Posts Tagged ‘australia’

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PR agencies and the blogosphere

June 2nd, 2008 by Daniel Young | 2 Comments | Filed in Blogging, Social media

Lee Hopkins has written a couple of posts in the last few days about the PR industry in Australia and its adoption / advocacy of the blogosphere as a critical communications tool.

He says that the PR industry is:

 PR industry clueless when it comes to blogging says Lee Hopkins

Lee has a point that the Aussie PR industry is, in general, behind the rest of the world when it comes to engaging with customers, prospects and communities via blogging channels and representing clients in the blogosphere. There re some exceptions with the larger agencies leading the way with strengths in consultancy, products and services. I would put Burson-Marsteller (my employer, my team), Text 100, H&K and Edelman in this bucket.

As an agency, Burson – like many of the other global firms – has made big strides globally to develop its service offering, educate clients, up-skill staff and bring in people to strengthen our proposition. 

It’s more a challenge for the small local, independent and boutique firms to add social media as a core competency and I have heard Principals of well known boutique firms state that they have no interest in making this leap. I think that’s dangerous because in time digital PR will become a core competency for every PR consultant, it will be part and parcel of strategy and tactical execution – not a fancy smancy add-on, not a cool factor and not a nice to do, as it can be perceived today.

The PR industry clearly has a responsibility to educate clients and earn trust, it will, after all, create new revenue opportunities for agencies. We (Burson) are very focused on this part of the process and have landed some great projects as a result.  

There is a long way to go until Australia catches up with the rest of the world – particularly corporate Australia – and we need more people on-side to shorten the journey.

I am returning to blogging after a lapse caused mainly be a lack of time, which is another big barrier for agencies that need to develop new service offerings.

Note: Like one other big agency in Sydney, we’ll be rolling out a new website in the very new future.

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Smart Card?

March 13th, 2008 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Life, Politics, Technology

The issue of a Smart Card for public health services is back on the agenda in Australia.

It seems like a no brainer to me to consolidate various social services and entitlements onto one identity card to improve management of public funds and reduce fraud.

The Liberal opposition has accussed Kevin Rudd of backflipping. There is no doubt that this was a pretty controversial policy prior to the election. Both parties did their best to distance themselves from the idea in the run up to the election, the Labour Party more so (since it wasn’t their idea).

This week, Shadow Human Services Minister, Senator Helen Coonan, said:“The Howard government invested millions of dollars getting together the expertise, systems and technology necessary for the smart card to beat welfare cheats.”In other words, the Howard Government wasted millions because this came to nothing.

The previous Government failed to engage the numerous stakeholders on this issue, they failed to design a card that did the job required of it but also addressed some of the issues raised by its opponents, primarily related to privacy and personal information.

They invited the IT community to pitch to tender for a card that had no design – they hadn’t even decided whether it would contain a photo of the cardholder or what sort of biometric information would be stored on it.

The previous Government need to engage stakeholders to design a card that everyone could agree with and then – more importantly – they need to SELL the concept to the community. They failed.  I think the Smart Card is a bit of a no brainer and I hope the new Government actually starts the conversation to ensure that the desired outcomes are controlled and delivered. This is a big issue for the community but getting everyone facing in the right direction and ‘on board’ is essential.

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