All posts by Jen Hibberd

Kicking off today in Barcelona, Mobile World Congress (MWC) is the world’s pre-eminent mobile event.

In 2013 it attracted more than 72,000 visitors from 205 countries and some of the world’s largest and most influential mobile operators, software companies, equipment providers, Internet companies and media and entertainment organisations, as well as government delegations.

Some of the industry’s biggest news breaks at the show each year, making MWC a must-attend for the media and giving them unparalleled access to everyone from the established well-known brands to exciting new start-ups. More than 3,000 international print, web and broadcast media attended the event in 2013 and still more are expected to attend this year.

However, even with this number of media in attendance, journalists are still run off their feet (in a good way). Their schedules are often booked weeks in advance with back to back briefings, while they still need to reserve time to cover breaking news. It can be tough then for companies to get their message out there, especially when they’re competing with some of the biggest names in the industry.

Liberty has been attending the event since its early days in Cannes and is well versed in making sure its clients get ‘heard’ at the event. Here are our top tips for approaching the next four days (and the post-show come down) from a media relations perspective:

• Grow relationships – With the fanfare that comes with a large show like MWC, the underlying messages behind news and real promise of new technologies can get lost in the frenzy of press releases, demos and briefings. Use the opportunity to provide media with information that will help them weed through the noise and tell a fair and positive story on your role in the growth of the mobile industry.
• Lead with innovation – MWC is still the pre-eminent event to showcase what new mobile technology is on the horizon.  It is the opportunity for vendors to package innovative new technology with tangible, longer-term value that will instigate consumer and enterprise IT purchases and model reasonable growth.  Demonstrate the practical application of your technology and address new and pressing challenges for the mobile industry.
• Position spokespeople as leaders and innovators – A spokesperson can set the tone that media and analysts will grab hold of. Use briefings to not only announce news, but to show innovation, thought leadership and impact with key messages. Highlight experience, partnerships and technology evolution, as well as showing that you have your finger on the pulse of industry themes and can offer relevant comment.
• Build on the momentum – Track trends that emerge during the show and use the time following MWC to follow up with key media and analysts with your viewpoint.

And finally, make sure you’ve booked yourself some time off for after the show – you’ll need it!

At our Liberty Academy day for graduates looking to make a start in PR and marketing earlier this year, I was struck by the horror stories being told about how difficult life fresh out of university really is.

I was lucky enough to leave university debt-free (yes, it really was that long ago) with no real fears about not finding a job – a paid one. Sadly, higher education (and the enormous accompanying debt that now seems unavoidable) isn’t enough to guarantee you that privilege any more. It may not even be enough to get you an interview. According to research conducted by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), one fifth of university leavers are unemployed or in low-paid, menial jobs six months (and more) after leaving.

I don’t think it will be news to any graduates out there by now that work experience and internships are a key differentiator in today’s competitive marketplace. Liberty is fairly inundated with requests for anything from a day in the office to a full year’s placement – and we do our best to accommodate as many as we can, including offering payment. It might not be a full salary but it more than covers the costs of travelling to and from the office and buying lunch every day (assuming you’re not eating at Gordon Ramsey’s, that is.)

Of course, we’re not entirely beneficent in our approach. Some of our best candidates are found through the internship programme so for us it’s an effective recruitment tool. It also makes us feel good about ourselves – a little bit of ‘giving back’ in a fairly selfish world! So, for all the graduates out there looking for a bit of a break, here are a few tips to get you on the road to that vital internship – and maybe even a job at the end of it.

• Don’t limit your options. You don’t know whether or not you’re going to like a particular sector or industry until you try it. I would never have called the fact that I work in technology having studied history and politics – but I had the opportunity to try it and I loved it.

• Network. Contact anyone you know – friends, family, tutors, someone you met at a party once – who might either work in an area you’d like to get into or know someone who does and ask if they’ll meet you for a chat or introduce you to someone who can help. If that’s not an option, attend grad networking groups or join industry groups on LinkedIn.

• If you can avoid it, don’t use recruitment agents. Sorry to all the lovely and very helpful recruiters out there, but while times are tough, companies will avoid paying recruitment fees if they can. If someone comes to them independently with the same qualifications or experience as someone who comes through a recruiter, the former candidate will get the job.

• Read industry news. Contact the companies that stand out to you or are doing particularly well.

• Do your research. You might be desperate to get a job, any job, but try and think about the company you’re approaching. Two of the first questions I ask people when they call asking about internships or junior roles are ‘Why Liberty?’ and ‘Why technology?’ – many don’t even realise we’re an agency that specialises in tech.

• Be targeted. Pick up the phone and find out who the right person to speak to or email is. Don’t just send the same blanket email to a list of companies you found in PR Week. It’s obvious. Try and pick out a few key points about why the company or the sector they worked in appealed to you.

• That said, do play the numbers game. You might have to email 50 or more companies to even get one response. But do it right.

• Stand out. Catch someone’s attention with an amazing cover letter or quirky phone style and you’re far more likely to be remembered down the line even if there’s no opportunity available at the time.

