online effectiveness meets online PR

I just came back from speaking at and sitting through the IAB engage conference in Manchester.

Microsoft IE gaff

Highlights included a senior guy from Microsoft Advertising failing to understand the meaning of ‘IE8’, apparently ‘that’s a different department’….fair enough (not)

IAB online effectiveness

There was a great presentation from the IAB about the effectiveness of online and TV working in tandem. Not ground breaking as it mirrors the findings of the old Unilever Dove case study – but great to have some UK data to show my clients.  My only scepticism about this, is that whilst being great research – it’s a million miles away from making it into traditional offline media planning models, and the monthly TV vs Digital debate I seem to have.  The challenge of forcing the reappraisal of planning models it appears still needs to be fought by the digital agencies.

Online PR

At swamp we’re about to launch our formalised online PR offer together with our colleagues in Brahm PR.  It’s going to be good harnessing the power of a well established and excellent PR team with our knowledge and experience in digital… but it is weird – we’ve being doing online PR in digital for years we just never called it that before 🙂

Anyway, there was a great presentation from Immediate Future about the online PR campaign they did for Sony Bravia.  It was very niche focusing on the management of the release of the 3rd Bravia ad (the one with all the bunnies.  Basically they manage to head off the advertising blogerati from giving it a panning and suppress an underground revolt from fans of the fantastic Kozyndan.   Job well done, but did it sell any more TV’s?

Still it’s made me appreciate the Kozyndan bunny poster I have hanging in my studio even more 🙂