Posts from — February 2009

I shared two things with Green Dragon skipper Ian Walker yesterday – a birthday and a slammed, business-as-usual schedule. I spent the day racing around Dublin meeting new clients, while Ian Walker spent it dodging the Doldrum squalls in the Pacific Ocean.

The Volvo Ocean Race fleet are currently due east of Papua New Guinea, heading for two ice gates south east of New Zealand, after which they’ll head for Cape Horn and on up to Rio, a 13,000-mile leg.

As with my last post, the Green Dragon is another gargantuan Irish #PRfail. If you’re reading this and wondering what the hell the Green Dragon is, my point is proven. I’ll write more about this soon. For now, fleeces await unpacking.

Happy Birthday Ian, and me.

This is his birthday blog post, and below is the interview with him from the official Volvo Ocean Race site.

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Bloggers beware – this is only the beginning.

Mulley has written about bloggers’ ire over being ‘duped‘ into a Fianna Fáil event last night, under the guise of a talk by Obama web guru, Joe Rospars, and between his post and the Slugger round-up, there’s no need to go linking to every angry blogger again here.

The jist is that Fianna Fail sent out two invites – one to party stalwarts which described the launch very much as a Fianna Fail affair, and one to bloggers which failed to mention FF at all, and merely dangled the social media carrot of Joe Rospars. Hook them, and they will come.

And come they did, in their droves. And lo, they were angry when they realised they were going to sit through a party political broadcast. But still, they blogged about Fianna Fail and their link to Rospars’ company, blogged furiously, but as anyone knows, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. And one thing you can rely on bloggers to do is write – lots. Happy or sad they will churn out text. It would take a Hiroshima-like event to shut us bloggers up. Bad or good, FF got their online column inches from a PR FAIL – so was it really a PR FAIL?

Just a week ago I warned bloggers to beware that they were setting themselves up to be used and abused by PR types. I was speaking about the Bord Gais launch model, and was assured in my comments that this wasn’t the case – bloggers were in control of the situation, and would not have their time wasted. They went because they were curious.

Well, folks, curiosity killed the cat.  This should be a stark warning to bloggers – PR people now see you as fish in a barrel, and they all have guns.

(An aside – the Irish Times picked up on the ‘What’s in it for us’ post – and credited it to some meaty-sounding blogger called Mark Ham Nolan. Is Google blocked in the ivory tower, Siobhan? Danger is MY middle name.)

EDIT: Hello folks in FF HQ, thanks for reading. I have a feeling you’re about to get what’s been coming to you for a long time very soon indeed.

Too busy with work to even think about a decent post for today. Go find someone interesting to follow on Twitter instead. I’ll be back tomorrow.

A desperate letter dropped on my doormat today – it was from the local office of estate agents Douglas Newman Good, eager to convince that now is, actually, a good time to sell. The letter was full of hilarious misdirection, suggesting that by not buying now, people are missing the ‘best opportunities and discounted prices’, and indicating that the market has reached its bottom.

Says Stephen Manek: “It is our view that house prices will not fall much further and that most of the price falls have already happened… We believe that now is a great time to move home and take advantage of the attractive falling interest rates and reduced house prives on your next purchase.”

If I believed that they actually thought that, which I don’t, it would be a black mark in DNG’s book, as it would fly in the face of all economic indicators. If a company can blinker itself to what’s happening in the global economy, that’s a company whose advice I don’t want to take.

House prices fell almost 15% in 2008, according to Daft.ie, with the rate of the fall accelerating considerably during Q4 of 2008. Back in April, the Economist’s report on global housing markets put Ireland top of a list of overvalued housing markets, with the average house overvalued by more than 30% at peak.

Applying basic junior-school maths, that means that a proper correction is only half-way through, so the bottom is some way off yet. The courageous might sell now, rent until things bottom out completely, and then buy, but the average person won’t risk it. Anyone who sold a year or more ago and has rented since might be tempted to buy now – if, that is, there was anything on the market to buy, which there isn’t.

If DNG honestly ‘believe that now is a great time to move home’, they are fools. What is more likely is that they are so desperate to sell something, anything, that they are happy to blithely smile and lie and hope that the people they are bombarding with junk don’t read the papers, turn on the radio or have a television or internet connection.

