Sam Howard

Tech Podcast: Metia interview David Metcalfe, Verdantix on Climate Change and Sustainability

2010-03-16T10:40:00Z

In the first in a series of tech podcasts, Richard Cookson from our AR team talk with David Metcalfe, director of Verdantix, an independent analyst firm specialising in climate change, sustainability and energy issues.

David and Richard discuss the problems facing the UK climate change and sustainability market and what the outlook for 2010 holds. They look at whether governments and NGO’s can do more when advising on climate change strategies. If you'd like a listen just visit Metia AR to download or subscribe to the podcast.

The next tech podcast is scheduled for end of April, so watch this space.

Metia and Logica the winning team at the B2B Marketing Awards

2009-11-27T10:13:00Z

Oh, another night out, another hunk of metal to put in our reception area. It’s a tough job but some of us are more suited to it than others.

Last night the Metia Influence team & our good friends at Logica rocked up at the B2B Marketing Awards at The Honourable Artillery Company in London. We were up for the Best use of Direct Mail, for our already award-winning Logica Does it Better campaign. There were over 250 entries for these prestigious awards, and some 84 shortlisted. The campaign, which we ran 12 months ago to fill up Logica’s January pipeline, appears to be the one that keeps on giving, we were the outright winners of our category with no runners up.

When the compare, Mr Frankie Boyle ran through the shortlist, we gave ourselves a huge roar of approval, contrasting starkly with the other more sedate rounds of applause from the other candidates, which prompted Mr Boyle to remark, “Metia – the only ones that care...” Which I think is fundamentally why we won - perhaps it should be our new strap line.

PRWeek, short lists Metia and GlobeOp for best PR campaign

2009-09-07T08:56:00Z

Seems the only time I blog is to brag. Perhaps they should be called brag posts, better than blag posts I guess.

We’ve been nominated for another, yes another award. This time PRWeek has shortlisted the Metia PR team and our client, GlobeOp for most effective PR campaign in financial services. This is already an award winning combo as the same team scooped the 2009 PRSA Big Apple Award for the most effective b2b PR campaign.

It’s enough to make some people blush – though not me – it’s a good job humility doesn’t come naturally.

Meeting of the minds; Metia to host AR seminar in the Big Apple

2009-07-30T14:49:00Z

Never a dull moment for our Analyst Relations team, even during the dog days of summer. Following a series of successful AR seminars in London, we are hosting the next one in New York, designed for the East coast’s large community of financial technology vendors.

Taking place Thursday, August 6, at the Warwick Hotel in New York City, the breakfast seminar is focused on helping technology vendors capitalize on analyst relations. The seminar will share insight from the industry’s best and brightest on developing a winning analyst relations program which will help you stand apart from the competition.

We’ve got some experienced practitioners along to give you the inside track, including David Potterton, vice president of global research for Financial Insights and George Ravich, EVP and chief marketing officer for Fundtech. From our side, Tinne Teugels and Mark Provost, will moderate the event. Mark will lead a session highlighting key elements for a successful analyst relations program.

If you want to attend drop me a mail.

Metia and Logica take top B2B Campaign at ISP Awards 2009

2009-06-05T11:42:00Z

Last night – suited and booted – Metia London took our lovely client, Logica to the Institute of Sales Promotion awards, at the Park Lane Hilton. We were up for the Best B2B Campaign award, with our nifty, Logica Does it Better campaign. Across the board, there were over 300 entries and some 70 agencies competing.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, we won! Tra la la.

Which is great for the team here and our customers, Logica.

Any campaign that generates a response rate of 60% from senior corporate decision makers (aka big budget holders), is one to shout about. So I’m delighted that we and the folk at Logica got the opportunity to quietly celebrate our joint success...

Metia and GlobeOp win at New York’s Big Apple Awards

2009-05-22T13:23:00Z

How much are we loving our NYC colleagues right now?

Last night, Metia’s New York office scooped the award for most effective B2B communications campaign in the Tri-State Region at the 2009 PRSA Big Apple Awards with our client GlobeOp .These awards run by the New York Chapter of the largest professional organization for public relations practitioners in the US, have been running for some 22 years and this year they received a record number of entries, so we are just chuffed to come out on top.

Our award winning campaign had all the components of what makes us rock: our passion to get deep into the subject matter, knowing what an industry’s hot topics are and how to play them to our client’s advantage, a creative approach to pitching complex ideas to the media, an energized team with the tenacity to secure top interviews, and of course, a fantastic client.

The end result was a great set of performance metrics: 456 pieces of coverage, 165% above target, from 83 media briefings, 184% above target, including coverage in the NYT, WSJ, IHT, FT, Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones, et al.

What better start for a well-earned Memorial Day weekend?

