A friend of mine let me know about this opportunity. Since I am happily employed, it would be a shame not to pass it on to you, crafty Internet people. Whoever is interested, please drop a line to Mike Comstock.

Do you love finding out what the coolest things to do around town are? Love travel, food & adrenaline activities? So do we! Lime&Tonic is an exciting new online City Guide for locals covering the coolest things to do in & around town. We are now in 5 destinations with ambitious plans to roll out globally. As such, we’re looking for a number of (bi-lingual) enthusiastic people to join our growing start-up team based in Prague.

In the role of a Blogger, you will be responsible for the launch and on-going management of a new destination blog in a selected city. Your role has the potential to evolve in to launching & managing multiple city blogs and to potentially move in to a Project Manager position. As a start-up company, you should be aware that your responsibilities will most definitely change so only apply if you’re a flexible character!

The role responsibilities will initially include:

• Translating & setting up the city blog for your given destination.
• Researching & creating blog content/articles and a weekly newsletter (tied to the blog).
• Development and execution of a (creative) subscriber acquisition plan, to include a strong social media strategy such as Facebook competitions.
• Sourcing & building affiliate relationships.
• Active management of the Facebook, Twitter & any other social media channels related to the blog.
• Dealing with all advertising, promotion or related activities of the blog.
• Handling any subscriber communications & experience recommendations or leads.
• Required to hit subscriber & read rate targets.

Requirements for the position are

• Past teaching / blogging or copywriting experience is ideal.
• Must be a self-starter who takes ownership of tasks and responsibilities.
• Experience in WordPress, online marketing, SEO, etc. is a big plus!
• Fun & easy-going personality. Must like wearing flip-flops to work.
• Must be fluent in English & a native speaker in the following languages (and ideally have spent time in the city in brackets)

• Czech (Prague)
• French (Paris)
• English- American (New York / San Francisco)
• English- British (London)
• English (Mumbai / New Delhi)
• Turkish (Istanbul)
• Vietnamese (Ho Chi Minh / Hanoi)
• Indonesian (Jakarta)
• Chinese (Hong Kong / Beijing / Shanghai)

We offer both part-time or full-time work with flexible hours, and the chance for ambitious individuals to join a fun global start-up in its early days. We also have some cool bonuses, like our monthly Beer Fridays & staff draws for free Lime&Tonic vouchers, as well as a very easy-going central office environment (actually, we’re currently searching for a bigger space so let us know if you hear of anything!).

If this sounds like you, please get in touch with us. Alternatively, if you know someone who might fit the profile- recommend them to us & we’ll give you a free Lime&Tonic voucher if we end up hiring them.

“I don’t have pet peeves. I have major psychotic fucking hatreds!” said Geroge Carlin in one of his performances. I would add that if you work in PR and marketing, you are bound to have them. No matter whether you work as an in-house specialist or on the agency side. Here are some of mine.

1) I don’t like it!

Sadly enough, there are marketing managers who use the phrase “You have to re-do this because I don’t like it,” when judging advertising visuals or press releases. They should be shot in a town square, while their families are watching. Let me condescendingly pose a question to them. When will you finally understand that your feelings have no place in the evaluation process? The only possible exception is you being a member of the target audience. The decision-making process must focus on how the customer thinks and how he feels, not how a marketer feels.

2) He calls me fifteen times a day

Ad space salesmen who call at least twice a day every day to find out that all our media space is planned out a year ahead are driving me crazy. Persistence is one thing but such behaviour gets you nowhere, except a blacklist on my phone.

3) You’re doing it too theoretically, our customers are idiots

Yeah, it’s a good campaign concept, but it looks too theoretic. I don’t think the customers will get it.

What is too theoretic about having a customer segmentation? Or creating a campaign that plays on associations and is a bit more sophisticated? Can we please stop treating our customers like morons? I am a customer too and hate being treated like a twerp.

I am planning on expanding this list, so if you have any additions, feel free to share them in the comments section!

