Brollies at the ready; it was a rainy night sleeping out in London for Byte Night 2009

It was arguably always on the cards. As we looked to re-evaluate our approach to CSR in the UK, there really was only one charitable initiative we could support, our namesake – Byte Night.

Well, maybe there was a little more to it than that!

I officially LOVE Byte Night. Ever since the delectable Sally Hanson, then marketing director at Cognos, involved me six years ago (not that I had a choice, I might add), I have never looked back. Having helped with the PR in previous roles, and of course having slept out in the freezing English winter weather, I am now chuffed to be heading the PR effort again with the full support of the Byte Night board and the Bite team.

Byte Night, the annual sleep out, is Action for Children’s single largest fundraising event. Given Action for Children is the largest children’s charity in the UK, that makes this a pretty impressive event. Since its inception 12 years ago, the event has raised over £2.5 million; £600,000 in the past year alone against the backdrop of a global recession. The money raised every year directly helps the UK’s most vulnerable and neglected children. Having met many young people who have benefited from Action for Children’s work, I’m in no doubt about the good work Byte Night does and its significance in helping improve the lives of 1.5 million children who suffer some form of neglect in the UK.

So it’s with great pride that we take over the PR baton from LEWIS, whose team did a great job for five years on a pro bono basis.

This year, we’re going to bring a mix of specialist skills to bear on the PR campaign and step things up a gear, so watch this space (in the meantime you can check out last year’s event here .)

 The 2010 event promises to be the best year yet for Byte Night, with more locations around the country and greater capacity in London to cater for the ever-growing demand from major brands to be involved. Our volunteers from across the business are chomping at the bit to get going and do our (almost) namesake proud.

Just the other day as I was walking through Times Square, I couldn’t help but notice that the majority, if not all of the billboard screens now constantly stream video advertisements. I even tried to count the total number of video billboards all simultaneously playing around me as I walked and lost count (numbers were never my strong suit, hence why I went into PR… but I digress). This revelation made me realize two very important things. 

1. I should probably pay more attention to my surroundings while walking through the city.

2. Videos, both offline and online, are becoming more than just a backdrop or accessory. They are becoming one of the main distribution channels of information for millions of people every day.

The online video world is quietly bubbling up around us. The stats pretty much speak for themselves with ComScore recently reporting that nearly 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online videos in December 2009, totaling almost 33.2 billion videos viewed during the month.

At a recent PRSA NY panel discussing social media, questions surrounding online videos popped up again and again. From a method to bring to light the personalities behind brands, to building communities and last but not least to help strengthen relationships between consumers and their brands. 

At another panel, ‘Journalism after Print’ attended by a colleague on the West Coast, discussions on the changing world of journalism concluded that with the huge adoption of tablets,  eReaders, and new media, stories are increasingly being told in real time through videos and rich media content. 

As communications professionals the task at hand is evident. With the demand and use of online video set to spiral, how can we best incorporate online videos as part of our storytelling efforts? 

It seems as though it will it only be a matter of time before we look to YouTube or Hulu to bring us the breaking news and stories happening in real time. And, in order to test my hypothesis I did a quick YouTube search for the most viewed videos right now to find the Oscars being at the top of the list.  Definitely a news item I’ve been following these past few days.

Lastly, let’s not forget about the recent turmoil between Conan and NBC. Nick Bilton at the NYTimes wrote a very interesting blog post discussing the consequences of Conan O’Brien taking his show online. I know I was particularly intrigued by his proposition having tuned into the final Tonight Show episodes hosted by Conan on Hulu as opposed to watching it on television. I can see it now, a huge Coco online community waiting for the next online show to appear on YouTube.

So, while we move full force into 2010 and jump into our communications plans for the year, let’s make sure to ask ourselves, are we telling content rich and online video worthy stories?  If not, why not?

One world-class cyclist......and Chris Boardman

They say you should never meet your heroes.   It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I muscled my way to the front of a BDO Stoy Hayward networking event last night to shake hands with the great Chris Boardman.

Winner of Great Britain’s first cycling gold medal for over 70 years at the Barcelona 1992 Olympic games, Boardman went on to break world records, wear the yellow jersey in the Tour de France and inspired a generation of GB cyclists who now are world beaters.

Chris was at the event to deliver the usual motivational speeches and provide a draw for the hundred or so distinctly unathletic accountants that form BDO’s client base in the tech sector.

Apart from having my photo taken with Chris, getting my cycling club cap signed and the usual embarrassing fawning, the one thing that sticks in my brain from the evening is a single phrase Chris said.

“If you can’t control everything going on around you, you can always control your attitude.”

