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Sumner Lifeboat (one of CPR’s charities), needs to sell its trusty, but rusty, Land Rover Discovery. It has chosen to auction it on TradeMe, and has asked CPR to assist with the writing of a description that will attract attention and get it placed in the ‘cool auctions’ – and therefore hopefully achieving a better price.

For this specific project, CPR took a team approach.  Amy Carter briefed the team – providing all the key information as supplied by the client – and we then quickly discussed the best way in which to gain people’s interest on TradeMe.  With respect to the medium and the charitable status of the client, it was decided that humour was the best approach.

The team individually developed different ‘angles’ which were shared internally. The best strategy was agreed upon, then sent to the Lifeboat.

Click here to go through to the trademe auction and see what you think of the result…

I’m feeling a little philosophical today. It’s probably because there was sunshine all weekend and I’m feeling upbeat due to the Vitamin D in my system. I’ve always been a sunshine girl, it makes me feel energised and excited about what life holds. I think all of us (here in Christchurch) are in need of a whole heap of sunshine hours, so yay for Spring!

Anyway…some key learning’s for life that the earthquakes have refreshed my memory on…..

• Keep things in perspective. Take time to look around you and realise that your life is pretty damn good compared to others.

• Everything is always much better after a good nights sleep.

• Make time for yourself. Everyone needs time off the treadmill to recharge the batteries and it should happen on a weekly basis.

• You can choose to see something as an inconvenience or as an opportunity. For example, I’ve found so many cool cafes, shops, and parks, that I’d never have gone to prior to February and have met some wonderful new people because of the earthquakes.

• When you are tired, grumpy or a little flat, exercise the 30 minute rule before replying to that comment that got right up your nose.

• Small things like the loss of a phone line and/or the internet are really annoying, but they’re not worth getting high blood pressure over.

• Enjoy life! For example the dance that your toddler does every morning because she is so excited to see you and to have a whole day ahead of her is exactly how everyone’s day should start.

While the snow is starting to clear outside the Carter Price Rennie office, unfortunately our phone lines have ceased functionality in this week’s blizzard. We’ve been told the area’s connection will be back up by 7pm Thursday the 18th, so until then call us on our mobiles instead of the landline.

Amy is available on +64 27 247 8707. For general inquiries, contact Christine our office manager on +64 27 688 4710.

From my personal perspective – as a professional in their mid-30s with a mortgage and a young family – the turmoil in the global financial markets and the situation in Christchurch seem to have more positives than negatives.

Before I start, I probably need to acknowledge that I’m not an economist and I don’t see the world as they do. I see it in terms of how things impact me.

The reality is that when you’re at my stage of life, investment uncertainty has very little direct impact. My money goes into feeding the family, paying down the mortgage and saving for child number two. What money I do find for investing (Kiwisaver etc) tends to be for the long-term – so short-term fluctuations mean very little.

What I do pick up on is that mortgage rates are likely to stay low for longer and that petrol prices are dropping. Add to this, that spring is around the corner, so fresh food prices and the power bill will start to come down, and the cost of living seems on the improve.

Media coverage – particularly comment from the PM – has indicated that the $20 billion Christchurch rebuild will insulate the whole country from a global economic downturn. Following that logic, Christchurch should be very well insulated indeed and will see growth through this – which means job certainty and new opportunities.

Finally, we seem to have turned a corner down here. New businesses relevant to me are opening – cafes etc, the town is getting easier to get around and we’re on the verge of seeing the Council’s plan for the future.

I recognise that there are plenty of people in Christchurch still doing it very tough and facing considerable uncertainty.

But for some people, and I’m one of them, life in Christchurch is beginning to feel pretty good. What we don’t need is another big shake!

Daniel

Maybe it’s because much of my career has been in the village that is New Zealand ICT and I’ve had pretty good relationships with most of the journalists I’ve dealt with, I genuinely believe PRs (as journos like to refer to us) and journalists work together to create accurate news more often than not.

I’m not naive – there are plenty of occasions when our views and the work we are doing for our respective organisations is diametrically opposed. As long as this is recognised and that these occasions are treated for what they are, then the rest of the time PR/journalist relations can be pretty good.

This week’s story about Christchurch voter numbers is an example of where the positive side of this relationship was missed – to the detriment of the Christchurch community.

I know teachers, for example, quickly translated 26,000 voters leaving Christchurch to mean a reduction in student numbers next year and, therefore, jobs. Creating stress people here don’t need.

I’m not sure if the journalist that worked on this had contacted a PR person at the Electoral Enrolment Centre (EEC). If they did, that person should have asked questions to glean a better understanding of what the journalist was trying to achieve. This would have resulted in the EEC providing more appropriate figures – avoiding inaccurate coverage on the current situation in Christchurch.

