Karan Chadda

Global digital marketing and communications leader

Business

Commercial disclosure

The Guardian is asking a very important question (in social media terms, at least) today: Is it ethical to pay bloggers to tweet? Sunny Hundal and Helen Lewis have taken opposing positions (Hundal for, Lewis against). The Guardian’s question relates to Sky News’s payments to bloggers in exchange for said bloggers tweeting about its Murnaghan Sunday morning political discussion show.  Applied more broadly, the question is a good one. So, is it ethical to pay bloggers to tweet?

Fortunately, this question ties in nicely with a discussion we’ve been having on CommsTalk about the ASA’s recent rulings about Twitter promotions. The central point, whether it’s about promoting trainers, chocolate bars, hair cuts or TV shows, is that undisclosed commercial promotions can be at best misleading and, in some instances, damage trust. When they do damage trust, they do so not just in the celebrities and commentators, but also in Twitter itself.

One of the best things about Twitter is its authenticity. Tweets have a sense of direct communication. They connect us with others – friends, businesses, celebrities, causes, etc. – in a very direct way. The conversation is instant and there’s a sense that it’s open and honest. It would be a pity if distrust started to seep in, in the way it has with other media. All the UK’s national newspapers are seen to favour one agenda or another. The BBC, generally respected for its quality and its balance, is shot at from all sides of the political spectrum for supporting “the other side”.

Of course, Twitter doesn’t create the content of tweets, so it’s less likely to succumb to the charge of bias. However, if people begin to become wary of tweets, fearing some alternative agenda and speculating at the commercial motives behind the tweets, then Twitter will become a less nice and less trusting place. It would be a pity if that were to happen simply because of a lack of commercial disclosure.

This piece was originally posted here on CommsTalk.

The ASA is your sensible friend

Snickers beat the rap, Nike were busted but are appealing and then TOWIE star Gemma Collins got a ticking off for getting her hair done. All ran forms of advertising on Twitter and every time it happened there was a bit of a Twitter brouhaha and some ranting at the ASA (including some particularly lucid points from CommsTalk’s own @simonhill).

The thrust of most arguments is that there needs to be a “common sense approach” and, in the ASA’s defence, I’d say there is one: it needs to be abundantly clear that you’re being paid to promote a product.

Twitter now has 10 million users in the UK, that’s roughly one in six of the total population, so Twitter is no longer a little bubble full of media and tech types, all eagerly enforcing accepted norms, cynically flushing out ne’er-do-wells on the net to vent their opprobrium. As more and more of the population sign up, the less we can assume that everyone’s able to tell what’s a paid-for promotion and what’s not. Beyond the hardcore mega users who tweet compulsively, there are an increasing number who simply listen or who tweet in an ad hoc manner. Twitter is something they dip in and out of. These users may only pick up snapshots and not necessarily entire conversations. Do they need to be safeguarded? No. Is it reasonable to expect ads to explicitly flagged so there’s no confusion>? Emphatically, yes.

The other argument usually thrust forward focuses on consistency. Well, of course there’ll be some inconsistency. Social networks are new and constantly evolving. Marketers are constantly thinking of new ways to exploit them. It’s unreasonable to expect regulators to draw a clear line and stick to it when the playing field is shifting. Change throws up inconsistencies. The ASA should be applauded for attempting to grasp the issues and protect consumers.

This piece was originally posted here on CommsTalk.

Seeing through the transparency debate

Recently, following the example of Google, Twitter issued its first transparency report. This was move lauded by many and the report’s contents was heavily analysed to see which governments were making requests for details about Twitter’s users, how many they were making and how many were granted.

To properly understand this debate, however, it’s best to take a moment to really understand the two forces at its centre: transparency and privacy.

First, let’s look at transparency. In the context of this debate, transparency is usually shorthand for holding corporations and governments to account; making sure that they’re doing the right thing when holding or accessing data about us. Of course, corporations and governments need to access our data for various reasons, but we don’t want them to have too much of it. Essentially, it’s seen through the prism of personal freedom.

On the other side of this debate we have privacy. This is the domain of the individual. The debate naturally centres on people’s right to live their lives without being surveilled. There is also a distrust of the ability of companies to securely hold private data. The recent spate of data loss by companies, including big technology brands like Yahoo and LinkedIn, have served only to underline this distrust.
The dual forces of transparency and privacy have come to the fore in the internet age; simply, there is more information out there. Companies like Google have been indexing it to make it easy to find. Governments have come under pressure to make more information available. Things are harder to hide, for corporations, governments and individuals.

