that canadian girl

Recently, there has been a rise in the number of press releases I’ve received, an observation many bloggers around me have confirmed. But these PR emails are accompanied by intros as uncomfortable as the teenage “Will you go on a date with me? Yes/No” scribbled by the nerdy girl who sat next to you in geography class.

Ranging from impersonal emails to borderline harassment calls and Facebook messages, there just seems to be a plague of poorly thought-out attempts at exploiting the circles of bloggers who are gaining influence in the media by the day.

According to Forrester Research, the general public doesn’t seem to trust us bloggers just yet, and might think we’re still total nerds, but it doesn’t matter, PR agencies have got a total crush on us.

So this is my open letter to all PR agencies we have had the (dis)pleasure of dealing with recently.

“Dear PR agency guys & gals,

We’re all very flattered that you fancy us now that we’ve gone from being viewed as the losers who spend too much time on their computers to being the cool kids with influence. We appreciate it’s difficult to accept that bloggers were never in the curriculum in your marketing theory classes, and that you feel the need to poke us with a stick while observing us from a distance, like you’re the Steve Irwin of public relations and we’re a wounded python. But I’ll let you in on a secret: We’re actually really quite normal. And we don’t even mind being treated that way.

I won’t be pointing fingers and naming names today, but I’ll use a few examples to illustrate where you unnecessarily complicated your own lives recently. If you recognise yourself, feel free to either take it as a call to action to review the way things are done, or roll your eyes and mutter that I’m an idiot. Don’t worry, I’ve got thick skin. But if you choose to do the latter, I may just name and shame you next time you stick your foot in stinky cow dung.

Exhibit A: The Lazy Approach

Now, not only did I not give permission to R’s agency to email me, but R here failed to call me by my name (it’s in my email address, can’t miss it), use my blog’s name (also in my email address) and didn’t notice that I’d already reviewed the viral campaign for the product they’re pawning. Already, 3 strikes, you should be out.

Below that dull message is an equally dull press release, using 3 different fonts and sizes, a LOT of ® characters, no real call to action, no freebies/samples offered and a link to an entirely Flash-based website with no HTML alternative. What the hell good is all that tripe when I’m on my iPhone?

Honestly how this PR agency received two PR Consultancy/Agency of the year is beyond me.

Exhibit B: The psychopath

Blogger pal receives mail from PR agency who wants them to show up at a product launch in exchange for a measly fee and liveblog the event like it’s the Spice Girls’ reunion tour. Blogger takes offense (rightly so) at the suggestion that his readership can be bought for the price of a cheap pair of shoes and chooses to ignore PR agency.

PR agency follows up deluge of pushy emails with “Email broken - Msg me your phone #. Love facebook!” via social networks. Next thing you know, they’ll be outside knocking at the window as he gets out the shower.

Creepy. Not good. Sometimes, the non-verbal signal should be enough to tell you to back off.

Exhibit C: The foreign agency

“Hi,

Hope you would forgive the intrusion.

We have been working on this for a couple of months now and are NOW live. Allow me to present Plooshh [name changed for anonymity] - why the extra ‘h’? We think it’s sexy! We think it gives you an extra H - oops, ‘extra EDGE’ we mean. :)”

And it continues on for two full screens worth of awkwardly friendly banter, filled with bright coloured large fonts, caps-lock sentences and extraneous exclamation marks. The English flip-flops between too formal and chat-speak, a bit rough ’round the edges yet endearing.

Exhibit C is the product of an Indian agency jumping head-first into Web 2.0. Nothing wrong with their pitch, everything strikes me as being done textbook-style, ticking every box. But it’s soulless. Again, there’s no attempt to get to know the bloggers they approach, opting for a scattergun mail-out. Throw enough stuff at the wall, something’s bound to stick.

While this wasn’t a particularly thrilling email, I suspect that once these guys catch on to the nuances of public relations in the new media age, their willingness and motivation might allow them to overtake many Western agencies who otherwise had a headstart in the game.

Jury’s Verdict:

While a few PR agencies have embraced social media and are actively engaging with the communities their clients have an interest in, most have totally blown it so far. They’re as guilty of carelessness as this cat is of drinking out of the toilet bowl.

