The man himself, all the way from Trafalgar Square in London, welcomes Stellar* onboard.

Starting immediately, we’ll be handling all communications for the Napoleon Perdis brand including hero range, Napoleon Perdis prestige, as well as masstige offering, NP Set. Our scope of work will include media relations; consumer trial and engagement; sponsorship negotiation, leverage and management; celebrity and ambassador programs; social media and event management.

To say we’re excited would be a massive understatement!

Following on from yesterday’s post on food bloggers and PR people, today Helen shares her insights about her blogging journey and the food blogger community.

RC/ How has blogging changed for you in the past year?

HY/ I find myself busier than ever, especially as my site, Grab Your Fork, has opened up a range of professional writing opportunities.  I now have my own column in Time Out Sydney covering hidden suburban eats in Sydney - a theme which ties in neatly with my philosophy of appreciating good food in all its varying forms and price ranges.  I was also responsible for writing the reviews for the just-published Food Lovers Guide to Chinatown, a free booklet designed to showcase Chinatown, as part of the City of Sydney’s new promotional campaign called Asia on Your Doorstep. 

RC/ Are you still working full-time and blogging on the side?

HY/ I continue to work full-time, maintaining the blog after hours and most often into the early hours of the morning.  Whilst I’d love to blog full-time, my day job is essential for paying the bills!  I’m blogging a little less often than last year, pershaps 3-4 posts a week rather than 5-7, and I’m forever trying to tackle a backlog of posts.

RC/ Has the acceptance of food blogging grown in the media?

HY/ I’d like to think so. I think that in the past, food blogs were too often dismissed as trivial or lacking credibility or credentials.  What media can’t dismiss is their growing influence, particularily as their visual format and personal writing style can attract thousands of loyal readers every day.  There is often an idea floated that bloggers see themselves as a threat or alternative to traditional print media.  I don’t think this is necessarily the case.  I believe that blog content complements, not replaces, commercial media outlets. What is interesting to see is how media outlets have themselves adapted their communication channels to incorporate many of the social aspects of blogging, e.g. adding comment functions to online articles and maintaining Twitter and Facebook accounts to provide a more personalised and interactive approach. 

RC/ What changes have you seen in the food blogger community over the past year?

HY/ The community continues to grow in leaps and bounds every year.  I maintain a list of active Sydney food blogs - 2008 saw the birth of 30 new food blogs; in 2009 that number more than doubled to 70. The explosion of food blogs means there is more content out there than ever before, covering a whole range of topics such as cooking, restaurant reviews, nutrition, travel and chefs.

RC/ Has there been any food blogger community events or initiatives?

HY/ The most fantastic aspect about the food blogger community is how tight-knit and supportive it can be.  Starting out as a new voice in the blogosphere is often daunting.  Fellow food bloggers recognise the importance of comments that provide both feedback and reassurance that yes, people are reading and appreciating your content!

Whilst we often interact with each other online, socialising face-to-face is always fun and more rewarding.  Together with food blogger Chocolatesuze, I organised a food bloggers’ Christmas picnic in December 2009 that was attended by over 50 Sydney food bloggers. Billy, from A Table For Two,  also organised a meet-up at a pub in the city that was attended by over 30 local food bloggers in April this year.  It can be hard trying to find suitable location, but it’s always fun to put faces to names, and find out a little more about the people behind the food blogs we read.

A big thanks to Helen for this interview.  If you’ve got any thoughts or comments on this interview please share them; we’d love to hear from you.

Posted by Renee Creer

It has been just over a year since Stellar* hosted a Food Blogger and PR Professionals’ Meet Up which resulted in this 15 Tips for Blogger Relations post.  A lot can happen in a month let alone a year, so I was keen to catch up with one of our panellists, Helen Yee from Grab Your Fork, to get an update and some tips and to hear what’s been happening in food blogger land.  This is a two part interview; the second part will be posted tomorrow.

RC/ Do you think PR people have improved their knowledge and understanding of how to work with food bloggers?

HY/ I’ve definitely noticed a change. There will always be a few incidents where approaches are less than desirable.  The successful PR agencies are the ones that recognise the personal nature of food blogging, and that these sites are maintained out of passion and as a labour of love.

RC/ What’s the biggest mistake PR professionals’ still make when approaching food bloggers?