That’s why I’m trying to be less grumpy in the office today. I hope it lasts

Bez

We hate to brag at Bite, and try to preserve the utmost modesty at all times, but we couldn’t help getting a little

Cameras at the ready - get 'sleb' spotting for a chance to win dinner for two

excited when we were awarded not one, not two, but a maximum of THREE stars in the Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to Work For List 2010. Additionally, as recently reported in the Sunday Times, we ranked 7^th in the Sunday Times 100 Best  Small Companies to Work For.

It’s true, there is nothing ordinary about working at Bite. From the TOCK-TOCK of the table tennis table to the sound of 80s power ballads filling the air on a Friday, everything is extraordinary.

To celebrate our three stars, we are running a competition for the next six weeks to see who else has been ‘seeing stars’. If you’ve had your photo taken posing with a celebrity, you could win a meal for two at Le Caprice in London* (so you can do some more star spotting!).

Just join our Bite Star Spotters Facebook group, upload a photo of you and the star with a caption including your name, your company name, the star’s name and where the photo was taken.  

We’ll let the members of the group vote on their favourite photos using the “I like” function, and on Thursday 15^th April the photo with the most votes wins!

So join the group and get star spotting!  If you’ve spotted or met a great star recently, but couldn’t get your photo taken, we still want to know!   Likewise, share this group with your star-spotting friends.

* The person who has posted the ‘celebrity spot’ with the highest number of ‘I like’ votes on 15^th April 2010 will win a £200 voucher for Le Caprice in Central London. Alternatively, at the discretion of the winner, Bite will donate £200 to a charity of the winner’s choice.

Co-authored by Sara Giles

This is what happens when you unleash SNL’s Seth Meyers on social media: “Facebook is the only place where a 12 year old stranger can call my vacation photos gay.”

Meyers hit the nail on the head during his set at Buddy Media’s party Social Marketing Is No Laughing Matter, which Sara Giles and I attended on Tuesday at New York’s Hiro Ballroom. If you’re a PR looking to make more fun of yourself, PRNewser has a good recap of the other Meyers highlights.

Now let’s back up.  A few things hit me when I walked in the door:

A) Apparently writers from the Huffington Post and New York Times are VIP and Account Coordinators from Bite are not.

B) I vaguely recognized at least 50% of the people in the room from their avatars.

C) Letter B was a little creepy.

Aside from my apparent stalkerish tendencies, Buddy definitely knows how to throw a good party. Sara and I found it surprisingly refreshing that aside from a short and sweet video on the power of social marketing, the event was all about having fun and meeting interesting people.

The event circuit in the PR/social media/tech world can be too focused on driving home a key point about the industry. Sometimes it’s best to just give guests a few free drinks, some food and let them at it. Funny how in a room full of people with iPhones, Blackberrys, Droids, etc., wearing the “Hi My Name Is” nametag is still very effective – no Twitter handle introduction required.

Not that this is news to anyone reading this blog, but the sheer variety of people attending on Tuesday only reinforces how ubiquitous social media has become. In a little over two hours, we’d chatted with creatives, developers, PR pros,  monitoring experts, venture capitalists, investment bankers and real estate managers looking to market over social media channels – basically if you think about it, the perfect blend of folks needed to fully furnish any brand’s social marketing needs.  And this diverse crowd all care about social media and find it relevant to their line of work, which is proof in and of itself that we’re far, far beyond a fad. 

A final more sentimental takeaway after meeting the folks at the Buddy Media event: nothing compares to the dynamism of New York’s media scene. As the New York Times’ David Carr would have it in his November 2009 piece “The Fall and Rise of Media,” New York’s media landscape “is not an island sinking, but one that is rising on a fresh, ferocious wave.” Happily I can’t help but agree –the people we met on Tuesday are the future of the city’s media landscape, and the future, well, it doesn’t look so bad.

Look away now...

The consistently excellent Arseblog (it’s not as rude as it sounds, ahem) made a very good point on Sunday during the Arsenal versus Stoke football match, about the decision by Sky Sports and the BBC to not show replays of the tackle by Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross which broke the leg of Arsenal’s Welsh midfielder Aaron Ramsey.

As a background for those of you who do not follow football in the English Premier League, Stoke are a notoriously ‘rough ‘n’ ready’, physical side, whereas Arsenal have been characterised as being technical, pretty, but quite easily physically intimidated. This popular belief has been circulated by media pundits, ex-players and writers, to the extent that a number of players now freely admit to intending to target Arsenal for physical treatment.

The point made by Arseblogger (probably not the name by which he is known to his mother) is that the media has a responsibility to show such an injury in its full glory/horror. The blog’s passionate (read: cursin’ and a-swearin’) argument is that if media pundits are expressing views left, right and centre about Arsenal’s weakness, it can lead to other teams trying to exploit this perceived weakness by playing a rougher game – which results in heavy-handed tactics and ‘accidents’ such as the broken leg of Ramsey. 

