Diffusion’s 2010 PR Graduate Scheme is now open and we’re looking for the brightest and the best to join PR Week’s New Consultancy of the Year in September ‘10.  For more information about our scheme, what we’re looking for in new recruits and to download an application form, please visit our Graduate Careers page here. Remember, the closing date is 8 February 2010.

So it’s official! Diffusion has been named as PR Week’s New Consultancy of the Year 2009 and we’re absolutely ecstatic! After months of waiting the PR Week Awards finally took place on Tuesday night, at the suitably glamorous Grosvenor House with over 1,200 leading members of the PR industry in attendance. We were is a very tough category, with some amazing agencies we all admire short-listed, so the award judges must have had an agonising time choosing a winner. Perhaps wisely given the audience, we weren’t allowed to give acceptance speeches, so I hope you won’t mind if Ivan and I say a few thank yous now.

Quite a few people thought we were mad to launch a new agency in the middle of a recession, especially one pioneering a new model of PR with digital at its heart and operating on a 100% payment-by-results basis. They were probably right.  Ivan and I were confident though, that despite banks collapsing around our ears, the pace at which the media and online worlds were evolving was not going to slow, and PR as an industry could not afford to waste any more time or cede any more ground to other disciplines. So a big thank you goes to friends, family and colleagues who back in 2007 said ‘”Go for it!” and to our financial, legal and business advisers who helped make our launch on 4 April 2008 a reality.  Special thanks goes to Sukhi and John at 383 Project for designing the Diffusion brand and building this amazing website.

Our success has of course been most dependent on the trust that all of our amazing clients have placed in us. Whether you’ve been with us from day one or have only recently started working with us, we’d like to say a big and very heartfelt thank you. We’ve been very lucky to be given such intellectually challenging briefs to implement and to work with people who share our vision for pioneering new PR approaches and constantly pushing the boundaries of what communication means today.

Ivan and I have been especially touched by the faith shown by Barney, Tom, Alasdair and Claire in joining an agency which was then only a few months old. In the 18-months since, not a week has gone by when we’ve not been amazed in some way, by the results secured by what has now grown into a 12-strong team of some the brightest and nicest PR professionals in the UK.

Chapter 1 of the Diffusion story has come to a close, but we remain very excited by what is still to come.  Watch this space!

At the end of September Diffusion Mobile hosted its first ever Mobile Knowledge Seminar, chaired by The Daily Telegraph’s technology editor Claudine Beaumont and with panellists from the GSMA, IAB and Juniper Research, discussing future opportunities for mobile media in a post-App Store world. With attendees from across the mobile industry, the event tackled opportunities and challenges for companies in a number of areas of mobile, including operators, advertisers, content developers and media owners.

One of the main points raised from those taking part was that without proper mobile internet strategies in place, businesses will lose out regardless of the attention they pay to apps and app stores. Future adoption of feature rich and value added services will centre on mobile users’ internet experiences, not just applications. In many cases, apps are already an easy one click portal to a mobile internet service, and indicative of the way access to and experience of such services are likely to go.

Alongside the seminar Diffusion Mobile has launched a whitepaper studying future opportunities for mobile media, conducted by Juniper Research. In the whitepaper, it is suggested that revenues for application downloads are expected to reach $11.3bn by 2014, represented by a total of almost 20 billion downloads per year. Most interestingly, the study indicates that mobile games will no longer be the dominant driver of app downloads. Gaming’s share of app downloads is expected to fall from current levels of 86 per cent to 50 per cent within five years, as apps geared for general entertainment, multimedia, education and social networking steadily gain market share.

If you would like to receive a complimentary copy of the whitepaper, please visit our whitepapers page and click the link to submit your details. One of the Diffusion Mobile team will then drop you a complimentary copy over. Essential reading for anyone covering the apps and mobile internet spaces!

It’s been a day of high political drama with The Sun announcing that it’s turning its back on Labour to endorse the Conservative Party at the next general election. Nobody would accuse us of underestimating the importance of online media and digital platforms, but we would never be naive enough to assume that when it comes to political campaigning or PR in general, that national newspapers no longer matter.  However, surprisingly, this seems to be the agreed attack line adopted this morning by Labour spokespeople being interviewed about The Sun’s decision.