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Simply put, they hate us because they must. I know this will upset everyone who claims that symbiosis between the journalists and the PROs must be revealed and respected publicly, but I can’t help it. I don’t mean to slam the media in any way – the journalist is doing his job as a PRO does. I’m not hating the player, I am hating the game.

The essence of PR

What are we the PR practitioners trading with? Our currency is credibility and trust. We are reliable sources for the journalists, although we are biased. Before you start criticising the nature and purpose of PR, tell me who is not biased. We need the journalists to trust us. If they didn’t, PR narratives would end up implicitly discarded.

Fact-finding journalists: a convenient myth

The journalist’s job is to present facts and provide space for discussion of all parties involved in a current issue about which the reporter is informing its audience. That’s it for the theory. What about the reporters’ day-to-day reality?

1. Do they have enough time to check the facts? No.
2. Are they encouraged by their editors to seek information from other sources, thereby prolonging date of publication? No.
3. Are they willing to get their hands dirty in pursuit of what they think is truth? Some of them are, most of them aren’t.
4. Do they have enough of information to write in-depth articles? Some of them do, but since the editorial offices keep cutting down staff, the number of generalists greatly increases.
5. Do they have enough of resources to seek out the good sources and critically evaluate their credibility? No.

As you can see, conditions for good journalism are deteriorating, even though the checklist isn’t extensive or complete. How have the journalists responded to the situation? They produce more content, more facts, more sensations. How do they do it? They source a lot of their reports from PR agencies and their clients.

The journalists trade with credibility as well – they need it to keep up their circulation. More credible news equals more subscribers and advertisers.

Necessary hatred

Since the media business positions itself as unbiased, it must by definition reject all biased information, otherwise nobody would believe the journalist is objective. In reality, the journalists happily copy and paste the content of the news releases they receive and move on to another topic.

Imagine they would admit it. “Oh yeah, we do almost zero fact-checking because it’s expensive and time-consuming. Instead of that, we just publish information that looks right to us.

That’s where necessity kicks in. The journalists need to state publicly that they resent PR practitioners and they need to say it aloud in order to preserve the aura of their own credibility.

In reality, they don’t hate or desipise us; they just can’t proclaim this sentiment in public.

Most PR, marketing, advertising, PPC and other agencies feel the need to put a glossy wrap on their business. Some of them are trying to look more corporate to easily associate with their customers and project their inner strength. Some of them are projecting an anti-corporate image to appeal to corporations by being the cool kids on the block.

I want to work with an agency that can get things done and won’t present itself as an institution that makes me cringe at the first sight. I want to know its competencies and people within the agency. The rest is irrelevant. That’s how you persuade clients to work with you – you show your agency is competent.

Naive much?

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Here is a recepie for a cocktail named “Charity event”. Start with a fragile dragon boat and cold river Moldau on a Saturday morning (time when all decent people should be at home suffering from a hangover). Add 16 colleagues across the board from sales top management to marketing who have never sat in a boat together. Then take 29 other teams and throw them into a shaker with previous ingredients. Shake like hell, don’t stir. Be surprised when you find out the cocktail actually tastes good.

It was my pleasure to participate in Rotary Dragon Boat Charity Challenge that took place last Saturday in Prague. This event had everything I wanted – team building, food and friendly atmosphere regardless of the position within the company. To top it all, by showing up and paying the participation fee, we helped local charity-focused NGOs. What’s there not to love about it?

To sum it all up, you need 3 key ingredients to forge a successful corporate event.

• Help your attendees to build their team.
• Amuse the participants with a sporting activity. This builds up a sense of belongingness.
• Make everybody compete.

Oh, and our team of Caterpillar, Phoenix-Zeppelin and Caterpillar Financial made it TOP 10 out of 30 teams. Not bad for the first try, eh?

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Welcome Skypecrosoft! It seems that Skype owners are going to be rather wealthy – they sold the leading provider of free IP telephony to a software giant for about $8.5 billion. Needless to say that Skype was not doing well to say the least. It had backed out of IPO and currently finds itself in a debt of $686 million. This raises numerous questions, especially “Why has Microsoft paid so much money for Skype?”