HY/ Presuming that we need or want their content.  Unlike traditional media outlets, food blogs do not have blank spaces they are trying to fill with content.  Bloggers publish one post at a time - the headline story is the only story and this is why unique and interesting content is so essential.

RC/ Do you have any new insights or advice for PR people wanting to work with food bloggers?

HY/ It’s essential that PR agencies be familiar with food blogs and how bloggers communicate.  We do not expect you read every post, but it does not take long to flick through a few posts, identify the content focus or priorities, observe the writing style, and note the interaction with readers.  In many ways food bloggers are like columnists - people read them not just for their news, but their personality and opinions as well.  This dynamic plays a huge role in the type of content food bloggers will choose to feature.  Astute PR people will identify propositions that match a blogger’s values and interests and that are newsworthy for their readers.

Once you’ve done this preliminary research, a personalised approach is logical and easy.  Note that mass emails with automated address fields can be detected a mile away. If you’re going to address an email personally, make sure you get person’s name and blog name correct, otherwise don’t bother.  Take some time to tailor an opening paragraph or two.  Be friendly, honest and genuine. It makes a huge difference.

The personalised approach of blog content is often what underlies the appeal for blog readers and the perception of blogger integrity is vital.  PR people should not expect a guarantee of content after an experience or product dispatch.  If a blogger loves something, they will write about it, with candidness and fervour.

Food blogs are written and maintained, for the most part, by sole individuals as an after-hours hobby.  These are people who are working full-time or studying, but they come home, turn on their computer and edit photos, write posts, respond to comments and answer reader emails because they enjoy food and they want to share their love with others.  A blog is not just a regurgitation of random content - it’s people’s thoughts, lives, hearts and souls published online for the world to read!  Writing a post takes anywhere from one hour to eight hours and bloggers do this for free.

RC/ What kinds of opportunities and experiences are food bloggers looking for?

HY/ Food bloggers are always looking for engaging content that will spark conversations or comment by readers.  This might be an invitation to a food-related experience, a behind-the-scenes opportunity, receipt of relevant products or the chance to interview a personality or chef.  Bloggers are more likely to be interested in a new, interactive or personalised experience.  In addition, the opportunity for a blogger to take their own photos cannot be forgotten either.

It’s also worth remembering that whilst the number of food bloggers has grown exponentially, many blog readers tend to visit large patches of the food blogging circuit.  As the blogosphere becomes saturated, duplication of content will become a bigger issue and exclusive or customised propositions will offer greater appeal.

RC/ What’s the best PR / brand led experience or opportunity you’ve had in the last year?

HY/ There have been a few notable experiences but the most memorable was attending the Tasting Australia event in Adelaide as a guest of South Australian Tourism.  It was an exciting event that featured noted chefs from Australia and around the world, all congregating in a celebration of food.  The event culminated in the presentation of the World Food Media Awards.  What I appreciated most about this experience was being treated as part of the general media contingent. This meant access to the media room and facilities and being hosted for regional tours and restaurant dinners.

Other noteworthy events included attending the Wellington on a Plate Food Festival in New Zealand (Wellington Tourism); taking part in a MasterClass hosted by Tetsuya Wakuda (Openhaus); and visiting the Emirates luxury resort at Wolgan Valley (Professional Public Relations).

Part 2 of this interview is here.

Posted by Renee Creer.

Every cloud has a silver lining and in the last few weeks I’ve seen the silver lining of the GEC with stories of people pursuing shiny new beginnings and opportunities after being affected last year.  If you’re a positive and creative thinker you can see silver linings everywhere - not just in your dark cloud but in the dark clouds of others too - and this week a couple of great examples came to light.

Grill’d v Nandos

Burger chain Grill’d recently published a 2-for-1 burger offer in the Uni Times publication meant to be exclusively for Uni Times readers, however this was not in the T&Cs.  Electronic versions of the offer did the email rounds and Grill’d were inundated with people trying to redeem. Grill’d wouldn’t redeem electronic vouchers which upset many customers and lead them to clarify the situation on their blog. Seeing the opportunity, Nandos released a statement titled ‘we don’t care where your vouchers come from just come on in’ and capatalised on the situation by redeeming any Grill’ed vouchers - printed or otherwise. Read more about it in Mumbrella or on Nando’s blog.  Props to poor Grill’d who openly admitted the situation was a ‘complete debacle’ on their blog. On the up side there’s now of bunch of people who have a new awareness of the brand.