I’m staying put. But if I was selling, DNG would have just lost my business.

Damien Mulley has soaked up enough of the credit today – we all knew him before the awards, and are well aware of his talents. It’s time to say ‘fair play’ to the event sponsors.

Anyone who has organised a big event like the Blog Awards will tell you that it lives or dies on funding.
Without funds, there’s no fun, and the likes of the Irish Blog Awards run solely on sponsorship.

The level of sponsorship is often a measure of the perceived worth of the event, and the model the sponsorship takes reflects on the market represented by attendees.

That the Blog Awards cleaned its own nose financially, with full sponsorship, free drinks and the rest, shows that the blogging community engenders a belief by sponsors that they will see some return in the form of exposure, and eventually a spend, as we tweet and blog away about their services.

Ciara Crossan from WeddingDates.ie took that to extremes by dressing up in a wedding dress to present best blog post.

A disclosure – my company, A Stitch In Time, was also a Blog Awards sponsor, so if you picked up one of the pictured pink and green bags, you’ll see our url running underneath the blog logo. If you’re in the market for some embroidery, we hope you’ll consider us. If you never heard of us before this – the sponsorship has done its bit.

Along that vein, let’s take my category sponsors, Mamut.com, a company I had never heard of before Saturday night.

Margaret, from their PR crowd, contacted me for a quote today for their press release, and I hurriedly did some research into their products so that I could put together a quote that was of most use to them. Mamut produce business accounting software, so I went with quotes mentioning the new surge in small businesses using blogs and the like to promote their wares, under the assumption that their target market is small to medium enterprise.

As someone who runs a small business and does the day-to-day bookkeeping, I know that having a package with which you’re comfortable and in which you have confidence is a huge weight off the shoulders. Mamut is a new one for me to consider alongside its competitors, which would include Big Red Book, Sage and the like.

So to the award winners and shortlistees – how about engaging in some blog PR for the people that made your category possible – the sponsor.

Ireland is running pretty short on heroes at the moment, with the economy in tatters and a cabal of wealthy conmen running for cover. Heroes are unlikely to be found in the Dáil, or the banks, or big business, and so we turn to sport.

On Saturday, one of Ireland’s marine heroes was recognised by his sporting community, but true to form, he was off doing battle with other men and Mother Nature, and could only connect via satellite.

Damian Foxall, currently mid-Pacific as watch leader on Ireland’s Green Dragon entry in the Volvo Ocean Race, was crowned Ireland’s Sailor of the Year, announced live on Tom MacSweeney’s Seascapes radio programme. Foxall, 39, was recognised as sailor of the month in February for his win in the Barcelona World Race, a non-stop round-the-world yacht race starting and ending in Barcelona. The Kerryman paired with French sailor Jean-Pierre Dick for the race, a 24,679 mile endurance test which they completed, unaided, in 92 days, 8 hours, 49 minutes and 49 seconds.

Foxall is the quintissential quiet man, appearing every now and then to meekly accept an accolade, before disappearing to silently do great things, the likes of which others only dream. He’s softly spoken, every word carrying authority, and larger in his presence than in his actual frame, which is surprisingly diminutive.

He started his offshore career with appearances in the famous Figaro race, the offshore sailing world’s sprint circuit, and progressed from there to bigger and better things, taking in a host of round-the-world races and speed record attempts. Offshore sailing, and solo sailing in particular, breeds a particular type of individual due to the stresses and strains it exerts. Racing a high-performance yacht over long distances is tough enough for a full team, but when you’re on your own sleep deprivation is heightened, and responsibility for all the navigation, the decision-making of the skipper and the brute force usually supplied by grinders rests on your own shoulders.

Foxall bears it with a simple shrug.

While not the skipper on board Ireland’s Green Dragon, Foxall is watch leader, and part of what sailors call the ‘afterguard’, the group of key decision-makers on the boat, akin to the generals in times of war. But unlike portly generals, you’ll see Foxall at the front line regularly. As someone who’s used to doing all the work himself, Foxall leads by example, and mucks in to the toughest work like an enthusiastic junior recruit.

