustichella. To die for. In time it may even tempt me from My Usual.

But then again, perhaps not… why break a habit developed over 10 years?

It’s been a beautiful white Christmas in north-east Northumberland, so I thought I’d share some photos of the area around Alnwick:

If you haven’t visited/ holidayed in Northumberland before, you don’t know what you’re missing. This article provides a great introduction.

There are plenty of people rushing to judge Eurostar this weekend. The headline on TechCrunch is almost comical – “As hundreds of Eurostar passengers languish, Eurostar ignores Twitter.” On the face of it, it’s rather like saying “As shelves run dry of food, Tesco ignores Susan Boyle.” It’s quite random. TechCrunch’s view of the issue is pretty narrow (as this post from We are social shows.)

The whole communications effort could have been better, and the speed of the social media response is just one symptom – hopefully Eurostar will take some lessons away from this weekend.

Where did Eurostar go wrong?

• It’s worth saying that when it comes to PR, Eurostar were unlucky – as ever there’s not a lot of news around at Christmas, and this is a big story which is relatively low effort / low cost to cover.  Dramatic though it is, is it really a bigger story than a vulnerable toddler being abducted from a police station? Personally I don’t believe so – but there are unfortunately a lot of angry passengers in the Eurostar story who are able to keep the story running.
• It sounds like there was confusion in Eurostar HQ – We are social’s Robin Grant describes grabbing the chief executive for a minute “in between various crisis meetings”, and being sat alongside the Sales and Marketing Director.  In a situation as fast moving and high profile as this, the key people could have worked better together if they had been co-located in one room. It would have been good to see Eurostar’s crisis team validate or update their corporate message every thirty minutes, while managing the operational challenge.
• I think Eurostar could have picked a better core message – the explanation offered about changes in temperature affecting the trains left more questions than answers. Over time it looked like the company didn’t know what was causing the breakdowns, so it would have been more credible to say “we don’t know what’s happened to the trains, but we’re working as fast as possible to understand it.” There was also an attempt to move too quickly to the final stage of the comms plan – the review and compensation line – when practical operational comms to passengers was needed.
• Eurostar could have used a different spokesperson – I remember watching The Bottom Line on BBC News earlier this year and thinking that Richard Brown came across as a great business leader who had built a formidable operation.  It doesn’t necessarily follow that he’s the best spokesperson for the company in a crisis, as I think the video below shows. The delivery could have been more confident, and the subliminal messages (eg how the picture has been framed)  don’t shout “we have lots of staff working to fix this, and we’re in control.”
• Finally, and most seriously, Eurostar’s internal communications structures, and their face to face communication with customers appear to have failed. Staff weren’t visible to customers, and those staff who were dealing with customers followed different procedures and gave conflicting messages, and the people who needed the most communication – those in the broken down trains – were the people who received the least.An urgent review is needed to establish crisis comms protocols for staff which rectify the  situation which Robin Grant describes as being unable “to communicate with their own staff on board when the train is in the tunnel as all safety regulations and operational responsibility sit firmly with Eurotunnel.” Assuming that is true, EuroTunnel’s procedures would seem to have cost Eurostar hundreds of thousands of pounds in customer loyalty and brand damage. Their press release titled “EuroTunnel rescues Eurostar” (PDF) will need  a robust reply.

Where do Eurostar go from here?

In short:

• Rapidly and transparently announce the likely cause of the fault when it is established, and how it can be mitigated. Put the media and some key social media critics on a successful test run and make the engineers visible.
• Proactively reach their customers with any further news on all comms channels – by text message, email, face to face and yes, social media.
• Look after the passengers – free food and drink at St Pancras and Ebbsfleet. Passengers are talking to the media all the time and no part of the message coming from them is “Eurostar are doing their best to look after us.”
• Use a broader range of spokespeople  – most board level leaders with media skills can fulfil this role.
• Talk to past customers directly – I receive Eurostar marketing emails as a previous customer, and as a potential future customer I have now have concerns about using the service in cold weather – use that marketing data to drive reassurance and reputation rebuilding comms

I do have sympathy for Eurostar’s comms team – it sounds from the outside like they simply lacked any facts to communicate beyond the number of broken down trains. In the long term that internal comunications challenge is the most serious issue to address.

If you’re reading this and you work in Eurostar comms, I hope your Christmas gets better from here on!

One of the major factors for students who choose to study at a metropolitan university, particularly those living in London, is the proximity of the University to their home. These students are more likely than most to search for a specific institution by name, as they may be familiar with it having been exposed to the brand through advertising / signage / events.

