I have just discovered that my blog isn’t worth of attention, and I’m really desperate… Saatchi & Saatchi has just spammed with a ridiculous press release (if you don’t understand Italian, I suggest a crash course because the release is so bad that after you’ve read it you won’t believe your eyes) the most prominent Italian bloggers about marketing and communications, and I didn’t receive the press release… I don’t think I will be able to blog again… My ego has been severely hit.

Tags: Marketing, pr, Press Release

Today, Microsoft is officially announcing Windows Vista, and the world of information technology will change. Starting from today, you will need a brand new mainframe to run the ultimate operating system for personal computers, and you will be perpetually hooked to it by Microsoft obsession for software piracy. Try Linux, you will get back your freedom. Disclaimer: I’m handling OpenOffice.org - the open source alternative to Microsoft Office - marketing activities in Italy.

Tags: Marketing

If you want to really ENJOY yourself, to a point that you thought difficult to reach with a “simple” web site, take your time, go to Italia Independent, select ENGlish - which is there for you, the non Italian speakers - and relax. You will discover FEELosophy, TOUCHoice, LIFEvents and STORExperience. Wandering around, you will also understand that this is “Made in Italy 2.0″. Don’t forget your headphones, otherwise you will completely miss the “audio experience” crafted by Stefano “stylophonic” Fontana. I’m embarassed. Once upon a time, we Italians were used to have a good grappa to get the juices flowing, and it usually was enough. P.S. - The VAT number on the lower right side is a relic of Web 1.0?

Nessun tag per questo post.

I’ve found a blog that can help those interested in understanding the Italian economy, even if they don’t speak Italian. In addition, there’s a comprehensive blogroll with many interesting sources of information.

Tags: pr

I’ve found this list of rules, which - in my opinion - aren’t just related to the career path but - more generally - to a successful life inside any kind of organization.

1. Unless you’re working in a coal mine, an emergency ward, or their equivalent, spare us the sad stories about your tough job. The biggest risk most of us face in the course of a day is a paper cut.
2. Yes, your boss is an idiot at times. So what? (Do you think your associates sit around and marvel at your deep thoughts?). If you cannot give your boss basic loyalty, either report the weasel to the proper authorities or be gone.
3. You are paid to take meaningful actions, not superficial ones. Don’t brag about that memo you sent out or how hard you work. Tell us what you achieved.
4. Although your title may be the same, the job that you were hired to do three years ago is probably not the job you have now. When you are just coasting and not thinking several steps ahead of your responsibilities, you are in dinosaur territory and a meteor is coming.
5. If you suspect that you’re working in a madhouse, you probably are. Even sociopaths have jobs. Don’t delude yourself by thinking you’ll change what the organization regards as a “turkey farm”. Flee.
6. Your technical skills may impress the other geeks, but if you can’t get along with your co-workers, you’re a litigation breeder. Don’t be surprised if management regards you as an expensive risk.
7. If you have a problem with co-workers, have the guts to tell them, preferably in words of one syllable.
8. Don’t believe what the organization says it does. Its practices are its real policies. Study what is rewarded and what is punished and you’ll have a better clue as to what’s going on.
9. Don’t expect to be perfect. Focus on doing right instead of being right. It will simplify the world enormously.
10. If you plan on showing them what you’re capable of only after you get promoted, you need to reverse your thinking.

The original text is here, the author’s blog is here.

Tags: pr

I know, this is not PR. But sometimes you have to slow down and think about yourself, and maybe realize that 40 years after you fell on your nose (and broke it, of course), the nose has stopped working, and you can’t breath anymore. Therefore, since last Tuesday I have a new nose, not in the sense that it’s nicer but in the sense that it’s now working properly. Blogging will resume soon.

Technorati tags: nose

Tags: pr

As a client of a PR agency, would you prefer to buy time or services?

According to me, the answer is a no brainer. Therefore, when I was in charge of coordinating five PR agencies scattered around Europe and the US, I’ve always looked for PR services (which, in my opinion, are a combination of brain + experience + execution) and I’ve always rejected the concept of time (which is a mere combination of minutes).

I’m probably narrow minded, but it was perfectly clear to me - even if at that time I was young and very unexperienced - that accepting a remuneration based on time was equivalent to admit that the slower and less efficient the PR agency the higher the invoice. Absolutely brilliant for the agency, not brilliant at all for the client.

I’ve probably been a very difficult guy to deal with, but looking for objectives - both as a PR agency client and as a PR agency executive - I’ve always gone beyond the targets.

In 1987, when I was at Honeywell, we won the RITA (Recognition of IT Achievement) Award - a UK prize - with an Italian product. The agency was A+, the account director was John Aeberhard and the account manager was Chris Hewitt. Quite an achievement.

In 2000 and 2001, when I was at Fleishman-Hillard, my group managed to obtain an average gross profit in excess of 21% (against an objective of 17%). Again, quite an achievement (and this was entirely due to the “time sheet free” business model that I’ve developed in 1992 for Qwerty PR).

I’ve always bought services. I’ve always sold services. And you?

Tags: pr

Alberico Tremigliozzi is a brilliant young individual with a deep knowledge of the retail environment, especially of the Italian one. He is working in the role of project leader in a well known multinational company providing solutions to retailers, and can therefore be considered a stakeholder - according to the traditional meaning of the term - for a company like Symbol, which develops products also for the retail environment.

Last year, Alberico has started blogging about the retail environment. Because of his deep understanding of the business, his blog has quickly developed into a “daily must read” for the Italian retail industry. Today, he has over 800 daily readers, and is growing quickly. On October 25, Alberico has published an interview to Ugo Mastracchio of Symbol Italy, about the company strategies and technologies.