On social media, data is plentiful but much of it is also personal. Social media companies are constantly under pressure to ensure users are able to protect their privacy but also required by governments to prevent abuses occurring – either online or in the real world. This is when the idea of a transparency report becomes useful. It enables social media organisations to frame themselves as protectors of people’s personal information, while at the same time giving information, which they have a duty to provide, to governments and corporations. The brilliance of such reports is that they not only enable social media networks to honestly tell users about the information they disclose to others, but also allow them to show how many requests they decline. By publishing the number of requests declined, they emphasis they are on their users’ side.

Companies like Google and Twitter should be lauded for launching such reports. By letting us know how much information governments and corporations are asking for, they’re treading a fine line by complying with disclosure requirements, yet keeping governments and corporation transparent while defending individual privacy.

This piece was originally posted here on the Huffington Post UK.

A photo tells of Diamond’s departure

Bob Diamond’s departure from Barclays has, predictably, led to a lot of puns. No doubt headline writers everywhere are celebrating their good fortune at receiving such an obviously mockable name, but at the same time straining their brains in an effort to avoid the most obvious gags. However, take a moment to appreciate the early goal scored by the photo editors and researchers at the FT.

Selecting the right image to go with a story is incredibly important. Photo editors search through thousands of images every day in the hunt for the right image for every story. With news breaking online, there isn’t the luxury of an afternoon to scour the archives and databases, images must be sourced quickly, but quality must not suffer.

It is for this reason, that we must laud the team at the FT for selecting this brilliant image of Bob Diamond.

The dejected look on his face is the classic pose of someone walking away. The positioning of Bob Diamond on the left, with his back partially toward us – simultaneously walking into the image, yet walking away from the viewer – tells us of his departure.

Finally, the defocused background hinting at a sparkly object just screams ‘diamond’. The photo editors have skilfully told the story and made the pun.

This piece was originally posted here on the CommsTalk blog.

BlackBerry – a managed decline?

RIM’s chief executive has announced his new strategy for the ailing mobile devices firm: they are going to focus on the business sector. For RIM’s new strategy to work they will need to subvert some key IT trends, some of which have already taken hold and will be difficult to uproot.

BlackBerry smartphones, although still selling in large numbers and a leader in some segments, have seen their popularity decline in the face of competition from Apple, Samsung and others. Something had to change. Moreover, with BlackBerry’s heritage as a provider of devices to businesses, it makes sense to focus on a market you know and one where you have a strong foothold.

There are two challenges, however, which might make this new strategy one of managed decline rather than renewed growth: tight IT budgets; and the consumerisation of IT.

In terms of IT budgets, the story is simple: money’s tight and there is lots to do. According to Gartner, budgets are still below their peak and, as economic uncertainty persists, companies are keeping a tight rein on costs. This problem is compounded by the need for companies to keep up with the changing IT landscape. The rise of cloud computing, trends toward home working, the need to integrate tablet computers and securing networks from data loss – both internal through the greater use of cloud computing and external as hacktivists overtake hackers in their strike rate – are all big issues that need addressing. Shortly, in Europe at least, there will new data protection legislation that will require new compliance regimes. This all points to tight IT budgets becoming tighter.

Many companies have found that there’s a way to minimise some costs and get a boost in productivity: let your employees buy their own mobile devices and use them for work. Indeed I’m writing this on a tablet computer, from which I can also access work emails and my calendar. I have similar functionality on my phone. When working from home I can access the work network from my laptop using a virtual desktop.

The trend, which encompasses a number of other factors such as the development of more consumer-centric software, is grandly called the consumerisation of IT. My employer isn’t alone in doing this. A recent study by Accenture found that 40% of employees use personal devices to access work information. That number is set to grow and will do so rapidly; it has more than doubled in the past two years.

There are security issues in allowing employees to access work data on their personal devices, but systems exist and will continue to develop which minimise or mitigate these. The benefits are clear: a flexible, responsive, always connected workforce.

As people use their personal smartphones, tablets and laptops to access their work data, it is inevitable that IT departments will spend less and less of hardware and more on systems that prevent data loss while enabling access from a variety of personal devices.

Blackberry used to set the trends, then they tried to follow them with the launch of touchscreen phones and tablet computers, now they’re trying to fight them. I’m not sure they’ll succeed.

This post originally appeared on the Huffington Post.