Everyone from Lord Mandelson to Charlie Wheelan to the Guardian’s Michael White have been on the TV and radio claiming that The Sun’s explosive decision to back the Tories doesn’t matter in today’s internet age with falling newspaper circulations.  Labour MP Kerry McCarthy, the parties new media chief even went so far as to claim in a Tweet last night that “Labour doesn’t need The Sun. We’ve got Twitter.”  As wonderful as Twitter is, it won’t have been read by close to 8 million people this morning, alongside a full-colour pull-out poster detailing what the paper claims to be Labour’s shortcomings.

There were some interesting Twitter sentiment analysis carried out yesterday by the team at Tweetminster in response to Brown’s speech, which classed 53% of tweets as positive with 21% negative.  The analysis is great to see but I don’t think it tells us anything more than lots of delegates at the Labour Party conference and supporters were on Twitter yesterday afternoon.  I don’t think Twitter is significantly Labour supporting, so again McCarthy’s claim of ownership over the platform for Labour seems rather misguided.

The pure online impact of The Sun shouldn’t be underestimated either. This morning it’s launched a Google Adwords campaign bidding on keywords including ‘Gordon Brown’ and ‘Labour Party’ which state  “The Sun endorses The Conservative Party for the next general election.” The paper’s FeelingBlue campaign has already translated onto Twitter within hours.

Ultimately lets not forget the 23 million plus unique users per month to Sun Online. Beyond pure news coverage The Sun’s website will be a key battle ground for seeding video attack ads and virals during the election campaign – following today’s switch it’s a battle which Labour’s online team will struggle to win.

Almost a year on from the first Twestival (or Harvest Twestival) co-founded by  Diffusion’s very own Tom Malcolm the team headed down to the cavernous Vinopolis in Borough Market for London Twestival Local and were pleased to discover that the event had lost none of its magic and was one of the best Twestival events yet!

Aside from the copious amounts of free booze generously provided by Magners and Barefoot Wine, what was fantastic about last night was fact that this event had been organised in a way that London Twestival Local did not lose any of the event’s original spark which has made it such a worldwide phenomenon.

As a venue, Vinopoplis worked perfectly with many different areas encouraging everyone to move around so that you could really talk and meet all of the faces you already knew along with a few you didn’t.  Huge credit has to go to the organisers for securing both Newton Faulkner and The Hours who continued the great tradition of providing great live entertainment at the event making the ticket price more than worth its value.

All this while generating a huge amount of money for a good cause.  While the final figures are still to be released – there’s no doubt that the level of money and awareness raised will provide a significant benefit to NSPCC Childline who last night’s twestivities were in aid of.

It’s a wonder that in just a year the simple concept of a London Twestival cooked up by  @benrmatthews, @timhoang and @tommalcolm in a pub after a football match they’d organised over Twitter has been transformed into a worldwide phenoneman by the hard work and inspiration of @Amanda Rose and the thousands of volunteers worldwide raising thousands of pounds for good causes.

Twestival continues to be a success thanks to the hard work of volunteers and the generosity of sponsors (this time Tamar, Sonos and Data Snatchers)  but more importantly it strikes a chord with so many people as it provides everyone with an unprecedented way of meeting new friends they speak with day in day out online while also raising funds for a good cause.

We just wish we didn’t all have such sore heads the morning after…

We’ve had some fantastic news this week with confirmation that Diffusion is a finalist for New Consultancy of the Year at this year’s PR Week Awards. The category looks at a number of criteria including staff and client growth and retention and against a tough economic climate, we have been fortunate to have grown to a 12-strong agency working with a range of amazing brands and exciting start-ups.  However, what we believe makes us stand out even more is our commitment to PR innovation and a pioneering approach to integrating digital, search and traditional media relations at the heart of our communication campaigns.

One of our favourite case studies of the success of this approach in action, was our launch of CyberMentors for charity Beatbullying, back in March.  The campaign not only got the issue of cyberbullying firmly on the national agenda via print and broadcast media, but was able to reach out directly to young people by creatively engaging with online communities and social networks.

The result was a campaign which was able to meet a brief concerned with not just generating large volumes of coverage, but inspiring a range of actions and outcomes from a distinct set of audiences including parents, teachers, politicians and of course young people themselves. Hitting the target set by the DCSF for visits to the CyberMentors site for the whole year in just the first month, was just one of the immediate outcomes.