City of Pocket v City of Sydney

The owners of Pocket Bar on Burton Street in Sydney have seen an opportunity to ease the pain of getting fined. The Pocket Optimism Act works like this: when you recieve a parking fine, a toll notice or any other stupid fine take it to Pocket Bar within a week of getting it and they’ll give you 20 per cent off your total bill.  Pocket Bar says ‘with Pocket Optimism we are bringing the fun back into living; breathing life into little annoying things.’ Great idea, a nice kicker for customers and a great incentive to drop in.

So there’s an opportunity that came from competitors and one that came from customers above.  What are the dark clouds of your brand’s competitors or customers and how can you be the silver lining?

Posted by Renee Creer

If there’s one good habit to develop early in 2010, it’s the habit of exploring and engaging with the blogosphere - but where to start? That’s the question.

Lucky for us, people (with a penchant for laborious tasks) like to rank bloggers on lists, which is great if you’d like a short cut to the cream of the crop. For example, Australia has some cracking bloggers who can be found here:

Top 100 Australian Blogs
Top 100 Australian Women Bloggers
Top 129 Marketing Blogs

Also see The Australian Index Blog Directory for bloggers listed in different categories.

For top blogs from all countries try the Ad Age Power 150 and Technorati’s Top 100. Or, if you’re looking for the best American bloggers (…I think they’re all team USA) by topic try Post Ranks’ Top Bloggers 2009 list. This is a great list to browse. There are three categories:

1/ Most Engagement… stuff that’s very very engagement
The blogger in each topic who received the overall highest engagement total over the course of the year (Congratulations Brian Solis - my personal PR hero - who topped the list for PR. He’s coming out in April for Connect Now).

2/ Most Influential
The blogger in each topic who received the highest average engagement with posts over the course of the year (Brian won again for PR. Yep, he’s pretty good).

3/ Biggest Mover & Shaker
The blogger in each topic whose engagement grew the most over the course of the year (Damn it Brian! At least leave something for the rest of us to fight over).

As the results show, if you’ve got anything to do with PR or you want to know anything about PR you need to know Brian’s blog. The man is a blogging machine. In the first 18 days of 2010 he bashed out 13 posts on a variety of topics, including a post written on New Year’s Day (…if I had of written a post on New Year’s Day it would have come out in hieroglyphics).

Finally, if you have burning questions about the Blogosphere check out Technorati’s annual State of the Blogosphere report. Or if you’re wondering how to keep up with all these busy bloggers, you need a Google Reader, which is simply explained In Plain English.

Posted by Renee Creer

Marguerite Julian (or MJ as we like to call her), Stellar*’s founder and managing director, has featured in this month’s B&T magazine.

As a PR person it’s quite comforting to have someone like MJ around because over the span of her career she has seen it, done it and PR’d it all!

The thing is, she’s very laid back, modest and unassuming so her remarkable achievements are not often highlighted. After some cajoling, she agreed to reflect on her career for this piece and in fact, this is the first time most of us at Stellar* have actually got the full story on what she’s done.

Posted by Renee Creer
Courtesy of B&T Magazine, December 2009

Why does PR = evil? I’m guessing that the assumed evil deeds we perform are to do with the so called spinning of information to generate publicity and dupe unsuspecting audiences.

This 19th century framework of PR is old and irrelevant. Unfortunately as an industry, we have failed pretty miserably at helping people understand what PR is and what PR people do.

While PR is widely known for publicity generation, this and media relations is just one facet of PR, as Craig Pearce and Karalee Evans also point out.

The media is just one channel in a host of channels PR people use to help businesses and brands meet their objectives and communicate with their many stakeholders and by that I mean markets, customers, employees, investors and so on.

When a client comes with a problem or opportunity, we solve it with the most appropriate solution:

…and then there’s all the ‘relations’…

When I started writing this post I thought I liked graphs a lot; probably more than most people but as I found out, not nearly as much as Craig Robinson who in the space of 10 minutes has become my personal hero.  Unlike Craig, who once audited his life into a range of magnificent pie charts, my interest has remained strictly professional.

Last week I caught up with Jye Smith and he asked how I measure PR.  In this instance I explained to him how I measure publicity results as a component of PR.  I was glad he asked because it gave me an excuse to bust out some charts.

