As reported by PR Week, Diffusion has been appointed by the Royal Institution of Great Britain to develop and implement an integrated digital campaign to promote the annual Christmas Lectures.

The Christmas lectures have been held since 1825 when Michael Faraday (pictured above) delivered the very first one, and since then have become an iconic fixture of the festive TV schedule. This year we’re working with the Royal Institution to take advantage of digital platforms to deliver an interactive audience experience.

The lectures this year are titled ‘The 300 million years war’ and have a strong environmental theme, examining the complex relationship between plant and animal life. We will be using digital and traditional media channels to reach out to young people, teachers and parents to drive viewers to the lectures which will be broadcast on More 4 between 21-25 December.

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.

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!

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.

Diffusion Managing Director Daljit Bhurji has been chosen to feature in PR Week’s Power Book, the “definitive directory of the most powerful and influential PR practitioners in the UK”. The Power Book was launched at an exclusive reception on Wednesday night at new private members club Paramount, with amazing views across London from the 31^st floor of Centre Point.

Acknowledging the launch of Diffusion since he appeared in last year’s Power Book, his entry states that “Nobody does digital better than this online PR and social media expert.”  The 2009 Power Book also see’s Matthew Freud take the number one spot with the likes of Max Clifford and Andy Coulson also making the Top Ten.  You can read and download the full Power Book via the PR Week website here.

Being both a politics and digital PR junkie I’ve been rather spoiled and completely fascinated by the US Presidential elections. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to record a video podcast for PR Week on both my favourite topics last week, which you can watch here. I think it’s fair to say that we are witnessing the first Social Media Election, where online platforms have become so much more than just channels for raising money but central to campaign strategy for both the McCain and Obama camps.

While the US elections have no doubt showcased the scale of what the web can achieve, there is still so much more that could be done in terms of sophistication. I touch on the issue of better campaign integration in my podcast – amplifying the power of political campaigns through intelligently linking traditional media relations, Search marketing and Social Media.  This is one of the areas I highlight where political parties in the UK, particularly the Conservatives are taking a lead and have a thing or two to teach our American cousins. The Tories live-bidding on Google for keywords spoken by Alasdair Darling as he was delivering his last budget speech is just a sign of the things to come.

Another example of integration in action, which I never managed to blog about at the time was Obama’s visit to the UK in July and his private meeting with David Cameron. Though most of the actual meeting was conducted away from the cameras, the party released a video on YouTube of Cameron discussing the encounter within an hour of it ending and then pushed this out via its press office, an email marketing shot and a sustained Google PPC campaign. The video made it into the Top 10 most popular YouTube videos that weekend, with over 20,000 hits in 48 hours, helping to ensure that the Tories at least matched the coverage given to Obama’s meeting with Brown.

As with most things Social Media we have barely scratched the surface, particularly when it comes to using the two-way communication potential of online platforms to the full. Watching how the UK parties fight the next general election online is going to be compelling viewing!

I’ve been watching a fascinating story unfold in the US this week charting how a mixup on Google sent the share price of United Airlines plummeting by a massive 76 per cent. The event triggered an emergency halt in trading earlier this week as automated trading systems began a mass sell-off of United Airlines stock.

It all came about after a nearly six-year-old story detailing the airline’s bankruptcy filing in 2002 on the Sun Sentinel’s web site found its way back into Google’s news cycle which in turn was picked up by Bloomberg and the rest, as they say, is history. The Tribune Company, which owns the Sun Sentinel and other US newspapers has since removed the offending article from its archives.

I read the story before it was removed and despite it being clearly dated from 2002, and was clearly related to events in 2002 it still managed to wipe $1bn of the value off the airline in a matter of minutes.

Above all this shows just how important Google has become in the communications landscape today, and its no longer enough to simply assume that as long as your profile in the traditional media is good, that you can ignore what’s happening online, and in particular what Google thinks of you.

The United Airlines example will not be the last, and for people in the communications industry arguing over the technicality of Google’s algorithms that contributed to this, and how the story got republished is missing the point in a big way. What Google thinks of your brand, and how it is represented has a massive impact on your bottom line, so it’s about time you did something about it. Just ask United.

Does the PR industry have a sufficient set of guidelines on the use of Social Media? That’s the argument which has been triggered by Edelman’s Simon Collister and Colin Farrington, DG of the CIPR. Last week Simon called on the CIPR to provide clear guidance on the ethical use of Social Media in a letter to PR Week, which elicited a response from Colin pointing out that the CIPR published its Social Media Guidelines in January 2007 and that Simon had in fact been involved in their development.

Simon has responded on his blog, remembering the guidelines do exist but pointing out that his recommendations were apparently largely ignored. Having read Simon’s detailed submission I’m a little confused. One of the main thrusts of his argument is that social media practice is little different from traditional media relations, and that the guidelines make too much of a distinction. While I would agree that there are many shared principles, I don’t see how that fits with his original plea for the CIPR to produce a clear (and presuambly discrete) set of guidelines on the use of Social Media.

There is also criticism that the Guidelines lack detail. Putting to one side that it would be an impossible task, I don’t think it’s the role of the CIPR to develop a bible on how to use Social Media with tactic-by-tactic step-by-step instructions. That ongoing and constantly evolving process is one which individual agencies and consultants need to tackle in their own way.

I think that there are two key points which need to be considered. Firstly the guidelines should be just that – guidelines which communicate the core principles which should govern the implementation of Social Media PR. Secondly, the guidelines need to be designed to be used by the entire PR industry not the relatively tiny clique of PR practitioners who have been living and breathing Social Media for years.

I regularly help to organise and attend CIPR events and I’m no longer surprised to meet PR directors for some of the UK’s largest brands who are still in the dark about the ‘rules’ of engaging with Social Media. I remember there was a rather parochial debate back in 2006 about whether a separate set of guidelines was in fact necessary for Social Media. In my experience for 90% of ordinary practitioners in 2008 it is still seen as new and discrete and they want specific guidance.

Keeping these points in mind I think the CIPR’s Social Media Guidelines are a good starting point. They don’t preach to the converted and they emphasise the importance of transparency and integrity and the unacceptability of unethical tactics such as astro-turfing and spamming.

One year on since their first publication there have been a number of significant developments which need to be considered for inclusion in the next update of the Guidelines, not least SEO. I agree completely with Simon that they really need to be formally reviewed on a six monthly basis in order to remain relevant. You can call me a radical but perhaps that development and consultation process could even be conducted via a dedicated blog where everyone with a genuine interest can easily contribute, debate and shape the outcome?

I would be the first to admit that the CIPR has been historically slow to embrace social media and there have been some serious missteps along the way, but we are by no means starting from scratch. Going back to Simon’s original point we do need a set of Social Media Guidelines which remain robust and relevant and it would benefit the PR industry for as many practitioners as possible to be involved in their ongoing development.