I’ll not go on. I was lucky enough to sail with Foxall and the Green Dragon crew from Galway to Cork earlier in the year – the resulting article for the Sunday Business Post is here. Congratulations, Damian.

Markham is a freelance journalist and contributing editor with Afloat Magazine, Ireland’s Sailing and Motorboating Magazine.

Just a note to say thanks and congratulations to everyone involved in the Blog Awards on Saturday night. The win came as a complete shock, and all eloquence seemed to drain out my feet once up on stage.

Congrats to all the nominees and winners – particularly Suzy Byrne who took home the gong for top blog overall.

The awards seem to get better and better every year, with new ideas from within the blog community put to work on the night to best effect. Nice to meet so many of you on the night, also.

Two networking events brought bloggers and advertising types in contact in Dublin over the last week, and both spurred a ripple of chatter on Twitter and through blogs.

The first was Casting Couch, a pre-launch event at which bloggers were given an early heads-up on Bord Gáis’s Big Switch launch, a day ahead of the traditional media, but with an embargo that prevented them from doing anything with the information until it went on general release.

The other was the second iteration of Damien Mulley’s Collision Course, a collaborative affair where bloggers and PR types were encouraged to mingle, work together to solve a problem, and share ideas.

I didn’t attend the first, but from what I gather, Bord Gáis unveiled the product behind their anonymous Big Switch campaign, which had established an online presence using Twitter and a placeholder website, without revealing anything of the substance of the offer beforehand.  Bloggers were bound to an embargo, after which they were free to blog away to their heart’s content, extending the reach of the campaign, for the cost of a few bottles of wine and some nibbles to the organisers.

The column inches and quantifiable hits were the desired result for the PR folk. But what, if anything, was in it for the bloggers? What use was this to them apart from the ability to say ‘I was there’ or, after the embargo has passed and the news is out there, ‘I already knew that’?

Erm, thanks, I think.

I did attend the second (nice to meet you all), and enjoyed working through a problem with a mix of bloggers and PR types. The format has potential, and the discussion about how to improve it further was good, but I came away feeling that although I had contributed to a worthwhile discussion, I hadn’t gained all that much, or felt like we had broken any new ground. The usual touchpoints were hit/buzzwords mentioned and at one stage of our discussion one of the PR folks observed that a certain tack might ’score brownie points with Damien’, meant in jest but illuminating. It reminded me of this post. (Update: and this video)

Any networking opportunity is valuable in itself, but I couldn’t help but wonder what tangible gains there are from this form of interaction, if any, for the average blogger.  In the Big Switch case, were bloggers not set up to be used as pawns by the PR firm in question, with little to show for it bar a few free drinks?

Bloggers have long craved respect and recognition from the mainstream, a recognition of worth rather than the ‘insolent child’ treatment that was doled out for so long. But in a rush to be ‘engaged’ by the big boys, have we mistaken being involved for being used? [Read more →]

Originally uploaded by cuu508

Where the trail cuts into the diagonal of the hill in this picture is where I found myself a few Sundays ago, after a 20-minute uphill mountainbike grind, and nursing a double hangover. The uphill over thick gravel became a mountain traverse, and my burning lungs were quickly extinguished by fresh air blowing up the hill from Lough Corrib.

This was Derroura, a Coillte recreation site, twelve hours before the polar air hit and Ireland was covered in snow, and the skies were as blue as you see them here. I got sunburnt. It was blissful, if somewhat scalding for my poor alveoli.

Until, that is, my back wheel rim started hitting the stones. I had a puncture. Not a problem, however. Claire, one of the staff  in the wonderful Killary Adventure Centre, had told us about her puncture at the top of the hill, so in the carpark at the bottom we made preparations. I had a tube and all the accoutrements in my backpack. Patches, multi-tool, yadda yadda. We had two pumps, so could afford to leave one behind. Or so we thought.

After a high-speed tube change, I started pumping, and pump as I might, things remained disturbingly flaccid. The pump had died, leaving me seven or eight kilometres from home with airless tyres. Shite.

Phil sprinted off to fetch the spare pump and I picked up the bike and started jogging home. Seven kilometres of trail is plenty of time to think, and it got me thinking about Coillte.