For a whole host of reasons this was a campaign we were very proud to be a part of, one which made a real difference, so in some ways we were even more excited to hear that our work for BeatBullying has also been short-listed for a PR Week Best Campaign award in the Not-for-profit category.

Having seen the list of finalists for both awards, we are in some very fine company and the competition is going to be tough. It may be a cliché but it is true nonetheless, that we are very grateful for the industry recognition we’ve received just to get this far. Win or lose, the evening of 20th October will be a time to reflect, celebrate and above all be inspired by the great work of our peers to do even better!

It’s been a day of milestones at Diffusion, we’ve moved into new offices (excuse the unpacked boxes if you’re visiting this week!) but even more significantly, we have also launched Diffusion Mobile.

Diffusion Mobile will specialise in helping clients in the rapidly growing consumer orientated segments of mobile telecoms including; content and applications, mobile advertising and consumer hardware. Competition and innovation in the mobile sector is becoming increasingly intense, and creative PR is essential to secure the mindshare of consumers, mobile industry partners and the investor community.

The team will bring Diffusion’s next generation approach to this vibrant sector, with integrated communication campaigns built around media relations, social media and search marketing. Reflecting Diffusion’s focus on accountability and measurement, Diffusion Mobile will also operate on a payment by results basis, with clear deliverables for all campaigns and clients only paying for results actually achieved.

We are also excited to welcome Juniper Research, the leading telecoms analyst house specialising in the mobile and wireless sector, as Diffusion Mobile’s first client.   We will be running an integrated digital campaign to raise awareness of the firm and its market reports, positioning its analysts as industry thought leaders.   The campaign will be implemented by mobile industry specialist David Ross-Tomlin, whose PR campaign experience includes some of the biggest names in the mobile industry including BlackBerry, Ericsson and HTC.

If you’re a company in the mobile space we’d love to talk to you about how our fresh approach can help you to meet your communication and business objectives.  Please give us a call on 0207 025 1500 or drop us a line at david@diffusion-mobile.com.

As reported in the latest edition of PR Week, ipoints.co.uk, the rewards-based online shopping portal has appointed Diffusion to create and implement a social media campaign aimed at driving consumer traffic to their web site. Our campaign will target consumers across a range of platforms to educate them on the benefits of collecting points for their day-to-day shopping online, and redeeming them for rewards. We will also be integrating traditional media outreach to build wider brand awareness amongst consumers.

ipoints.co.uk was founded in 2000. It is owned by European online marketing specialist Maximiles and counts more than two million members who use the UK portal to collect points and redeem rewards for their day-to-day shopping.

We’re looking forward to working with ipoints.co.uk to drive quantifiable traffic to the site through social media and to building wider brand awareness through traditional media.

This week’s issue of PR Week takes an in-depth look at the BNP’s success at the recent European elections and asks a straightforward question – was enough done by the main political parties to prevent their breakthrough? My own view, shared by other industry colleagues, is that a communication strategy based on the premise that if we simply ignore the BNP they will just disappear has clearly failed.  A new approach is now needed, focussed on countering BNP propaganda whenever and wherever it appears, with a far more proactive stance taken by all mainstream political parties.  This includes online.

While I agree completely that there is no substitute for knocking on doors and talking to voters directly, the inability of the BNP to use the mainstream media as a mouthpiece, makes the internet a key component of its campaigning strategy. The online world will therefore become a key battleground in fighting extremism.

I was given the opportunity to debate these issues further with Luke Pollard, an account director at PR consultancy Edelman, as well as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party. You can watch our discussion in the PR Week video podcast below.

Following the G20 protests, the death of Ian Tomlinson and two police officers being caught making controversial comments on Facebook, the Metropolitan Police has been battling a storm of negative publicity. This has been driven and perpetuated in the traditional media by ever more revelations emerging through YouTube and other social media platforms.

The challenge faced by the Met shows that no organisation, whether in the corporate, consumer or public sector is immune from the threats and opportunities posed by social media. When an organisation’s reputation is at risk, not monitoring for threats online – at the very least – will in end up costing more in the long run, with greater investment required to regain lost trust.

You can read my advice on how the Met should combat the recent negative press in this week’s PR Week.