Rule 5 at MIPTV in Cannes

Rule 5 Managing Partner, Rob Brown, is at MIPTV in Cannes this week for the Marché international des programmes de télévision, to give it its full French title. MIPTV is an international trade market for audiovisual content, or what used to be called television. The market takes place annually in April at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes. Over 11,000 participants from over 100 countries attend with TV formats and finished programmes being traded. Increasingly there is a focus on digital platforms and content. Rule 5 attends the market to support existing clients and to gain insight from the event’s conference programme. There is also a substantial networking opportunity, often in the evening over canapes and rose in one of the beach front restaurants or grand hotels on the Croisette. “We met the team from Raw Cut for the first time in Cannes two years ago and we have several new business meetings this year,” said Rob. “Whilst people are here primarily to buy and sell TV content they are happy to talk to providers that can support that process.”

Instagram keeps it simple with Layout

We’re no strangers to Instagram in the office. It’s probably one of the “cooler” user-friendly photo and video-sharing apps on the market. Simply take a snap, add a little oomph with your favourite #filter – ours is Mayfair if you’re asking – type a witty caption, then share it with your followers. Don’t forget to post it on your Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr accounts too…extra likes never hurt anyone.

So when a quick #layout search brought up over 230,000 posts (selfies and food pictures galore) within days of Instagram rolling out the app to iPhone users this week, we had to take another look.

According to Instagram’s latest blog post, Layout is fun, simple and gives you a new way to flex your creativity.

Users are shown previews of custom layouts – now we understand the name – as you choose from photos from your camera roll. Drag, drop, pinch, zoom, flip and rotate. Complete artistic control is at your fingertips.

There’s also a Photo Booth button that sets off a countdown for people to take multiple photos simultaneously. Faces, Mirroring and Previews complete Layout’s main features.

Currently a standalone app, an added perk is that you don’t need to have an Instagram or Facebook account to use it. Once you’ve saved a collage, it can be emailed, sent by text or shared to apps including WhatsApp and Dropbox.

A curious drawback is Layout’s cumbersome mismatch with Twitter. Sharing images directly to Facebook or Instagram is simple, but Twitter users have to save collages to their camera roll before posting. This is a continuation of Instagram’s decision in 2012 to stop images shared from its main app showing within tweets.

We must admit our initial thoughts were that Layout was aimed at the selfie obsessed. Nine pictures to a collage must be their dream come true. That was until we saw a collage of American First Lady Michelle Obama on her official visit to Japan and Cambodia.

Dignitaries aside, it seems Layout has been quickly embraced by well-known brands & marketers too with Victoria Secret and Sephora amongst the early adopters.

On the sporting front we’re looking forward to testing Photo Booth’s time-lapse feature, which provides the opportunity to capture movement in a short space of time. The forthcoming 2015 BMX Supercross World Cup in Manchester will present just the right opportunity.

Our verdict? If it’s good enough for the First Lady of the United States and 300 million active users, it just might be good for enough for us.

Biz Stone Awarded CIPR President’s Medal

The agency’s Managing Partner and CIPR President 2016, Rob Brown, was delighted to present entrepreneur, Biz Stone, with the CIPR President’s Medal at the SXSW Music, Film, and Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, this week.

The presentation was made on behalf of Stephen Waddington CIPR President 2014, who awarded the founder and CEO of Super.Me, co-founder of Twitter and contributor to Jelly, Medium, The Obvious Corporation, and Odeo the coveted title.

Biz received the CIPR’s most prestigious accolade for his leadership as an entrepreneur at the forefront of developing new forms of media, networks and applications, modernising the business of public relations by enabling genuine two-way engagement between organisations and their publics.

Commenting on receiving the award, Biz Stone said: “We built Twitter to be readable and writable on every mobile phone on the planet because SMS is ubiquitous. Our goal was to provide the infrastructure to support the creativity and engagement that emerged. That ambition has meant that it has become a platform for public engagement and is part of the changing nature of communication between individuals and organizations.”

Speaking at the festival, Rob said: “Biz Stone is a true innovator who has played a fundamental role in how communications has changed, something that in turn has altered the way we practise PR, he’s also a very down to earth guy.”

Rule 5 Wins PRMoment’s Best Use of Video

The agency won Best Use of Video for its work on the UCI Track Cycling World Cup at the PRmoment Awards at the Hilton in Manchester last night (11th March 2015). The awards recognise outstanding campaigns and exceptional talent and this year attracted over 650 entries.

The agency working with British Cycling delivered an astonishing 137 million impacts on Twitter for the UCI Track Cycling World Cup London at the Lee Valley VeloPark in the velodrome that was used at the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The social media campaign incorporated video content, edited and shared in near real-time ahead of TV highlights. The campaign also used interviews with fashion guru and cycling fan Sir Paul Smith and fellow knight and six times Olympic track cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy.

“We were working hand in hand with British Cycling’s team to ensure that if you were following the event on your phone, laptop, tablet or PC you got a real sense of the excitement” said Rule 5’s Rob Brown.

The awards picture above is courtesy of the government’s Executive Director of Communications Alex Aiken who was at the event in Manchester and tweeted:

Great to see @robbrown & @5Rule5 winning at #prmomentawards for best use of video pic.twitter.com/yhitCg7AMj— Alex Stuart Aiken (@AlexanderAiken) March 11, 2015

PR Tech Guide #3 – Dropbox Pro

What is Dropbox Pro?

Dropbox Pro is a cloud based file sharing and storage system and it’s fair to say that it transformed our business when we signed up at the start of 2014. You can sync files and folders across all of your devices. The starter level for storage is 5TB so easily enough for most small ro medium-sized businesses. All your data is transferred securely using SSL and stored using 256-bit encryption.

What we use it for

We use it as our agency file server and store all of our files and data on it. We have a legacy file server in the office but it just contains files and data from pre-2014.

5 great things about…Dropbox.

1. Access and collaboration – When we opened an office in London we needed to be able to access our server from both locations. The firewall in our office meant that we could allow remote access to the office based server. Dropbox feels exactly like a local based server when we use it via the Windows File Explorer, Office or any other programmes.

2. Access from home and on the move – The point about Dropbox Pro is that once you have set up a PC, laptop or phone with you secure account it’s just like being in the office wherever you are.

3. Security – One of the concerns about the cloud is that it isn’t secure. The opposite is true. Our old server has a back up disk but when one disk fails you have a real risk whilst you replace it. You then need to wipe the old disk. Neither is necessary with cloud based storage.

4. Best bit – There isn’t just one. There’s a nice feature where you get a pop up every time someone saves a file so you can see what colleagues have saved but in reality it’s probably the seamless way it integrates across platforms and locations.

5. Recommendation? It’s not the cheapest of applications in our PR stack but we would recommend it without hesitation.

RULE 5