But hope is not lost. Assuming said agency is willing to put some elbow grease into their day’s work, I dare say there is a huge amount of potential for a beautiful relationship to blossom between PR people and bloggers.

So dear PR guys and gals, behave in a natural and human way; you’ll resonate emotionally with us. Emotional resonance is invaluable; we feel that we can become friends and are far more willing to listen to you, even when the product you’re pitching isn’t 100% on target.

I appreciate that we are the means to an end, helping you reach the (sometimes unrealistic) targets set by your client, but remember that we’re all human - yes, even us weirdo bloggers - so treat others as you would like to be treated and we’ll be more than happy to give you a hand.

In Summary

Your future cheat-sheet.

Do…

Don’t…

I’d love to hear what PR agencies or other bloggers would like to add to this. How’s your PR-to-blogger relationship going?

With much love & geekery,
Vero”

I’m always harping on about the importance of having a tight grip on stats to know what’s happening on your blog but… I have a secret: I’ve never tracked my own RSS feed stats.

I launched That Canadian Girl back when RSS wasn’t very popular and, while WordPress automatically produced a feed, I never bothered tracking stats around it.

Now, many years later, I’ve decided to add Feedburner to it. If you’re already reading this via RSS, it should - in theory - be business as usual, but should you spot any funny business, please let me know via the comments.

New reader? Why not subscribe to the feed now?

However, since Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz said this, things have changed. Coffee comes pre-ground, “FlavorLock” packaged for a longer life and, in some regions, food is being cooked within the store. The smell of fresh coffee, which used to wrap itself around you, inviting you inside, isn’t as omnipresent as before. Where’s the aroma? Where’s the theatre of beans being ground daily in front of you?

There’s no use pretending, human beings are all but rational, and your products need to have a spark that makes us feel special - whether it’s the aroma wafting from your bakery or coffee shop, the handcrafted feel of your beauty products or the shine of your electronics.

What are the key emotional deciding factors for your product or service? Why did your customers cross your doorstep the first time?

No aroma, or no enticing factor, means that no new customers being led in, but it also means no emotional reminder for your previously loyal users. The business decisions you make shouldn’t steer you away from the source of that emotional tie. Your Aroma doesn’t have an ROI attached to it, but you need to take it in account when making decisions. Don’t compromise on it.

We love to believe in stories that match our worldview. We like to buy from our local cheese shop rather than buying it pre-packed from the supermarket, even if it involves going out of our way on the way home. It’s more “real” and we feel we’re helping local business. Sometimes, that worldview is a romanticised truth. We like to think of Starbucks as fair trade, even though most people order regular non fair trade coffee.

It makes us all fuzzy inside.

So how does your product make users feel fuzzy inside like the smell of fresh brewed coffee in the morning?

[Note: This post was salvaged from a project I started last year I never fully set live, so you may have spotted it before… Still as relevant as ever, though.]

Buying home appliances is hardly a rivetting experience, but a few companies are succeeding at making it friendlier, easier and… almost enjoyable!

Zanussi-Electrolux takes a relaxed and friendly tone in presenting the different customer-related options on their Customer Service page.

Zanussi also have a stellar approach to product search. Picking an appliance based on name is impossible - you mean, you don’t know your ZSF2440S from your ZWF1631W? - and the specs all look the same after a while.

Their product search allows you to choose how important certain factors are to you on a scale of 0 to 4, to help narrow down the search to the most useful items. For example, looking at washing machines, it’ll ask you to rate five criteria:

Each choice narrows the selection down by greying out the items that don’t meet the criteria you’ve marked as highly important, leaving you with a smaller selection.

Matt from 37signals writes on the positive impact of limiting the consumer’s choice, as opposed to leaving them with too wide a selection.

Washing machines, dishwashers and other home appliances are inevitably going to come in a wide range of shapes, sizes, features and colours, so Zanussi’s useful product search is probably as close as one can get to avoiding paralysis and chronic indecision.

How can you make decisions easier when it comes to your product? Less choice? Better support towards decision?

