Having worked in several different sectors of PR I think I'm justified in saying I've paid my dues. From dancing with a rapping cow all day in a field, to nights in the office late enough to justify ordering breakfast… I've been there; written the pitch. But working on more taxing campaigns just makes it all the sweeter when such great projects comes along. Cue Cisco's BIG Awards.

When we began work on the British Innovation Gateway (BIG) campaign - Cisco's legacy piece as the Official Network Infrastructure Supporter of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games - we were clear on one point: we wanted to use Cisco's position as an industry leader to inspire, discover and nurture tech talent in the UK.

We live in a time of extraordinary technological advancement and outstanding innovation. But there have been grumbles about how few of the big ticket ideas come from the UK compared to our American pals across the pond. We're a clever bunch, and Britain's technology legacy is rich - the phone, the television, the WORLD WIDE WEB - but there seems to be a limit sometimes to the level we push ourselves to achieve. Tweetdeck, yes; Twitter, no. So what do we do to bridge this gap?

We set out to find the unsung heroes of the UK tech scene by launching a five year awards programme which tied into the wider BIG campaign. The Cisco team was clear on one point when we began planning the Cisco BIG Awards: a cash prize alone was not enough. Feedback from SMEs over the years indicated that money is all well and good, but without expert advice, mentoring and resources it will only carry you so far. So Cisco lined up some tremendous partners to help make the Cisco BIG Awards as beneficial to the winner as possible - Bird & Bird, DNX and even us here at Octopus will join Cisco to deliver legal, PR, digital and industry mentoring, in addition to the cash prize.

The level of entry - as clichéd as it may sound - was exceptional. This was compounded by Dragons' Den style presentations by the six finalists last night at Cisco House. There were some real 'oh I wish I'd thought of that' moments and the judging panel - which included our very own Octopus MD, Jon Lonsdale - had a hard task it must be said, but in the end three really stood out.

The winner in particular is AMAZING. Snap Fashion allows users to search for clothing items via a visual search engine - simply take a photograph of something you've seen or an item you own and the app will scan more than 110 UK fashion retailers to find a match. Impressive stuff.  Runners up included Digital Shadows, a clever cyber protection tool, and Six3, a very slick video messaging service.

It's been a pleasure to work on this campaign and to meet all the entrants - and we're excited to start working with Snap Fashion very soon! With more projects like this, with more corporate buy in and support, I'm sure the UK will be back on top of the tech map in no time.

By @KeBeveridge

Here at Octopus we always encourage people to make sure they have a healthy life / work balance and get to embrace their hobbies and passions outside of the office.

Chris Owen, a Senior Account Director at Octopus, has worked with Bletchley Park, the home of the codebreakers in the Second World War, for a few years now and has won industry awards for his work with them. He is also a keen writer and was commissioned by Wired to write a feature as part of the magazine's focus on Alan Turing around the legendary mathematician's 100^th birthday this week (Turing played an integral role in the codebreaking at Bletchley Park).

Chris's piece is below - and there's another to follow later this week…..

Bletchley Park, codebreaking and the lost art of secrecy

Social networks, 24-hour news, consumer journalism and the ability to share everything with everyone (and anything with anyone), has created an insatiable desire for gossip and scandal. Throughout the Leveson enquiry we've witnessed countless hidden secrets unearthed and pored over by lawyers, media and the public. In short, nothing is really secret any more. Alas, it wasn't always thus.

During the Second World War, the manor at Bletchley Park -- once a paragon of British architectural eccentricity (to put it kindly) -- was home to not only the greatest collective secret in the history of warfare, but the greatest example of secrecy being used as an undefeatable weapon.

Bletchley Park was home to the code breakers, although "home" belies the fact that throughout the war only one person remained a permanent tenant. The thousands (at its peak it is estimated that over 10,000 people worked at the Park) who travelled in and out each day stayed nearby at billets in the various towns and villages, or commuted in from the Oxbridge university towns which provided many of the great minds which underpinned the code-breaking operations.