At Stellar* we use Stellar* Analytics, our measurement and reporting tool (shameless plug - tick).  Below are the core measures that come into play when we’re looking at publicity results (I’ll save the social media charts for another time).  Just note that when I refer to coverage, I’m talking about a print article, a radio segment, an online news piece etc.  Key publicity measures include:

• Volume:  how much coverage was generated eg. press clips, broadcast segments, online articles
• Frequency: how many times within the coverage a brand name, category or product was mentioned
• Reach: in crude terms, how far the coverage went based on circulation or audience figures
• Sentiment/Tone:  analyses if the coverage was positive, negative or neutral
• Message:  the key messages that were communicated, much like content analysis
• Share of Voice: how much coverage Brand/Product A got compared to Brand/Product B
• Medium: the different media segments that generated coverage eg. print, broadcast, online etc
• Type: what type of coverage was generated eg. a feature, column, mention, review etc
• Category: the category of media the coverage appeared in eg. capital city daily, national newspaper, supplement, trade mag, online news
• Date: when the coverage appeared
• Location: the location of the media outlet if specific to an area eg. by state
• Outlet: ranks the media outlets by volume of coverage
• Journalist: ranks the reporting journalists by volume of coverage

The following charts highlight some different publicity results over time. 

NOTE:  CLICK ON THE CHARTS TO GET THE FULL VIEW, OTHERWISE YOU’LL BE SQUINTING AND THINKING HOW CRAPPY THESE CHARTS ARE.  ALSO, BRAND AND PRODUCT NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED.

1. This shows that the majority of coverage for the client has come from product reviews or basic brand mentions.

2. This shows the same results as the above but over a period of one year.  The chart shows a spike in product coverage heading toward Christmas which correlates with an increase in press features such as Christmas buyer guides etc.  It also shows that the client leverages value ads off the back of its media spend.

3.  This shows that the coverage in regional / suburban press significantly outperforms other media categories.  There’s also a spike in lifestyle and trade publication coverage in January as a result of a specific campaign around a new product launch.

4.  This chart shows that over a two month period, Audi outperformed competitors in terms of share of voice in the media. 

 5.  This charts shows how different products in the same company are performing over time in the media. The significant spikes are the result of product launches or specific media sampling campaigns.

6. This chart shows the rise and fall of reach, based on circulation, over time.

When you build up a body of data like the above, you get to clearly see the results of your efforts and you get insights on how different elements are performing which in turn allows you to adjust your strategy and invest where you need to. 

Posted by Renee Creer

Following on from last week’s post, we have part 2 of our top tips for exhibiting at shows.

Manual

Read the exhibitor manual in detail - it’s your bible! This will contain all of the info you need to know for the show including bump in/bump out times and details, delivery details, permits, health and safety regulations etc. Be sure you’ve got everything covered so there are no surprises.

Staff

I’ve seen lots of brands spending big bucks on flash stands only to man them with less than impressive promotional staff. Without doubt the best people to man your stand are your own staff as they have the knowledge and passion that you wish to convey to visitors. If this is not feasible then promotional staff will need to be fully briefed so they can confidently engage with visitors.

Stock

I’ve also seen lots of brands underestimate the stock for exhibtions! Always overestimate, just to be safe. Visitors at food shows in particular want to eat and drink A LOT so no stingy samples! The last thing you want is to run out half way through the show. Also consider whether you will store stock onsite or ship it in before or after each day.

Promotions

Competitions and promotions are great for capturing data to expand your customer database. They also allow for a reason to continue communicating with visitors after the show. It is important to carefully consider your prize - make it relevant and exciting for customers to encourage entries and don’t forget the permit.

Leverage

Think about how you can promote your involvement through other channels to excite customers and encourage visitation. Mention the show on your website, newsletter, blog, in direct mail, in store etc. Consider publicity opportunities also.

Measurement

Understanding what came of your participation in the show is paramount. Track sales, customer acquisition, competition entries, data capture - anything that will allow you to demonstrate the show’s success and facilitate comparisons year on year. Also, can you estimate a cost per head? That is, the cost of participating against the number of people you reached. This will show whether the investment was worth it.

Finally, if you are going to be on the stand during the event - wear flat shoes and pre book a post show massage because you’ll need it!

I hope this helps any would be exhibitors out there. If you have any further advice or experience then please share it with me.

Posted by Jane Outen