Shawcross’ tackle on Ramsey on Saturday evening has been criticised by those within Arsenal as the natural result of such tactics.  However, while happy to express their over-zealous views on Arsenal’s lack of rough and tumble, both Sky Sports in its live coverage of the match, then the BBC in its subsequent highlights coverage on Saturday and Sunday evenings, did not show a close-up replay of the tackle for fear that it might upset viewers, such was the horrific nature of the injury.

This set me thinking as to whether the press can reasonably justify claiming the role of censor and moral guide in an age of immediate social media and widespread citizen journalism…

Within hours of getting into work on Monday morning I’d had images of Ramsey’s broken leg sent to me by no less than seven of my friends via email. A search on YouTube for ‘Ramsey leg break’ brings up a staggering 269 results. I’ve been invited to a handful of Facebook groups dedicated to the 19 year old’s erstwhile tibia and fibula.

In this environment of 24:7 information, it seems odd that the established press should bang another nail into its own coffin by purposely limiting the information it passes onto its audience. Of course, there has to be some level of decency when it comes to a national TV station: you wouldn’t want or expect the lunchtime news to show close-ups of pile-ups on the motorway. But in the case of the BBC football match highlights, it was a show that went out at 11pm -way past the watershed.

At a time when people are more likely to hear of a breaking story via Twitter than the trusty ol’ souls at the Beeb, it seems like a strange exercise in self-limitation…

• Disclaimer: I am a Gooner (aka: Arsenal fan).

Many a guitar gently wept today as BBC Director General Mark Thompson confirmed that the axe was to fall on 6 Music. Rumours have been circulating for the last couple of weeks about the station’s potential closure, but I have to confess, I didn’t believe they would be mad enough to actually do it.
 
How could they?
 
6 Music is a veritable beacon and bastion of music in its own right. It is a guiding light for all levels of music lover throughout the UK, and beyond. 6 Music’s team of passionate, intelligent and genuinely funny presenters have certainly brightened up my days for the last couple of years – as well as introducing me to some incredible new music.
 
I believe that it is 6 Music’s focus on finding and breaking exciting new artists that will be mourned the most. Chart-based pop-mulch, eighties floor-fillers and smooth classics all have their place, but they don’t exactly move things forward, or in any direction really. In my humble opinion.
 
David Bowie, just one of the thousands of highly vocal protestors that have flocked to the station’s defence, said: “6 Music keeps the spirit of broadcasters such as John Peel alive and for new artists to lose this station would be a great shame.”
 
Well said sir.
 
Shambolic decisions like these need to be fought against, lest we all gradually melt into the mainstream river of X-Factor ooze, as Simon Cowell laughs from his heavily fortified tower.  
 
If you love music, or care about fresh and original broadcasting, join the Save BBC 6 Music Facebook group.

(L-R), Kath, Jonathan Austin, Imer, Rowan and Rachel

The nature of the media means that bad news generally gets greater exposure than good news.  That was certainly my experience of being a news journo; it was evident in all the media outlets I worked with (despite my best efforts to create a balanced, good news/bad news paper and website)   Good news, though, is always harder to share without sounding self-congratulatory and, well, a bit smug.   

But we do have some good news to share and rather than write a post that carefully treads the balance between being happy, showing off and just being self gratifying, I thought the best way to share this was simply to show an email I received this morning from Kath Pooley our European MD at Bite.  

From:Kath Pooley
Sent: 02 March 2010 08:35
To:Allofbite
Subject: Best Company? You bet…

Hello ‘all-of-Bite’,

Greetings from sunny(ish) London. I trust all is well around the world.   We have got some fabulously good news to share which I believe is a great sign of things to come and a reflection of efforts around the world to consistently evolve and improve our culture and approach.

Yesterday, it was announced that Bite is the 7^thbest small company to work for in the UK. Helloooooo….

Just as background, this is an award in conjunction with The Sunday Times, so pretty damn prestigious thank you very much! Obviously not EVERY company enters, but this year 1,086 companies applied for ‘star status’ and to be in the top 100 league table. Only 50 organisations, including us, received the full three stars. Lexis, our sister agency, came 10^th and Text 100 was also in the top 60, so good news for Next Fifteen all round.

The article, which appeared in Sunday’s paper, highlights our training, focus on digital and the opportunities presented by our meritocratic approach. Every member of the Bite team submitted a confidential survey and I promise we didn’t pay any of them a penny…

I actually think this is a reflection of both the direction we’re headed as a company as well as the progress we’ve made. We’ve consciously tried to get everyone involved in shaping the culture, the benefits and our overall approach to client relationships of late. There’s also been a lot of investment across the board – time and money – at every level. There’s lots still to do, I’m sure everyone here would agree, but I’ve always said we have an absolutely brilliant team and we are in a great place to drive the agency forward onto bigger and better things.

