The current famine in the Horn of Africa is threatening to claim millions of lives. In Somalia alone nearly 4 million people are at risk, half of them children.

Although famine has been formally declared by the UN, appeals by charities providing aid in the area struggle to gain media cut-through, and in the UK, UNICEF executive director David Bull has spoken about the “children’s famine” being overshadowed by the phone hacking saga.

After hearing him interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme Porter Novelli’s UK MD Sally Ward contacted UNICEF in London to see how we could help – and as a result we’ve provided a week of pro bono support to help the charity get its urgent fundraising message out to the wider world.

Over the last few days 10 PNers have worked in the charity’s office in Farringdon alongside its press and digital teams to reach out to influential bloggers from the parenting, social media and lifestyle sectors asking them to donate a tweet or a blog post to this worthwhile cause. We’re also developing longer term campaign platforms to keep the story in the spotlight, and lifesaving funds coming in.

If you’d like to do your part to help there are two easy ways to contribute: simply donate £10 by texting FAMINE to 70007, or contribute online at www.unicef.org.uk/pn

And to stay in touch with the latest news on the relief effort, follow @unicef_uk on Twitter.

The Interwebz, and more specifically the world wide web, have both been around for quite some time now. Blogging has entered the difficult tweenager stage and even Twitter is getting past the terrible two’s tantrum throwing stage. There’s also now officially a ratio of one-to-one for every social media guru/maven/expert/sith lord to every non-social meda n00b. Pretty much all we seem to do is talk about blogging/micro-blogging/citizen journalist, how to do it well, it’s importance and impact. The horror stories of what happens when you cock up can circulate for years (seriously if I attend one more social media seminar that references either Dell Hell or the Kryptonite, I may well go postal), so it’s stunning that some companies don’t seem to realise that people use the web to talk about them and that anything they may do in a slight untoward manner may well get picked up on. It’s also surprising that marketeers still don’t seem to understand human nature and that it’s not just bloggers who don’t check their facts.

A colleague flagged an interesting tale of woe from the Inquirer about a blog competition ran by Asus that had attracted complaints due to a late in the day change to how the winner would be picked, the intro calmly stated that:

IRATE BLOGGERS are up in arms at Asus after a blogging competition at electricpig.com turned sour.

Which seemed like an excellent opportunity for me to wax lyrical about how companies need to be wary of trying to play things their own way and shouldn’t expect to get away without at least a minor blogstorm. Indeed, the whole point of the post was initially intended to be something along the lines of ‘For god’s sake people, when will you realise that the web is nothing that a huge rumour mill and stop adding grist by underestimating this. This now forms lesson one for this post, because as I researched into the story it became apparent that Asus had little option but to change the selection process.

From what I can gather, as I can’t find the original competition post, readers of Electricpig were invited to pitch to become an Asus reviewer for a month, they could pick which product they wanted and had to produce three articles per week for the duration of the competition. Six bloggers would be chosen and the winner would be decided on by a reader vote for the best one, they would then be able to keep the product they reviewed. One lucky commentator would also be given an Eee PC, so far so funky. Posts were written, the competition closed and the votes piled in, and the winner by a fair stretch was Gavyn Britton, except there was then some discussion as to whether he had gamed the system by asking for votes on other forums. Second lesson, people will always try to game the system and sometimes being overly-cynical is actually a good thing.

It was decided to then ask the six bloggers involved to vote for their favourite reviewer, which meant Emma Hill, who’d only gained 1% of the popular vote, won. Unfortunately, the post about her winning rather glossed over the reason why the selection process had changed:

The final twist to the campaign came when we asked the six bloggers to turn on each other who they felt gave the best blogging experience. We’re happy to announce that Emma Hill, who affectionately called the ASUS Eee Top 1602 ‘ET’ and even took some cracking photos of ET in action to prove the point!