The reason is simple enough – Skype’s user base totals over half a billion names and contacts and Microsoft’s competitors are getting stronger. If you were in the shoes of Microsoft’s Strategy Director, what would you do when Google Voice is getting increasingly popular and Apple FaceTime is cutting an increasingly larger share of the pie? The counter-move fitting this situation is obvious: buy Skype.

What will the acquisition do with Skype’s marketing?

Nothing right now. Microsoft will probably let the Skype brand live its own life for a while. Then integration will take place and some users will leave. The core will stay, though. Afterall, people need a software client to speak to each other for free.

What does integration do to brand’s narrative?

It will either change it from the ground or take the current one to the next level. Skype used to be one of the “cool” and “anti-establishment” brands. It got acquired for a preposterous amount of money to the brand that has embodied establishment for many years. Core users and brand fans may perceive the Skype brand as a sell-out and it’s up to Microsoft to overcome that.

What will the marketers keep saying to keep the users from leaving?

My safest bet is that integration will be the name of the game. Microsoft will make the Skype brand “grow up” and become integrated with its other products.  It might even continue down the road towards the sterilisation of the brand. Skype will change from being “cool to use” to being “a tool to use”.

What do you guys think? Is Skype’s brand identity dead or will Microsoft leave it intact?

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We the marketers, be it the in-house rats or the agency hounds, live for praise. It’s our crack, ganja and crystal meth combined. Whenever my boss praises me for well-written texts or a well-executed project, my pulse jumps up to 150 and I feel like I could climb Mount Everest and still make it back to the office before the end of lunch break. Mind you, that doesn’t happen very often. Not because I am not awesome, but because she is so strict. Before I go off on a tangent, let me stress the main point of this article:

If you want to get 120% out of your subordinates or co-workers, make sure you praise them!

In our society, where resources aren’t life-threateningly scarce (we have food, shelter and relative comfort of our families), other needs kick in. You still remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, don’t you? If not, auntie Wiki will help you out. We are thinking in terms of self-actualization, so the condensed version of the theory goes like this. If the managers give you enough acclaim, you will perform better.

Walkng the thin line

However, not even praising is a universal tool necessarily leading to higher performance. It doesn’t work like a black box, into which managers put nice words and get out results. Instead of borrowing from theory, I will give you a crash course of rules and limitations for praising. Let me disclose that what works for me and a couple of hundred other people might not work for you.

If you want to increase productivity via incentivization, here is how you do it.

• Praise people for well-executed projects, in which they have applied their autonomy, mastery and purpose. Dan Pink has a great lecture about these three elements.
• The compliments must come from someone your colleagues respect, admire or aspire to. Yeah, there is a difference between winning acclaim from a janitor and a Nobel Prize winner. Who would have thought, right?
• Adhere to the rule of criticizing privately and praising publicly.
• Don’t ever be insincere when acknowledging someone’s good work. If you are, your personal as well as professional credibility will die a horrible death. It’s better not to praise than to sound insincere.

Your take on motivation?

By the way, you know this type of people who have everything you could ever wish for? They come from a good family, have a satisfying job you would kill for, enjoy financial independence and are in the middle of a stellar career. What if you get one as a co-worker or a subordinate? Tell me, do you know how to motivate them? I would try my luck with praising them. You?

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I generally don’t publish press releases but this one caught my eye. You can comment on this post to make me feel less like a commercial sell-out. Here is the edited part taken from the news release.

Communications company QuestFore has launched a sweepstakes contest. The agency will award one lucky business $15,000 in internal marketing services. Entry is open to all businesses, large or small, from March 15 to June 30, 2011.

What types of services would the winner have access to? Quest Fore offers comprehensive marketing resources, from research and strategic planning to traditional advertising and interactive services.

Let’s end it with a commentary, shall we? I think it is a good idea for the agency to promote itself this way. What does it cost them? Time and willpower. What do they get in return? New contacts, and if they manage to impress, new client will join their portfolio.