[Note: This blog post isn’t entirely new, and was written last year for another blog project I never formally launched. If you come across it elsewhere, it isn’t because I stole it from another author ]

Today, Biz Stone confirmed that Twitter has acquired Summize, which used to crawl online reviews and blog discussions to create summarized reviews of music, movies, books and more. Or so says CrunchBase.

To be perfectly honest, I’d never heard to Summize until Twitter kept crapping out, and Summize was the best option to find out @replies and snooping on what people are saying on any given topic. And now, it’s joined that big happy Twitter family - or at least, 5 out of 6 Summize staff have.

I’m wondering what purpose Summize will serve in the future, other than an improved search and replies tab. Imagine if PR companies turned their megaphone the other way, using Summize as a way to get genuine, candid feedback from the community? Odds are Twitter could find a way to monetise that while keeping the end-consumer service free and accessible.

The web is rife with shouty public relations, it’d be a refreshing change to see companies use honest, simple tools to communicate with their users.

User generated content is all the rage these days, and every company wants a piece of the action. Some companies understand this concept and act on it fabulously well, but others fail miserably at understanding the basic ethos of UGC.

A mutually beneficial UGC campaign will…

Put simply, it should be a win-win situation. But today, a friend of mine received a message via Flickr from the agency in charge of promoting BMW USA, praising one of the photos of his 3 Series.

So to reiterate:

Ahem, did I miss something here? It’s a pretty crap deal for the photographer who is, and has been, for years, a faithful BMW owner and promoter. Yet BMW doesn’t give him anything in return for his undying love. This company has pretty deep pockets and a huge following, so it’s bound to be able to offer something exciting in return, no? A backlink to the source doesn’t cost a penny.

I’m sure this agency means well and may get UGC one day but, at this point in time, I advised my friend against entering this one-way succubus relationship and let BMW know that he was keeping the rights to his pictures, thank you very much.

The past few weeks have been pretty hectic at Pepperrell Mansion, and I realise personal updates have been few and far between (as my mom regularly reminds me).

About three weeks ago, we had Tommy, Trisha and little nearly-3-year-old Emma over for a week from deepest darkest Scotland (not really, somewhere between Glasgow and Edinburgh. They even have electricity there.) We went to Colchester Zoo, Andrew’s parents’ house in Kent, and had numerous BBQs to take advantage of the good weather.

Somewhere during that week, I attended Fuel Conference, organised by the fab team at Carsonified where I met a whole new bunch of new people, saw some great friends and got many new ideas I need to start acting upon.

Then last weekend, we popped down to the inlaws’ house to see our adorable new niece Evie, who’s a few weeks old yet kicks like Beckham in his prime.

On Wednesday night, I hastily packed my suitcase for a whirlwind visit to Amsterdam on Thursday and Friday, attending the Mobile Social Networks & UGC Conference with a few work colleagues. And yes, we walked by the red light districts and saw “coffee shops”, and no, it’s not really much to see so don’t get over-excited.

On Friday night, I dropped my suitcase and swapped my stuff around to head off to London early on Saturday morning (by which point Andrew has started greeting me with “hi, do I know you?”) I attended MediaCamp London, an event organised by Chris Hambly at the SAE Institute.

If you’re wondering what happens at BarCamp-style unconferences, Nic Butler aka Loudmouthman (and yes, he lives up to his name) Qik’ed a few videos (including Steve Lamb’s presentation on social media in the entreprise) so have a look. Here are all the photos taken by Chris as well.

Met some great people there, Ben, Vicky, Jof, Judith, Melinda, Nic (and many more, I need to dig out the biz cards we swapped).

SpinVox sponsored the event, and made quite an impression, with many people asking existing users (such as myself) to show off the rather awesome service.

So today has been a braindead, chill out and tidy up spend time with Andrew day. A simple BBQ for dinner, and now, time to watch Juno on the Apple TV while sipping a mandarin and mango cocktail.

Ciao!

MediaCamp is an unconference for us social media geeks to network and meet like-minded people (and many with whom to disagree!) today in London.

Some of the presentations are being streamed here by Loudmouthman so have a look even if you couldn’t make it to London. More updates later!

It’s my duty as Canadian to post today and wish all fellow Canucks, in the homeland and abroad, a wonderful, sunny, lively Canada Day. I’ve been away from home for quite some time and won’t be doing much partying, but I may have to cook something involving maple syrup tonight.