If you search for the University of Westminster on the current Google interface, you will see a first hit that looks similar to this:

Under the new Google interface, the map is no longer included in the first search result. However, further down the page a contextual map is included:

I can’t quite believe this map is intended not to give prominence to the University of Westminster, given that those were my search terms. However at present, this is a slot of our ’shop window’ dedicated to our competitors, without the need for PPC advertising. A big change, with a particular relevance in areas where multiple institutions are packed in close together - so yet another London factor for student recruitment.

It’s impossible to answer that question without first defining what an “Internet election” is. Traditionally to my mind there have been two possible definitions:

1. An election where a stasticically significant number of seats, ten or more, change hands either as the direct result of online campaigns by political parties candidates, or because positive online campaigning was a critical factor.
2. An election where any number of MPs, as low as a single MP, is undeniably ousted from their seat by a negative campaign either by political opponents or independent critics, mustered online.

But a third possibility is emerging.

My belief is that when we look back on the General Election of 2010, for all the effort poured in to them the defining story will not come from My Conservatives, or the Liberal Democrats’ soon to be launched competitor, Act.

It could come from a signature pre-planned campaign. If, for example, the TaxPayer’s Alliance aren’t working right now on a postcode searchable system in which voters can see what their sitting MP has claimed on expenses, and what their opponents have said their approach to expenses will be, then they need to sack the person responsible for their digital effort and re-hire quickly.

More likely, the defining online moment of GE2010 will come from Twitter.  Watch this short video before you go any further:

The video shows Twitter’s trending topics for October 13 2009. It shows the clear emergence of the #trafigura hashtag as the dominant topic of conversation in just three hours – an explosion aided by (cough) people like me keeping the tag alive overnight from about 10pm on the 12th. They weren’t just any hours either, but the awkward hours at the start of the working day – 08:00 to 10:00 where people are still drifting in to work, and an organisation isn’t at its peak responsiveness.

Millions discussed Trafigura on Twitter. By the time Trafigura hired someone who understood social media, just three days later on October 16th, their staid YouTube response was only able to garner a few hundred views. Many simply weren’t interested in the story any more, and those who were interested weren’t inclined to help the company out by passing on the existence of the video. They’d burned millions of bridges with millions of people, simply by being slow to react.

Every party, and every candidate, has to decide now whether they’re going to understand and engage with social media, or fear it. It’s a nightmare for political parties to get their heads around – social media has no respect for constituency or regional boundaries, no understanding of the need for parties with complex structures to navigate their internal democratic processes before they pronounce, and in particular, no mercy for those who cannot respond somehow, in some way, immediately.

If the parties haven’t understood it already, they need to now. The General Election of 2010 is already the Internet election – the power of one foolish remark by a tired key figure, amplified by Twitter, could cause your national campaign to implode if you aren’t ready. There is no choice whether or not to engage online, the playing field has been swapped from under the feet of the political parties while their attention was focused on the Lobby.

Purely in terms of defending against the threat of social media, irrespective of embracing the opportunities, if parties haven’t already done the following, they need to move quickly:

• Don’t think that reading Guido Fawkes’ blog is the same as monitoring the web – treat Guido just as you would a journalist from the mainstream media. In terms of influence his blog is as mainstream a media outlet as The Telegraph online. Engage him as you would any other hostile journalist. And Guido’s not alone – have a list of bloggers with a similar impact to the MSM.
• Train all your press officers as active participants on Twitter. The Lobby and other key journalists are already there, and will be being fed stories through Twitter constantly.
• Extend your media monitoring teams to set up Twitter searches for ‘@’ replies, so you can see not only what your key targets are saying, but what is being said in reply. Include:
  • Your candidates and their opponents
  • The journalists following your campaigns
  • Key national political media
• Merge / co-locate your digital and media teams, they need to feed information to each other instantly.
• Have a plan for how you’re going to engage on a national level. Where will you be? Who will speak? Look at the polling data – particularly the demographics. Are you better off on Facebook? Twitter? YouTube? Can you cover them all?
• Be ready to create video at short notice. If you’re hit by a critical YouTube video, there’s little point responding on a webpage on your party site.
• Train your local campaigners. Make sure they’re running a reduced version of your national social media monitoring. Ensure that they can quickly alert your national digital team to anything they may have missed. Particularly, but not exclusively, for sitting MPs look at the campaign and ask yourself this – “If I found myself on the receiving end of a Tim Ireland / Anne Milton campaign, would I know how to react?”

And finally, the national parties (and for that matter any large agency, charity, or company) need to examine their usual tactics for handling negative stories, and ask if they still stand up in the age of Wikileaks and Twitter. You can’t injunct them, you can’t cajole them, you can’t bully them, and you can’t deny their voice. You can only engage. Are you ready?