There are two people who we need to thank for this award in particular – Imer and Rowan – our marvellous HR team. Often the unsung heroes, they are constantly looking for ways to improve our benefits and HR process, absolutely have the backs of our team, and went through the most gruelling interview process ever to ensure the CEO of Best Companies believed everything we’d said!They are led by our global head of HR, Rachel Gilley, who drives initiatives like this like you’ve never seen before! Well done to them – a great achievement and this will significantly ease the recruitment process – we’ve already seen a three-fold increase in the number of in-bound CVs.

That’s enough about us now. Watch this space – I believe we’re doing some really exciting things, not just in London, but in Europe as a whole. Do ask if you have any questions – or want to chat about what on earth we do and what our plans are in EMEA!

Over and out.

Kath

Those of you who follow Bite’s progress will know that we recently added five offices in Asia Pacific through the acquisition of Upstream Asia. This has greatly increased our ability to service clients on a local, regional and international level. We’re thrilled that the strength of Bite’s global network has quickly been proven with the expansion of our HP relationship.

Bite North America was awarded HP’s corporate reputation business in September 2009. At that time we beat out the incumbent, Hill and Knowlton, and one other top 10 PR agency. We were awarded the business based on our reputation as a creative and proactive consultancy with a proven track record of driving integrated traditional and digital corporate communications programs. The brief is to expand HP’s reputation as an innovative and environmentally conscious organization. At the time, HP’s decision to award this business to a more creative agency like Bite was testimony to its desire to set itself apart and create a unique and compelling corporate reputation.

Now, four months into the relationship, Bite has been given the ultimate vote of confidence with the expansion of its relationship to EMEA and APJ. Bite will be supporting recently promoted Christina Schneider – who has moved to London to run HP’s International External Communications efforts – to deliver regional coordination and communications in major global media markets. By expanding with Bite in all three of its primary regional markets HP gets the control and consistency to drive a single global message around its innovation and sustainability initiatives.

The opportunity to represent the world’s largest technology company on a global basis is a tremendous endorsement of the great work that our team has been doing and sets the tone for Bite’s global strategy.

While the prospect of Bryan Ferry reviving 80’s band Roxy Music has us all excited, we have a consumer campaign to

Do you have the choons in your bones? Does vinyl give you vivacity? If so get your mix upload now and be the Next Girl DJ

announce from the UK team that is even more thrilling.

Today our UK client JBL along with partner ROXY, the women’s surf wear brand, launched a new pan-European competition ‘Next Girl DJ’ that aims to discover the best new female DJ and propel her into dance music stardom.

 JBL is well known for providing the sound in public places, such as cinemas and pubs, and the company even supplied the sound system for President Obama’s inauguration. Having recently partnered with ROXY to create over-ear headphones for girls  JBL decided to take the partnership further and launch a female-only competition that will culminate in a series of four live ‘mix-off’ events in the top music capital cities of Europe – London, Berlin, Brussells and Paris in May.

 So much cooler than X-factor and American Idol, the Next Girl DJ contest will provide one girl with a life-changing opportunity and launch their mixing career.

 DJ’ing is still a hugely male-dominated environment; in DJ Magazine’s recent Top 100, only one female DJ (Lisa Lashes) was represented.  So JBL and ROXY have ‘clubbed’ together (excuse the pun) to change all that and  provide a platform for girls to showcase their mixing skills.

 So if you know anyone who is queen of the decks – passionate, ambitious and knows how to throw down some tunes, then encourage them to upload their mix to www.nextgirldj.com.

 Here is how it works:

 1) Each mix should be uploaded to www.nextgirldj.com.  All entries will be voted on by a community of dance music lovers. The contest will run online for two months and the closing date for voting is 16^th April.

2) Entries are accepted from across Europe and when submitted each potential Next Girl DJ will be asked to choose a location (London, Paris, Brussels or Berlin) that they would be willing to travel to should they qualify.

3) Twenty girls will go through to the semi finals, with five girls going head to head in each location. 

4) The grand final will see the four local country winners go back online to upload a beach-themed mix at www.nextgirldj.com.

5) One winning girl will be announced from public and expert panel voting  as the Next Girl DJ and will go on to play their mix at the Roxy Jam in Biarritz in July, win a year’s contract with Roxy to produce music, and a whole host of other prizes.  They will also appear on critically acclaimed German DJ Anja Schneider’s radio show in Berlin.

 Check out our twitter and facebook pages for the latest updates!