Have a good one!

Credits: Image by Just-Us-3 on Flickr

The wonderful team at Wikio gave me a sneak preview at the July rankings for the UK Tech blogs. Amongst the ranks are some of the usual suspects and, just off-the-podium, yours truly coming in at #29 30 this month - up by a smashing 81 places from last month!

Fingers crossed you’ll see That Canadian Girl in the Top 20 next month.

Wikio Top 20 UK Tech Blogs

[Update: Wikio even gives That Canadian Girl a mention in the July top blogs review. What an honour, thank you Wikio!]

Natalie Dee draws really cute stuff.

I’m a bit torn.

Poke, a digital agency in London, created this funky campaign for Orange mobile’s Pay As You Go tariffs - you know, the raccoon, camel, canary and dolphin balloons? Yeah, well, if you see a camel called Vero fly by, don’t adjust your medication - it’s just me floating by.

The campaign involves floating from one website to the next, in a StumbleUpon random-new-site manner, using your air canister to boost yourself along. You pick up stars, more air canisters and rainbows along the way. All this nonsense for the sake of an Ibiza holiday for the winner.

It’s cute, it’s entertaining, but my one gripe is that the entire site was developed as a gigantor Flash animation. I’ve been known to whinge about Flash before, and I’m just not a fan of sites that have no deep-linking or easy ways to navigate. Plus, it makes my Mac whirr itself into a frenzy!

But I just can’t help it, I keep on travelling! So go on, Boost my Camel, baby!

Quick post to tell readers that things do happen up here in Cambridge, interesting things!

If you’re thinking of coming to Cambridge for this, get in touch and we’ll make an evening of it.

When designing a new site feature or planning a new campaign, I always create with a rule of thumb in mind: “Lower cognitive friction and make it as effortless as possible for the user to participate.” Less fields in the signup form, less clicks to a destination, a better FAQ page…

Then I heard Ted Hunt from Innocent Drinks, during Fuel Conference on Friday, who talked about the +400,000 hats that were knitted during The Big Knit campaign for the Age Concern charity.

Knitting. Four hundred thousand hats.

Nobody’s getting paid to do this, and some participants even learned to knit specifically for the occasion. That’s when it struck me; far more important than reducing friction to participation is engaging the community so that they’re willing to do something crazy - like knitting hats - to support your cause.

“Someone just knocked on the door to deliver a parcel, kids shouted “Dad can you sign, we haven’t got signatures yet..”..funny, v funny!”

- Kevin Dixie, on Twitter

Doing my usual news browsing while having a morning coffee and trying to wake up, I came across a video of Rory Cellan Jones making a clown of himself doing something I’d expect a 5 year old to do with ease. He was evaluating the benefits of the “new idea” that is the milk bag, as an alternative to glass bottles and plastic pints which are the norm in the UK.

First off, Rory, I’m not sure what kind of bizarre contraption you bought but if you’d bought a straightforward milk bag jug, like the one on your right here, you would have been done in about 3 seconds flat.

Step 1: Put milk bag (which in my lifetime, I’ve rarely seen leaking) into the jug.
Step 2: Snip the corner of the bag by holding the very corner and using scissors or these tiny fridge-magnet bag clippers.
Step 3: Pour the milk into the glass.
Step 4: Drink milk.

It’s far from new, it’s been the most common way to buy milk in Canada for my entire 26 years of life. The milk comes in a bag of 3x 1.3 liters transparent bags, and the best part is that these milk bags make the sturdiest lunch snack bags ever afterwards and create a hell of a lot less waste than bottles or plastic containers.

So it’s happened. Saint Jobs announced the Second Coming of his child, the Holy iPhone.

Like Ben, I sat in front of my MacBook watching MacRumors, TUAW and Cali Lewis liveblog and report on the Keynote. Unlike Brian, I wasn’t mad (or privileged) enough to attend the Keynote at the Moscone Center, in SF.