Metia and GlobeOp shortlisted for best B2B campaign

2009-05-20T09:52:00Z

This year I told my CEO, it ain’t about the cash revenues - we'll fill our boots with

psychic income or glory by any other name. Not sure he was really smitten with this concept, but I ran with it.

You have two options when the bear in the market growls. Run and hide - or play that tin whistle and see if you can’t get that big ol’ bear to dance.

I’m lucky. I work with some brilliant people, both in-house and on the client side and when the going gets tough, we get creative. We’ve focused on designing campaigns that make the budgets work harder, while our clients have given us the ammunition to aim that bit higher.

So, nice to see that right on the back of our US-based client, Correlix, winning the Red Herring North American 100 award for top tech start up companies, the 2009 PRSA Big Apple Awards have shortlisted the Metia PR team and our client, GlobeOp, for most effective b2b campaign in the tri-state area. This is for our sterling efforts to promote GlobeOp’s trailblazing market position as the guiding light for hedge funds.

Being recognised for our creativity and ability to impact the client’s bottom line is a huge thrill. And of course it’s a great reason to dust off the little black frock – even if it is last season’s. Keeping it crossed NYC.

50 fantastic publicity stunts and the one that got away

2009-02-24T14:27:00Z

I saw this list of the 50 best publicity stunts collected by consumer agency Taylor Herring and had to share it.

While, the list doesn’t completely validate the professional discipline of PR – especially for those of us working at the B2B end of it – it does demonstrate that, when correctly applied within a campaign, a little creativity can have dramatic results.

Since I started off my working life sitting in a glass cubicle wrapping presents in Harrods, my personal favourite is the gift-wrapped helicopter. Fortunately that wasn’t on my shift, the worst I ever had was to wrap a bicycle. Seven of them actually, and it took till midnight. Another customer did once demand I wrap a red rose along with a four foot long eel, which he had brought with him in his overcoat. He was more than a little strange and distinctly smelly, so security removed him.

So if you want to be amazing, first make sure you don’t have any eels in your pockets, then inspire your agency to be creative and they just might be able to sort it for you.

Social media: my new big bro

2008-11-14T11:23:00Z

Being a gangly child in the extreme (6ft tall, all elbows and feet) I was no stranger to the savage laws of the playground and it was there, confronted by a somewhat belligerent audience, that I began to develop my laconic wit and engaging persona. If that failed, and it often did, I‘d promise to bring in my big brother.

These days, I’m pretty good at fighting my corner. So when a company I had shopped with was a little tardy with my refund of £110, I opted straight for plan A. Plan A comprises a base layer of icily polite assertiveness, laced with a sugary coating of sarcasm. Plan A rarely wins me any friends but does invariably get results. So effective is Plan A, I have never needed a Plan B – until now. Each month I asked for my refund, each month I was told it had just been processed. Each month I’d check my statement, to find it devoid of refund and then we started again.

No amount of irrefutably logical emails made any difference, neither did my increasingly exasperated phone calls.

This went on for four months…

I have many failings, refusing to give in, is just one of them.

So I wrote a polite little email in the sweetest tones with lots of hyperlinks, simply asking if they had any suggestions as to how I might extract a refund from them, and I wondered mildly should I mention it in my blog, or on Twitter, or maybe share my experience on a review site...?

The next day I had a very nice phone call and a follow up email, and two days later I had a cheque signed by the MD.

Notably, I had not even used social media to share my frustration, I merely suggested I was considering it. How powerful is that?

And so much more effective than the threat of my big bro ever was. Especially as it soon became apparent I was, in fact, an only child…

Ok so it's not raining men...

2008-11-10T16:36:00Z

So I know the global financial markets are being redefined with a butcher’s knife right now, but I’ve never seen so many new business opportunities coming along. And no, it’s not even like buses. At least with buses you don’t try to jump on each and every one of them and it's certainly not like my love life...

Anyway why are we besieged with RFPs right now?

Here are my theories:

Theory one: the crunch has been around for a while now. It has made our market very competitive. At recent trade shows I repeatedly heard, “My agency is just not delivering.” Now I doubt very much if other agencies can’t deliver, they wouldn’t be here if they couldn’t. But over the last year I’ve lost a couple of pitches due to costs, where a competitor has come in with a more aggressive bid. I would hazard that after the honeymoon period (three months usually gets to the bottom of it), these accounts are now being serviced at the quoted levels. So the customer has a minute a month of a senior consultant and a couple of days of someone fresh out of college. Inevitably, service levels, and results, suffer as a consequence.

Theory two: I’ve recently met several marketing execs facing the same problem: their division needs more support than central comms will give it. One central comms team supporting a big diversified organization, can end up being somewhat vanilla in its approach. So these maverick marketers turn feral and come to talk to us. Our culture, and indeed the people that we employ, are all about the deep dive. What do you want to know about achieving equilibrium in fragmented markets? How outsourcing can help hedge funds survive the meltdown? Or the role of liquidity in risk management?... In tough times topping up central comms, with bespoke programs that speak to your markets about their problems in their language, can be a judicious move.

