What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 9 June 2014

Welcome to another week and we're pleased to report that last weeks Midlands Media Awards went extremely well, with 300 guests at Aston Villa, celebrating the success of journalists and broadcasters from throughout the region.

We had lots of nice comments following the event which is also a positive and judging by the photos from the night we think everyone looked pretty happy with the event (including Qasa Alom from BBC Radio in Stoke who seems pretty pleased!) so we think it was a job well done.

No time to rest on our laurels though as this week our attention is all on the CIPR Northern Conference which is taking place in Manchester this Thursday.

This year’s Northern Conference will provide insight and learning into the skills required to operate in a digital PR landscape. Industry leaders will demonstrate how PR, Content Marketing, SEO and Social Media all work together to create fully integrated and measurable earned media campaigns.

Delegates will learn from the best in our industry about optimising copy for SEO, how paid, earned, owned and shared channels work together, content strategies for social and PR, as well as digital reputation management and monitoring. 

The Northern Conference is perfect for PRs at any stage in their career and is filled with insight, learning and no doubt a good debate! So whether you are in- house or agency, in the voluntary or charity sector, or thinking about a career in PR, this is the conference for you.

Stephen Waddington

The Speaker Line Up is pretty impressive with Earned Media Specialist from the BBC, James English, CIPR President Stephen Waddington, Drew Benvie, founder of Battenhall (Drew is the UK’s #1 most respected practitioner in New Media Age’s 2011).

 Additionally we have the Global Social Media Manager for LateRooms, The Communications Director for the Met Office, Representatives from the Co-operative Group, Harkable and McCanns as well as Google and YouTube so it should be an incredibly interesting day.

You can follow some of the activity live on the day using #CIPRNC

In other news this week it would be churlish of us not to mention the World Cup as football fever will no doubt be gripping the nation in the coming weeks. However if you don't like football the next few weeks might be a bit tortuous so we thought we'd look at ways to avoid it altogether. We have blatantly pinched this article from one we found online, but it made us laugh so much, we ran out of time to think up our own ways of surviving the tournament!

 
1. Walk around blindfolded for four weeks. Not only will you not have to endure watching all those football matches, but you could say it was a social experiment.

2. Invest in cable TV. Then you can watch E4's live coverage of Big Brother all day, and ignore the football altogether. (Although if you really wanted to miss the World Cup, you should have applied to be in the Big Brother house in the first place).

3. Arrange a last-minute expedition trekking in the Himalayas. Lots of scenery but no TVs.

4. Use the four weeks to organise your wardrobe. Have a massive clearing out spree, then go on the mother of all shopping trips. Retail therapy is the only answer to football fatigue. You know it makes sense!

5. As many of the matches are shown in the mornings (because of the time difference), have a lie in and miss the whole thing.

6. Become a nun (it's only for four weeks), and spend the time in quiet contemplation at your local convent.

7. Rent out all your favourite films from your local video shop and turn your home into a cinema for the whole of June. You could even hold your own mini film festival, and invite all your friends who are also trying to avoid the World Cup.

8. Pretend you're Harry Potter, and live in a cupboard during the competition.

9. Become an eco-warrior, and go and occupy a threatened tree. Lots of fresh air, and no soccer highlights with Des Lynam.

10. Take up football and train really hard. Then you might get into the England squad and get injured, or into the Irish squad and fall out with your manager. Either way, you'll miss the World Cup altogether. It worked for Gary Neville and Roy Keane.

So that's it for this week. Don't forget the deadline for Brand You and for The Fresh Awards is fast approaching...

Enjoy! 

What's Floating Around Cloud 9? 24th September

Welcome to another week!

As its the last week of September, we are gearing up for a busy October with both The Fresh Awards and the CIPR Northern Conference, so its all hands on deck.

Social Media plays a big part in events these days and during one of our discussions on this subject, the topic of reading came up and just how many actual books we collectively get through now we are in an age when Kindles and ebooks are ever more popular.

 

If you consider just how you now read online, its very different and is ever changing. You may have an ebook open on your iPad, plus your email, maybe a song playing on Spotify, and of course when you find a memorable line in the book, you might want to post it on Facebook.  You also might look a word up online or check a fact or two via Wikipedia.

Kindles are great and make life so much easier: going on holiday you don't have to pack half your case with the latest novels which incurs huge charges at the airport; its portable and light and can store an incredible amount of books online; its much cheaper to download books than to buy them: some authors are now writing exclusively for Kindle - the list goes on.

Of course not everyone is a fan and at The Hay Book Festival back in June, which attracted a quarter of a million people, Kindle owners were told they would not be at all welcome. This  coalition of local booksellers are blaming the Kindle for the closure of 5 local bookstores in the past year and claim that Kindle owners are different from other readers in that they walk around like robots, not noticing their surroundings or interacting with other festival participants!

What was slightly amusing about this was that Google was one of the sponsors of the event - and of course Google sell ebooks!

We are big fans of Amazon here at Cloud 9 Towers and regularly order or download books from the site, both actual books and Kindle versions (although the Kindle versions are cheaper) and whilst we appreciate the many benefits of electronic reading, what do you do with all of those books once you have finished with them?

Yes, you could donate them to charity, sell them online or pass on to your friends, but we think there are some great ways you can use old books without simply shoving them in a an old box ready for your next car boot sale...

Seating plans at events are always a key feature and offer a great excuse to get creative and whilst most formal events require a straightforward seating chart, we love the idea of using old books with bookmarks to guide guests to their appropriate tables. Whilst this image is a little "Weddingy" we think its a great way of using books and by using books with selected titles or of selected genres like Romance, Reference, Sci-Fi or even Thrillers, you can cater for any event and any theme in an effective and stylish way.

The Pages from old books also make excellent table confetti, just get an appropriately shaped hole punch and a few old pages and hey presto, or if you want to use a larger book, then you can even have a go at bunting! It doesn't matter what the book was about particularly, although you may want to avoid including paragraphs about grisly murders if using large hole punches or making bunting - it might well put your guests off their dinner!

Now we are not sure the next suggestion is great or simply bonkers but we love the idea of a Book Broom - especially if you are clever enough to make one from any book about cleaning or the art of housekeeping. Not having a single domestic goddess within the walls of Cloud 9, we like to think that this is a great idea for a book that tells you how great it is to spend your life cleaning! Fantastic!

The greener amongst you might like to take your old books to a recycling plant but if you are the owners of green fingers then we think this is a lovely idea, an old book plant holder. We are sure it involves some plastic and compost and a strict rule about not over watering, but its a cute idea all the same.

If you are feeling festive, then you might try wrapping old books up to boost the stash of presents under your tree - give old books as stocking fillers with a message on the front for your loved ones - or not depending on your feelings towards the recipient!  While hardcore book lovers may have a hard time tearing out the pages of any book, for those less faint of heart, use the pages of your old books to wrap small gifts or to make envelopes, paper flowers or even personalised cards.

Whatever your feeling about books and reading, with the ads currently all over TV for Stoptober, the stop smoking campaign starting in October, we loved this campaign that featured heavily earlier in the year with a book.

An ambient campaign which cleverly inserted a page mid way through several new book releases, with the simple message that as a smoker, your story would end 15% earlier than as a non smoker.

So that's what came up this week at Cloud 9 Towers.  Books and reading. Not a bad way to start a week so when you get the chance, now that the nights are drawing in, turn the TV off, stick the kettle on, and snuggle up on the sofa with a good book. You might just be glad you did.

Have a lovely week!