Tweetcamp venue announced

The Learning Village at Bishop Challoner School  is hosting the Tweetcamp Unconference on 8 Oct 2011

http://www.bishop-learningvillage.towerhamlets.sch.uk/

Claire on BBC Radio Berkshire

Debbie McGee as seen on the BBC

Today Waves PR and I were on BBC Radio Berkshire, being interviewed by the lovely Debbie McGee.

You can hear the interview here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00htgth.

(From 2:27, or at 2:35 if you want to miss the weather!)

I wanted to do the interview for several reasons – firstly it’s never bad publicity, and although I was told not to put the company name in, I work mostly as me (no bad thing) so I’m findable if anyone’s interested.

Secondly, there’s no such thing as a bad contact, and when the right time comes, I now know and like Debbie, and would be happy to pass her a feelgood story any day of the week!

And yes, I was hugely worried – I think they call it ‘eating your own dogfood!’!

Greenpeace and the Old Street Storm Troopers

By Claire Thompson, freelance PR Consultant, Waves PR

The Greenpeace v. Volkswagen ‘Dark Side’ storm trooper campaign is a hugely well executed integrated PR/social media/advertising campaign.

As a big Greenpeace fan on a personal level, I had emails this morning with a very easy sign up to protest message. Videos, photos, Facebook… great social stuff, all in the mix. The tactics are fantastic, brilliantly attention grabbing, brilliantly orchestrated. ’Old Street’, where the storm troopers assembled, has been trending on Twitter.

But even as a Greenpeace fan, I’m somehow a little reticent about rubber stamping it from a PR perspective. Because at least Volkswagen does have some more ecologically friendly cars, albeit marginalised, within it’s fleet, whilst there are other car manufacturers that don’t. The green movement is strong in Germany, so maybe that filtered into their thinking as part of their strategy. Only time will tell whether they’ve made a difference, but my big fear for Greenpeace is that their tactics, rather than their message, are what’s grabbing the attention.

Their social media activity around palm oil only really gathered pace and got people’s backs up when Nestle got the hump and removed and tweet and objected to a picture using their logo. Yes, some extra attention reached the ears of a general public which might not otherwise have engaged with the campaign, but Greenpeace is running the risk of becoming the ‘Fathers for Justice’ of the eco-World: the tactics attracting more attention for themselves than for their message/cause.

Read more »

thupr Gamification and Social Gaming event

The thupr event on gamification and social games was a really engaged event, with people sharing genuine learnings. We’ll be applying some of them to thupr soon!

Paygen are going to get us some packs of gamification cards to share, Raf had shared his presentation, and I’m hoping that others will add their pictures to the ones I’ve already uploaded.

Big takeout for me: it’s more about psychology than anything else and challenge what we mean by ‘reward’: I was struck by some echoes from Google’s talk at Digital Surrey – ‘what people will do for nothing that they won’t do if they’re paid’ .

On the subject of which, there are still some places left at the Digital Surrey event on The Science of Gamification. They go fast, so grab one quickly.