Coillte owns a million acres of Ireland – almost 7% of the island of Ireland (turning over €381million, 0.001% of Ireland’s GDP) – a sizeable chunk. Of those million acres 79% is forested, with a mix of 38 species – 16 conifer, 12 broadleaf. For a long time, most of that land was off limits to bikers of any kind.

For years, we mountain bikers trespassed on Coillte land, enduring the shouts and lashes of walkers who viewed us as bandits and outlaws.

Until, that is, Coillte started engaging with the growing mountainbiking community in Ireland, and realised that if a person could afford to spend upwards of €1,000 on a bike, they could probably afford to pay for other stuff, too.

Hence, their new development of outdoor recreation sites, for biking, hiking and the rest.

Jewel in the mountain-biking crown is their outfit at Ballyhoura, which I’ll be hitting after the Blog Awards on Sunday. It’s €5 for parking, another €2 for the bikewash, and there are 95kms of looping trails of varying severity, with a shop and showers at the trailheads.

Finally, the days of Coillte not seeing the woods for the trees are over. Bikers like trails that are maintained and have ancillary services, and will flock to them. Take the Queen Charlotte Track in New Zealand, a mecca for the local bikers, or the ‘World’s Most Dangerous Road‘ in Bolivia, both of which have mountain biking industries around them. The last time I was in Ballyhoura, there was traffic, a variety of nationalities all bashing the trails, having received a long-overdue fáilte from Coillte. Fantastic.

Oh Hai, I Can Haz Catipal? KThxBai.

AIB spent a large sum of money yesterday reassuring us that they were primed and ready to back their customers with renewed vigour. As they might, having had €3.5bn of our money pumped into their cobwebbed coffers to help lubricate the credit system. The ads contain the line: ‘As Ireland’s largest bank we can – and must – play a role in getting our economy back onto its feet.’

Full-page ads across a large section of national newspapers cost, on Mark Coughlan’s estimates, €160,585 – a substantial amount on any given day, and certainly enough to raise eyebrows when it’s felt that banks have been more flaithuileach than they should with other peoples’ money. Many could rightly feel that the money would have been better spent invested in SMEs or loosening lending policy.

The figure, in perspective, represents 0.005% of what the government invested in AIB, or 1/20,000th of the principal (Meaning they still have 99.995% of it to play with, or €3,499,839,415). Given the size of the principal, hewing off even that small a fraction yields a breathtaking lump. Of course, €28,615 of that lump goes directly back into government coffers as VAT paid on the ads by AIB to the various papers, so all is not lost. The balance will also trickle back into the Irish economy (bar, perhaps, the money spent with the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times) as the newspapers go about spending their revenue on other goods and services, wages, PAYE/PRSI and, if any of them manage to post a profit, corporation tax.

Mark offers a few suggestions on the alternative uses of the money. He says: ‘It would have funded 12 SMEs with the maximum FÁS staff training scholarship (€13,000)’, and goes on to point out it would pay for three school teachers or two Gardai. All good suggestions, but by calling it a ‘€160,585 thank you’, the post is missing the point slightly. (A disclosure before I go on – my initial reaction was exactly the same as Mark’s, and we discussed it on Twitter).

The full-page ads are just that – ads – and must be seen as such. Marketing mogul David Ogilvy once said: ‘The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time’. Personally, I’ve never invested more in hitting potential customers with advertising than in the last few months, which have been the toughest Ireland has ever seen. The purpose of ads is to inspire confidence and convince customers that they can rely on your product. People have lost their belief in the banking system which is, correspondingly, the source of all credit, and a prop to all industry. If SMEs, sole traders and the rest feel they have no chance of securing a loan or even useful advice by going into the bank, what options do they have? Going to the wall, and then the dole, is one, and that has a much more detrimental effect on the exchequer than a few newspaper ads.

AIB and BOI have a huge role to play in the next few financial months. Their trump card is the €7bn recapitalisation that they have just received, giving them a huge leg-up in security terms over and above other banks. In order to make those work, they need to be able to disburse that money into the Irish economy, and to do so, get people through the doors. To do so, they have to shout from the rooftops that they are safe, secure, and willing to lend . A 0.005% ad spend will pay for itself by the end of the month. As a proxy contributor to AIB’s bailout, I wish them well.