• If you do get the opportunity to intern, work hard to prove yourself but don’t feel you have to stay until 9pm every day (or later). Prospective employers will admire the intern who gets the job done efficiently – it’s not about how many hours you clock up at your desk.

• Make sure you are learning. Of course you will end up with some of the less interesting aspects of office life, but make sure you’re asking questions about what you’re doing so that you’re clear on how it contributes to the bigger picture and ask for more opportunities. Once you’ve edited that press list, sit in on a client call or meeting, take part in a brainstorm. It doesn’t matter if you don’t or can’t contribute – just take it all in and then write down what you did so that when it comes to your next interview, you can confidently talk about what you have learned.

Recently, the Liberty team has been working with two key players in the education technology and e-learning space, IBIS Capital and Edxus Group, on a new event exploring the business of education and acting as a catalyst for the consolidation and investment required in the sector.

The project has been a great example of one of the things that I most enjoy about working in technology PR – looking beyond the bottom line of a new technology’s earning potential to how it impacts on the real world and can potentially change lives. Along with m-health, education is clearly an area which has the potential to be revolutionised by technology – with benefits for both education providers and the recipients.

As IBIS Capital’s industry reports into e-learning have found, despite the fact that the global education market is worth a staggering $4.4 trillion, 20% more than the global IT market, it has been one of the least innovated areas of modern life over the past decade. If market dynamics can be aligned then e-learning and education technology generally looks set to turn this lack of innovation on its head. In return for governmental and education institution investment that falls far short of that required in traditional learning delivery infrastructure (which has skyrocketed in recent times – by 80% since 2000 according to IBIS), e-learning platforms have the power to cost effectively provide a better standard of education.

Not only can this help to democratise education, offering access to standardised content whether a student attends the best private institution or a rundown inner city school, but the immersive, interactive platforms that are available will fundamentally change the way that education is delivered. By leveraging virtualisation and gamification, adapting to an individual’s need for visual or numerical content for instance, the potential for improved engagement and therefore results is huge.

Combine this with e-learning platforms’ ability to harness big data and smart analytics and you can start to see how content can then be further tailored to the individual’s learning patterns and aptitude. Progress can be tracked down to the individual with less need for exams and less admin for teachers, as well as greater visibility for parents or bosses in the professional learning sector.

Of course, we’ve got a long way to go before all schools are able to offer e-curricula, but the trends in the higher education and professional learning sectors towards e-learning are clear and seem to be well received. If government and education institutions can work together to welcome the digital age then hopefully the impact on both results and budgets will be an education in themselves.

For more information on IBIS Capital’s industry reports, visit http://www.ibiscapital.co.uk/resources/investment-banking-research.aspx and http://edxusgroup.com/a-european-perspective-on-e-learning-report-ibis-capital/.

For information on EdTech Europe, Edxus and IBIS Capital’s recent London event, visit http://edxusgroup.com/category/events/.

I’ve recently returned from holiday. It was brilliant and, once we were there, we had wonderful service from the people looking after us.

But the experience leading up to our departure, from the minute we paid our deposit to the moment we left for the airport, was terrible. It really reminded me of something that I take for granted working for Liberty – that good customer service is not a nice-to-have or a luxury, it should be the bedrock of any service industry.

I won’t bore you with the details of the seemingly endless list of complaints I have about the owner of the company we booked with, but it’s safe to say that, once she had secured our business, all niceties shot out of the window and she treated us like a problem to be dealt with – to the point where I wasn’t looking forward to going away, which I really resented! We generally had to chase her on responses to our questions, she brought business issues that she was facing to our door as if it was our job to solve them and correspondence was a constant list of things we weren’t allowed to do during our stay that generally ended in a request for more money in order to ‘augment’ our service.  And it’s not like we hadn’t paid enough in the first place… but I’ll stop there because I can feel my rant coming on!

Maybe I found this particularly frustrating because I used to work in the travel industry, and because customer service is so central to all our dealings with clients at Liberty, whether they’re prospective, a couple of months into a retainer or have been with us for years. Six years ago when I started working here I remember being educated on ‘the Liberty Way’ of doing things, which centred around proactivity, attention to the client’s needs, maintaining exceptional standards at all levels of account activity and adding the personal touch.

I’m happy to say that that ethos is still alive and well today. If anything, it’s even more central to what we do in these times of budget constraints and cutbacks in which we need to stand out from the crowd when it comes to retaining and securing business.  Indeed, I don’t think there are many agencies of our size that have a dedicated client services director who monitors client sentiment and ensures regular six monthly reviews are conducted to ensure client objectives and creativity are maintained.

Good client service is the life blood of a business like ours. We want clients to enjoy working with us and to treat us as an extension to their own team. It means that we’re proud to count many clients as repeat customers who choose us when they move from one company to another, or are happy to recommend us to other industry contacts. We’ve also had clients who have chosen to change agency only to come back to us months later because the service they received elsewhere wasn’t up to scratch. Some have even become friends.

Maybe we could teach my holiday contact a thing or two – she certainly won’t be getting any repeat business or recommendations out of me!