I have a question. When I’ve talked with Alberico about the interview, was I speaking with a stakeholder or a citizen journalist? Or both? I can’t find a suitable definition for my timesheet.

I’m joking, of course. But if I had to fill in my timesheet with a “proper” definition, I’d probably had to choose between giving up the opportunity or starting an endless discussion with my boss.

Tags: pr

For normal people, a personal computer is a tool. I often say that my laptop is my third generation writing tool after the pen (used at school) and the typewriter (used to write my thesis and press materials until 1981).

I am a perfectly normal PC user, but over the years I have matured some strong opinions about technologies and IT products. The strongest of them is about Outlook, which I consider the worst email program conceived by a human mind (I use Outlook as a PIM, the task it was developed for before being acquired by Microsoft and transformed with the addition of email features).

When I was working at Fleishman-Hillard, in order to avoid using Outlook I decided to use my own laptop, where I installed Eudora to handle emails (today I have switched to Thunderbird).

I’ve mentioned Outlook several times in my blog (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, unfortunately always in Italian), and I’ve never hidden my negative opinion.

If you were a PR professional in charge of launching the next release of Outlook, after having thoroughfully read my blog and made a short online search about me, would you still send me a laptop to review the software?

It’s not a problem of ethics or hidden agendas, or anything similar. It’s a pure problem of religion. When the subject is Outlook, I am an integralist.

Apple and Linux hard core followers have exactly the same attitude with the whole of Microsoft. Has anyone heard of Windoze or Mickeysoft? If not, please read Apple and/or Linux user groups or blogs. You will see the light.

Tags: pr

The internet, and therefore the blogosphere, is based on online communities, each one “fluctuating” around a common interest of its members. They have their roots in the late eighties, in the age of bulletin board systems and proprietary networks (in my opinion, AppleLink and CompuServe were the best examples). I’ve “met” online communities in 1987, while working as a consultant for Apple, and since then I’ve always been a member of one or more of them.

As a PR professional, I always had a clear perception of the potential of online communities for public relations, once the medium and the supporting technologies would have been mature enough to allow the access by a large number of people. I followed the evolution of newsgroups, and especially the Macintosh one (I’ll never thank enough the members of the newsgroup it.comp.macintosh for the lessons they’ve taught me). As I’ve already written in the past, the Macintosh community has offered to PR professionals the possibility of understanding the mechanisms of online communities ten years in advance.

Once I decided that I had enough of lurking and I could have a role in the discussion (at the time, I was representing Macromedia in Italy), I entered the it.comp.macintosh and it.comp.appl.macromedia in order to support the company I was consulting for. As everybody can see from this search, I had my ups and downs (unfortunately, for the English readers, all discussions are in Italian and use a lot of jargon). At the end, the effort was incredibly positive: I started in 1996 with 40 “informal” members, and I handled the community to Macromedia in 1999, with 26.000 members.

I also tried to study the US experiences about online communities. I bough the books written by John Hagel III and Arthur C. Armstrong in 1987, Net Gain: Expanding Markets Through Virtual Communities, and by Cliff Figallo in 1998, Hosting Web Communities: Building Relationships, Increasing Customer Loyalty, and Maintaining A Competitive Edge. The latter was definitely enlightening, as it reported the experience of The WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link), probably the oldest online community, born in 1985. If you want to get a grasp of the concept, you can read this article written by Chris in 1993 (especially the paragraph about Community).

This is the first paragraph: In a medium where text is the only means of communication, trust becomes one of the most difficult but essential things to build and maintain. With no audible or visual clues to go by, the bandwidth for interpersonal communication is quite thin. There are, though, ways in which trust can be built even through the small aperture of telecommunicated text.

Since then, molta acqua è passata sotto i ponti (this is an Italian saying, whose meaning is “a lot of water has gone under the bridges”), and online communities have changed a lot. The last evolution was based on blogs and wikis, which have allowed a large number of people - including the “technology shy” - to enter the discussion. The basics, though, are always the same, those that I have learnt the hard way during the first stage of my participation in online communities.

Today, I’m working as a volunteer for Progetto Linguistico Italiano (Italian Native Language Project) OpenOffice.org. This gives me precious insights into the next wave of online communities, those based on concepts like open source and knowledge sharing. I handle media relations and marketing communications, and - apart from having raised the profile of OpenOffice.org in Italy - I have learned a lot about the foundation of these groups of interest and the use of goodwill for public relations purposes (the story is a typical “David against Goliath” one, where Microsoft Office has a marketing budget of several million Euro and OpenOffice.org hasn’t any marketing budget).

I think that PR professionals should use a percentage of their time to understand the evolution of the stakeholders of their actual and potential clients (you always have clients, even inside companies). As I consult mostly to TMT companies, I’ve always felt the obligation to provide my clients not only the basics of the profession but also an insight into new PR territories, strategies and methodologies, which could strengthen their competitive advantage in the market.

I would have expected a similar approach by the Edelman social media specialists that have handled the Microsoft Vista project. Unfortunately, what they’ve done shows a limited understanding of the behaviour of online communities, especially when there are Macintosh or Linux users involved. The posts of Scott Beale at Laughing Squid are a perfect example of what can happen when you approach someone that has already made a clear choice about Microsoft products, and is pissed off by the Microsoft initiative to the point to auction the laptop and give the proceedings to an essentially anti-Microsoft organization. I will come back on this subject.

Tags: Marketing, media, Media Relations, pr, Public Relations, Social Media