Daniel

P.S. Good on the Press for running a second story that clarified the numbers.

Here at CPR we celebrate Bastille Day every year. There is no particular reason why. Just for fun.

Last night we transformed our little part of Opawa into a slice of rural France. The team were joined by our loved ones for a wonderful French themed meal. We had a lovely evening, full of laughter.

And not one mention of seismic activity!

So…what is my point.

Taking time to enjoy life is a great tonic in tough times.

Amusez-vous.

Amy

There it goes again: after a few days without feeling the earth move, a little 4.3 this morning to wake us up again. Just when we were thinking it was maybe going away.

Mind you, it’s a bit more of a jolt on this side of town in our little tilt slab in Opawa. Nestled (if you can use such a calming word over here) into the shadow of the Port Hills, our office is now on the shaky side of town. Somehow the rocks and volcanic strata over here seem to magnify the jolts so that we feel them a lot more than further west, where it’s more of a roller than a rock and roller.

Such are the days of our lives now, counting the shakes, having quake.crowe at the top of our google list, and being able to guess pretty correctly just how big each quake is.

It would be nice to leave town for a while and escape them, but my passport has been confiscated – I was out of the country for two of the three big ones. In fact, a lot of people assumed I was away on June 13, since I’d missed the other two. I wish. At least I’m now a true Cantabrian and have felt something greater than a 5.6.

It would be nice to think this little lull we’ve had lately is a sign the damn things are slowly fading away. It would be nice never to experience any more of them.

Felicity

This Sunday’s issue will be the last for News Of The World, the 168-year-old tabloid owner by MMM (Media Mogul Murdoch; yes we just made that up).

Who would have thought the careless actions of a few immoral journalists could put 200-odd staff out in the cold, jobless and potentially with a stain on their CVs?

Kiwi writer Dan Wootton, who works for the publication, argues that it has cleaned up in the years since the phone hacking took place. Here’s hoping he doesn’t have too rough a time finding a new post!

The Public Relations industry has been debating how to measure the value of PR since its inception and the discussion flares up regularly.

The Wall St Journal recently examined the PR value of a photo of a couple kissing during the Vancouver riots and of President Obama drinking a pint of Guinness, among other things. This discussion was then narrowed in Business Insider by the CEO of US firm, 5W Public Relations commenting about PR versus advertising – also an age-old argument.

The Wall St Journal article sites a suggested PR value of (US)$10.5 million for the couple kissing and (US)$32 million for the President drinking Guinness. These figures are based on the PR industry norm of calculating the value of media coverage against the cost of advertising in the same space and the perception that unpaid coverage carries a greater weighting than advertising. We call this EAV – equivalent advertising value.

This approach and these articles fail to recognise the only effective determinant of the value of any communications activity, or marketing activity for that matter. This is to ask: how has this activity helped an organisation or business meet its objectives?

We can safely assume that the Guinness drinking coverage has some PR value when measured against business objectives – even if the photo wasn’t organised by Guinness. At the very least, short-term sales in the US should go up and increased sales would always be an objective of the Guinness marketing and PR teams. But whether its (US)$32 million in value, who knows?

We can also confidently say the suggested value of the couple kissing is dramatically overinflated. In fact, using the criteria of meeting objectives, it has no PR value whatsoever. No business or organisation is directly associated with the kiss, so nobody will realise a direct business benefit from the coverage. So where’s the value?

We’re not suggesting media coverage does not have value. Quite the opposite. It can have immense value and generate an enormous return for an organisation provided it helps that organisation meet specific and well defined objectives (whether around sales, brand recognition, influence etc.) and is part of a broader communications strategy.

But as an industry we need to be very careful about presenting success to our clients on the basis of column inches or airtime alone, and be even more careful about inflating the value of this coverage with a subjective dollar figure. Lots of media coverage may not necessarily translate into business success and clients will see right through these “industry” measures pretty quickly.

Good communications people will spend time at the front end of any communications discussion clearly defining business objectives and articulating how communications can help achieve these. After all, it is these objectives that we expect our plan and our work to be measured against. We will only recommend activity that can be tracked back to these objectives and challenge our clients if they want to invest in activity that cannot.

Our advice to business decision makers: be very wary of anyone trying to sell you a communications idea that does not relate directly back to your objectives and tries to measure success in any other way.

Our advice to communications practitioners: before you recommend an idea or course of action, consider it against what your client or your business is trying to achieve and only recommend activity that stacks up.

Daniel

Carter Price Rennie is dedicated to Christchurch’s future. “February 22 is a date etched in our hearts and minds,” says Managing Director Amy Carter.

“As a Canterbury firm through and through we are extremely proud of how we have performed as a community.  We are also genuinely excited about what the future holds.”

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