Sweepstakes is an overused marketing tool but QuestFore shows that you can succeed with this old dinosaur, provided you have a good idea. I wonder who will be the first agency to do this on the Czech market?

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Public relations adds value to company’s sales efforts by limiting customers’ frame of  reference and creating a favourable context, in which the products can be easily sold.

When clients ask me or my colleagues how exactly PR helps them to drive sales, we tell them that it doesn’t. Every consumer makes his own decisions and bases them on various facts. Public relations activities cannot change minds of thousands overnight. Instead, they can gradually build up a positive context around the product and encase already known facts in it. That leads to less headaches for the sales team. On the other hand, if you have a lousy product, you can never turn it into a best-seller, regardless of good publicity.

Now onto a practical example. Say you manufacture cars and you are a relatively unknown brand.

I should also add that shifting a context around a product or enforcing behavioural or attitudinal change is a long run and it requires synergy, budget and stamina to keep going through the tough times. The reward is worth it.

PR can also influence the way the customer compares products and which otherwise arbitrary attributes are important to compare, but that deserves another post to discuss all the nuts and bolts properly.

Czech interactive marketing will never be the same again. Ataxo Group has acquired H1.cz, one of the leading agencies focused on PPC advertising. The result of the merger will be a powerhouse with strong potential to dominate the Czech market. Expected turnover in 2011 is about 250 million CZK and it will be created by around 150 employees.

“The merger of the H1.cz  team with the Ataxo Group is mutually beneficial on many levels. We both have a similar approach to our client relationship management, offer first class customer service and have a history of the biggest players on the market,” said Peter Wiedemann, President and CEO of Ataxo.

Why did Ataxo acquire H1.cz?

1. H1.cz has more corporate clients with great growth potential in the post-recession environment
2. H1.cz knows really well how to do PPC and Ataxo needs that knowledge
3. Ataxo knows how to hook and retain the clients, while H1.cz has nearly no sales team

This merger is only a logical conclusion of Ataxo’s efforts to cover a greater portion of the market and capitalize on the big corporate clients. Although the two players are no strangers to Czech online marketing, they are more different than similar. While Ataxo’s main target market are small and medium enterprises, H1.cz caters to the big fish (Ceska pojistovna, Telefonica O2, Home Credit). Another discrepancy lies within the expertise of the agencies’ staff. Historically, Ataxo has been very good at doing SEM, while H1.cz rules in the realm of PPC ad campaigns. Ataxo also wants to complement its team with with the specialists from a different field.

Future of both brands

As of now, the management of both companies has decided against re-branding. My guess is that the brands will not stay apart for a long time and unification will eventually occur, but they don’t want to do it now in order to prevent negative coverage. Is maintaining two brands a wise choice? On a small market, like in the Czech Republic, it is. Furthermore, the clients won’t get confused, the media won’t get confused and the public will not think of Ataxo as a predatory corporation.

Only the positive side doesn’t say it all

David Špinar, Managing Director of H1.cz claims in the official press release that

Due to integration, we will be able to concentrate more on what we do best, especially on providing our VIP clients with high-class services. The merger will also provide our staff with the option to professionally grow.

Call me a skeptic, but if there is one thing I don’t buy about this merger, it is the claim that the consolidation has only a positive side. Every merger is expensive and has to pay for itself, which is why PMI (post-merger integration) processes and cost cutting usually follow it. Although the management of both Ataxo and H1.cz has denied any of these effects taking place in the future, chances are that the merger party will be sooner or later followed by a financial hangover. The fact that 2010 was a good year for H1.cz (the company had time to create financial reserves) might alleviate some of that pain. However, gradually amortising the costs over time might unnecessarily prolong the transition period, which would be unwise.

Good job!

It is undeniable that the acquisition will put a financial strain on both companies but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter. What matters is how they deal with it. In the case of H1.cz and Ataxo I have no doubts the management will do the right things and steer the company towards prosperity. My congratulations especially to the owners of H1.cz who have changed the Czech digital advertising market by creating a major player from nothing but their know-how and skills!

Image credit: o5com, H1.cz, Ataxo