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The CBS Interactive team swung by Octopus comms HQ yesterday afternoon for a Q&A session about how top tech PR agencies can work better with their publications. The CBS Interactive roster includes the likes of Silicon.com, ZDnet.co.uk and CNET.co.uk, so with all these publications being relevant to a host of Octopus clients, there was plenty to discuss…

This provided a great opportunity to learn first-hand what makes these publications tick and Tony Hallett, the group publisher, gave his top three tips for PRs looking to pitch to CBS Interactive publications:

1.       Pitching on a Friday afternoon is ok!

Tony explained how readers still consume content on weekends! There seems to be an urban myth in place at some PR agencies that you should avoid pitching on Friday afternoons but there is a growing trend amongst online publications to push out news beyond the traditional Monday-Friday, 9-5 timescale. PRs shouldn't be afraid to pick up the phone at 4pm on Friday afternoon as this is the time journalists will be looking for weekend story leads and comment.

2.       Get to know their beats:

Every PR has been there before - you spend five minutes pitching a story to the journalist, only for them to say "I'll pass it onto my colleague who covers that area." Save yourself the time (and embarrassment) by spending a few minutes checking up on the kind of areas they are writing about. It will get the pitch off to a good start if you are talking to the correct journalist!

3.       Show passion for the clients you are representing:

Your enthusiasm will really come across when speaking to the journalist on the phone. Journalists receive lots of calls/emails each day from PRs so invest a little bit of time in your pitch and think about why it is relevant to the journalist and why the story will resonate with their audience. It will help your pitch stand out from the crowd and the journalist will appreciate that you've put some intelligence behind it instead of taking the easy option and selling-in a generic press release.

JP

When I finished my PR degree five years ago and stumbled dazed and confused into my first agency role, I found AVE (Advertising Value Equivalent) an odd concept.

After three years spent studying the theoretical side of PR and debating its value as a management tool, I was surprised to find that measurement was the responsibility of an account assistant (me) with a ruler and some highlighter pens. It seemed too easy and too amateurish to form the basis of reporting on the success of such professional and complex campaigns - and it seems I'm not the only one who thought so.

Last week, PR Week announced that its industry awards will no longer accept AVEs as a method of measurement. The trade magazine explains that this move "reflects the growing industry consensus that AVEs are outdated and insufficient".  Last year, the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) conducted a five-month review of AVEs with the intention of finding a replacement measurement tool. Prior to this, in July 2009 the Central Office of Information (soon to become the Government Communication Centre) undertook a project to create a set of mandatory core standards for PR evaluation, signalling a move away from using AVE in the public sector.

AVE measures the value of coverage generated by a PR campaign simply by calculating the value of the column inches it achieves. Some agencies then multiply that by three, an "accepted industry standard" representing the increased integrity of editorial coverage versus advertising. It's popular because it's straightforward to work out and explain, and also because it looks good! However, much of the controversy around the method stems from one fatal flaw - PR is not advertising, so how can it be measured in the same way? On top of this, it places no value on tone or relevance, and is increasingly extraneous now that such a large proportion of PR coverage appears online.

The problem of course is that to do away with AVE, we need to be able to replace it. Entrants to the PR Week awards will almost certainly look to measurements like reach, opportunities to see (OTS) and frequency to demonstrate the success of their campaigns, alongside qualitative measures such as favourability. Indeed these are the tools recommended by the COI's Standardisation of PR Evaluation Metric report.

However, the bottom line is that none of these measurement tools do quite the same job as AVE - namely, providing a monetary value which can be used to demonstrate return on investment. For many clients, this is the measurement that matters, particularly if their own management have only a top-line understanding of PR. Until an equally simplistic measurement tool is developed, PRs have little choice but to soldier on with AVE regardless of its many faults.

How do you think PR value should be measured? Have you found a suitable alternative to AVE yet?

Rebecca

Image courtesy of Matsuyuki's photostream on Flickr