Theory three: Right now, accountability and commonsense demand that you look at every line item in your budget and ask the question, “Are we really getting value from our marketing spend?” A far blunter question would be: “Could we get it cheaper?” I’m guessing that we don’t come out on top for that last one. But the smarter question is, “Could our marketing spend work harder, position us as innovators, make more impact, create more buzz, reach further, initiate more dialogue?” Well, in those conversations, we seem to be doing really rather well.

So, all in all, despite the winter chill outside, here in St Martin’s Lane we are cooking on gas. Now if I could just get my romantic situation to follow suite, I’d have the perfect work/life balance.

Face time v Facebook

2008-09-22T09:04:00Z

Having just returned from Sibos I am reminded that sometimes, however alluring the alternative, there really is no substitute for just getting out there and talking to people. Whether it be customers, journalists, analysts or random introductions. In this increasingly virtual world, sometimes a little face time with a real human being is worth a million pokes, nudges and emails.

As a primary carer with a mild disdain for playing to the PR stereotype, I’m more likely to be found curled up with a good spreadsheet than, ‘doing lunch’. But in just one week of camping out in Vienna, and yes visiting a few bars, I got to know my customers inside out, met their customers, caught up with the broad community of influencers at large, and engaged in some genuinely interesting dialogue with people that I would just not have met otherwise.

In a business world that’s looking ever more creaky, it’s good to you know you have real friends out there.

Despite the success of my face time initiatives, the traditional one-to-one briefing seems to hold less appeal for an ex-boyfriend. He’s just announced to all his intention to be re-marry via Facebook (so little time, so many ex-girlfriends?) Of course, my natural grace and good breeding doesn’t permit me to publish a link to his home page right here… but under the circumstances, I thought just a passing mention wouldn’t go amiss.

Social media – there’s a time and a place.

Reasons to be jolly...

2008-09-14T19:08:00Z

We don’t really have a, down-the-pub-on-a-Friday-afternoon, type of culture; we’d rather keep on trucking and leave for the weekend with a clean conscience and a clean desk.

But this Friday, even for us, was horribly frenetic with just about all of us sporting please-don’t-talk-to-me auras: interns assembling and re-assembling press packs; account execs printing schedules with a flourish only to bin them ten minutes later; AR and PR account managers intent on taking multi-tasking to new levels, seemingly on several calls at once, emailing and IMing all at the same time; harried-looking event planners scuttled around with lengthy guest lists, muttering darkly about being 25% over capacity already; while account directors looked increasingly dismayed at their calendars for the following week and the number of back-to-back briefings wedged in them. As for me, my own concerns cantered around my new smart phone the current embodiment of a contradiction in terms and seemingly designed to thwart me on every level. Owl post would be a definite upgrade. Conversations were terse and the regular flurries of expletives remained unremarked, while Haribos and Americanos were being consumed at the optimum ulcer-inducing capacity.

So what’s all the fuss about?

Sibos innit?

More to the point the 14 clients we are supporting there, the stands we’ve designed, the parties we’ve planned, the 50plus sales appointments we’ve scheduled, the 80plus analyst briefings and the 100plus press interviews that we have organised on their behalf.

It goes without saying the most sought after currency next week in Vienna at the five day super size conference, will be sleep and the following week I expect we’ll be sporting the collective cold for our efforts as the stress and lack of sleep takes its toll on my otherwise chilled out team.

This is the dark underbelly of your PR ‘jolly’, and guess what, we LOVE it.

Whether it’s our 25^th Sibos (well done Clare) or our first (welcome to our world Silke) we will wear our ghostly pallor, and facial ticks like badges of honour. Sibos - our ultimate tour of duty.

As for me, I’m particularly looking forward to patrolling the queues of party goers with my clipboard (and possibly an owl on my shoulder if I can’t get my bloody phone to co-operate) fixing the fintec faithful with my icy stare, and uttering those immortal lines, ‘If your name’s not down, you’re not coming in...’

On rainmakers and fire starters

2008-09-06T15:22:00Z

PR Week recently ran a small piece citing a survey conducted by PR agency Parker Wayne & Kent. The survey found that many PRs still believe off line coverage to be more influential than on line. Apparently only one in ten respondents thought that digital coverage was becoming less relevant to PR campaigns.

Meanwhile this June guardian.co.uk cited over 20 million unique users (print readers about 1.2 million).

Maybe the reasons some PROs still cling to the opinion that digital coverage is not as influential as more traditional media is because they’d just prefer it, if it were so.

I mean, wouldn’t life be easier if the companies with the most PR spend had the most clout? If product messages could be tenderly crafted, engraved in stone and transcribed verbatim, if all we ever had to do was chant the corporate message loudly and repeatedly, and the world would be so.