Keynotes are a bit like circus acts. The event is rehearsed to the second, we all watch and wait with bated breath for the grandiose final scene, wondering whether anyone’s going to fall flat on their face along the way. While the keynote was light on substance, the short of it is the new iPhone hardware includes 3G, GPS, and there are a number of software changes - MobileMe particularly appeals to me.

However, the biggest change isn’t in the physical device. It’s all in the perception. Last time around, Apple was looking for early adopters, geeks and IWOOTs* to test-run their product in a giant, live usability testing session. Now that they’ve been able to watch us use the device, it’s time to reach out to the normobs with lower upfront costs. While the tariffs are still in the upper end of the scale, unlimited data makes it completely worthwhile.

As an existing user, I’m grateful that under O2’s reign I’m not given the “brand new customers only” treatment. I can upgrade without getting stung for breaking my contract. All first generation owners shedding their skin in prep for the Second Coming means there’ll be a number of orphaned first-generation iPhones floating around. Mine, for example, will most likely find a new home with my father-in-law, Roy. I’m curious to see what the trickle-down impact of giving second hand iPhones to unlikely buyers like Roy will have on the profile of future buyers.

I think Apple will continue to own marginal marketshare, because the iPhone remains too expensive, too complex and too closed for most, but it’s about to take a significant leap ahead. Are you jumping with me? Or kicking back and shaking your head at the fangirl* that I am?

[* Def. IWOOT: “I want one of those”, otherwise known as saddos like me who can’t resist the latest gadget, even at exorbitant prices.]
[* A fangirl who began supporting Apple back in 1986 when it definitely wasn’t cool to own a Mac!]

[Cross-posted to the Taptu blog]

A few moments ago, I subscribed to the 4mations “Keep me updated” mailing list, out of curiosity of what it’ll turn out to be (how did I get there anyway?!)

I’ve got a past in email marketing so even though that subscribing should, in theory, be fine, I hesitated. I’m aware of how dodgy or how careless/naive some senders can be - recently, it took me a battle with an agency that shall remain nameless before they acknowledged that I’d requested repeatedly to be unsubscribed, so things like that peeve me off.

But I subscribed. And it was immediately followed by the familiar green tick mark from Campaign Monitor confirming I was subscribed.

And you know what? I definitely had a fuzzy feeling inside thinking “yup, I can trust this sender. Even if they write total rubbish, I’m confident I can unsubscribe, should there be a need.” I bet you I would’ve bypassed the hesitation had the subscribe field been accompanied by the Campaign Monitor tick. Think that could help increase subscriptions or give users confidence?

What brands do that for you? What logos give you the confidence to hand over money, personal details or your precious time?

It’s Sunday and I’ve got tons to do, but I couldn’t help taking a break to make some yummy homemade chicken nuggets. These were inspired by a Sainsbury’s recipe I found a few years ago when they started making these tiny meal ideas cards you can pick up on your way out. It’s evolved a bit since, getting tastier every single time we have them.

The chicken nuggets are as healthy as you want to make them, and leave plenty of room for creativity - and whatever you have in your cupboards.

Vero’s homemade chicken nuggets

Ingredients

Let’s get cookin’

Turn the oven on to 190 degrees celcius and find yourself a baking tray. Mix the yogurt, lime/lemon juice and mint/coriander and set aside in a bowl.

Put your stale bread, crisps, Parmesan cheese and spices into a food processor and whizz to turn into breadcrumbs.

Now, time to start the action chain. Take your pieces of chicken, dip them into the herbified yogurt, then into the breadcrumbs. Cover with breadcrumbs and press the mountain on top of the chicken to make sure it’s well covered. Put the piece down on the baking tray. Continue until you’ve done all the pieces.

Put in the oven and turn after about 10 minutes. Usually, I leave them in for about 15 minutes, but all depending on the size of the pieces and the mood your oven is in, you may need more or less. Just cut one piece in half when you suspect it might be ready, and for Dog’s sake, don’t leave them in til they go dry!

Enjoy with some Fiery Guava sauce or some fresh yogurt and mint sauce. (Just don’t reuse the one you used to cover the raw chicken in, that’s not good for you!)

What’s that I hear you say? Om nom nom nom! That’s right!

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for, originally uploaded by thatcanadiangirl.

Jack getting comfy in my towel on this lovely Sunday morning.