Which then meant that the Electricpig readers felt cheated and disenfranchised, leading them to complain to The Inquirer, herein lies the third lesson. The web is about transparency, it’s difficult for people to create conspiracy theories if there is nothing left for them to doubt and question, so if you are doing stuff online as a brand be open about, explain why things are the way they are and be open to discussion as to your reasons. In this case, if the final post announcing the winner had been clearer about why the selection process had changed. Another possibility would have been to ask the readers themselves how they felt the situation should be resolved. Perhaps then people wouldn’t have complained to the Inq, which in turn would not have written a misleading article blaming Asus for arbitrarily changing the rules, which in turn leads to the forth and final lesson for this post, don’t take anything you read at face value.

The Guardian Ethical Blog started running a new series in March, called “You ask, they answer”. The idea is that they will highlight a big company in a post, readers then leave their questions in the comments and they’ll be answered over the following week by the company. It’s a nice idea, having a regular feature helps keep the blog ticking along and it also actively encourages reader participation. It’s also very handy way of the companies in question to dip their toe in the blogosphere without too much effort.

The series started well with green cleaning product company Ecover, comments started at about 10am and a representative from the company spent two hours later that day answering the various points with lengthy replies. This continued for the next four days. Howies, the organic clothing company was next up and again did a reasonable job. A few more followed in the same vein including Abel and Cole and Divine Chocolate, mainly receiving a good number of questions and responding well.

Yesterday, it was the turn of Neal’s Yard Remedies who received a record number of comments, well over 200 compared to 84 on the Howies post, but unfortunately it didn’t respond to a single one. Not a peep, squeek or yogic chant was to be heard. I should mention at this point that all the other companies involved so far had received rather tough questions. Able and Cole was quizzed on its new delivery charge, Divine Chocolate on why it’s not organic and Howies got grilled on pricing. Admittedly the questions for Neal’s Yard were slightly more pointed from the start and tended to concentrate on the wider claims of the homeopathy industry.

This example was the very first comment.

This is your chance to grill them: from the controversy surrounding the chain’s removal of a homeopathic malaria remedy to the benefits and reasons to switch to organic beauty products.

How do you validate the medical efficacy of your ‘remedies’?

Benulek

26 May 09, 1:06pm

And they only got more detailed.

Your website states:

The correct homoeopathic remedy will stimulate a sick person’s vitality to send healing energy where it is needed, thus rectifying mental, emotional and physical imbalances.

Could you please explain how the ‘correct homoeopathic remedy’ is decided on and describe the qualifications of the people who make these decisions?

I’d also be grateful for a biological definition of ‘healing energy’ and an indication of where I can find the scientific evidence for its existence.

takearisk

26 May 09, 6:33pm

Readers then started getting annoyed that they weren’t being answered, leading to one to ponder:

Are they not answering because (a) they were expecting questions about skincare products and have gone in the huff or (b) someone’s just told them about the Enlightenment and they’re having personal crises all over the shop?

I was picturing two grumpy hippies pacing around Covent Garden, one saying to the other, ‘what the f*** did you agree to this for?’

Benulek

26 May 09, 7:34pm

Comments were left over a 26 hour period, with nary a reply from Neal’s Yard. The Guardian moderator did a couple of updates promising that Neal’s Yard was working on replies during the first day, but then had to reveal that the company ‘will not be taking part in the debate’. The thread comment was closed, though not before some mentioned that they had updated the Neal’s Yard Remedies wikipedia article and someone else mentioned that negative posts were being deleted from the company’s Facebook page.

For the Guardian, this is not necessarily a bad thing, they produced a follow up post, follow up post on the PR u-turn, and the blogosphere has predictably lapped it up (see this post here for clear example). For Neal’s Yard it is a pretty bad thing and something that could easily have been avoided. As mentioned above, none of the companies taking part were given particularly easy rides yet I’d wager that every topic brought up was one that they were already aware of as a potential weakness and so they should have already been well prepared to respond. After being investigated by the BBC News for claims about its anti-malarial remedy and the stance taken by the Guardian’s own Ben Goldacre who has written several articles on homeopathy.

Basically they should have known in advance that not only were they not playing to the choir, but that their audience was educated, skeptical and web savvy. They should also have already been very much aware of and prepared for every possible critique of their area of expertise and it’s a shame they didn’t as it can be so easily done. As we keep banging on about her at PN Towers, the best bit about the explosion of conversation online is that you can listen and hear the good and the bad and respond accordingly. Not responding is no longer an option.