Ahh to go back in time, to the days before user generated content, when PROs were the rainmakers.

Now the world’s gone mad. A no-name company with a budget that wouldn’t even cover a PRO’s bar bill, throws a phone in a blender, and puts the resulting footage on YouTube. 5 million hits later and it’s the most talked about brand of the era. Our most sacred tool, The CEO, once only rolled out for speaker slots and interviews with the chosen few, blogs daily and takes time to reply to anyone that contacts him. A disgruntled journalist bleats about some pithy laptop malfunction and a global corporate completely revaluates its entire comms strategy.

Now it’s all about ‘transparency’, ‘listening’, ‘responsiveness’ and, heaven forbid, ‘creating a dialogue’.

These days the world and his dog have a view, a means to communicate it and an attentive online audience to lap it up. Increasingly, it is the maddeningly authentic voice of the individual whether they be consumer or supplier that has more clout than that of the seasoned and oh so reasoned PRO.

So if you worked in PR what would you do?

Judging by the survey results, going into denial is definitely an option and it does seem to work for all the alcoholics I know. And while I still squeal with pleasure when we get coverage in the FT and have I do have to stroke the glossy pages of The Banker should it have a client mugshot within it - in such invigorating times shouldn’t us old rainmakers have a slightly more thought out approach than just to hide behind our umbrellas?

Revel without a cause

2008-08-19T10:44:00Z

I’ve been crowdsourced!

Sadly this doesn’t involve leaping off the main stage to be held aloft by the Glastonbury faithful. Indeed, I feel that moment may have passed me by. But it did involve a cute campaign and an unscheduled retro chocolate purchase.

So there I am tapping away on the laptop when a very simple pop-up pops up with a choice of six voting buttons and asks, ‘Which Revel will you vote out?’ Now, while I’m not that clear on the relative merits of our main political parties and a fair few religious faiths, I do have an instant opinion on which lack-lustre flavour should be summarily evicted.

As soon as I’d voted, the pop-up disappeared. No one demanded my details, my socio-demographics or to know how I’d heard about them. And no one wanted me to create a password that was a mixture of letters and numbers and to type it in twice. Those nice people at Mars just wanted to hear which chocolate I wanted out and I was happy to tell them. That’s crowdsourcing.

No doubt the results will provide the next installment of the print and TV campaign. Then it will be back online to vote for a new flavour to replace the hapless evictee with the results of that survey be pumped back into offline vehicles again. And at that point I’m just going to have to buy a bloody bag because I’m engaged now, I have a stake in this, and I need to have a view on the new flavour on the block. Clever.

I’m explaining all this to Lynne, my very world-weary and delightfully cynical friend, as we queue for the flicks. But as we head over to the popcorn, she stops and stares ruefully at the sweetie stall before saying, “But what if orange really is evicted. This might be our last ever chance…”

As for rock-and-roll moments, I may never have got to crowd surf, but last week, as I finally extracted myself from a rather messy team karaoke session, I did get to say, ‘My name’s Sam Howard. Goodnight!’

And I have ALWAYS wanted to do that.

Some job titles just aren’t worth having

2008-08-12T18:11:00Z

So this weekend we had friends to stay and my eight year old is keen to show off his newly acquired tea and coffee making skills. He quickly builds a small but loyal customer base. Next up a bit of market research in order to establish new revenue streams: “How much would you pay me to make your tea and coffee all weekend?” Come Sunday and he’s charging 19p for a mug of coffee and 22p for a cup of tea (additional stirring required). At the end of the weekend, having turned a healthy profit, I promote him to EVP of Hot Beverages…

Meanwhile at work, we’ve hired Cat, complete with one year’s work experience and a shiny first from Bournemouth University. A month into her new job, “Cat,” I say, with loaded intent, “Would you like to take over our social committee?” All sparkly-eyed and full of first-job enthusiasm, she leaps at the chance. And so last Thursday, 18 of us herded into The Comedy Store, with our jugs of beer and hamburgers balanced on our knees for a bit of jolly team bonding. So far so good. Then Jason Rouse takes the mike. Titanium-toothed and tattooed-encrusted, Jas zeroes in on boundaries and tramples all over them. And as he charges manically from one really-no-go-subject to another, annihilating every single one of your cherished values, I watch our collective team smile become ever more strained.

And I can hear Cat whimpering beside me as she contemplates an alternative career, one based primarily around asking, “And would you like fries with that?”

As it turns out, I have spent far too much time living in the U-rated world of Harry Potter, so I really rather enjoyed my exposure to (way) beyond the fringe humour. So for now, her voluntary job title as head of our social committee stands. But Cat, and here’s the rub, what are you going to do to top that? I feel exotic ladies adorned in little more than sushi really is the only way to go…