Rhythm and Vines 2010

Have you sorted what you are doing for New Years this year? It’s way too soon I know, but keep Gisborne festival, Rhythm and Vines in mind as the frantic planning rolls around at the last minute.

After 8 hard years and just starting out as a student party in the backyard of a family vineyard, Rhythm and Vines has reached the top of their game nationally and internationally. Last year Tourism New Zealand awarded them gold in the ‘Best Festival/Event’ category at the annual awards last year and RnV (as it is nicknamed) as has also ranked in the top 5 New Years destinations by The Times and The Guardian UK. Now that’s what I call impressive!

I’ve just returned from my first RnV experience and thought I’d give you a run down on what a slick operation this beast really is. Firstly, let it be known that 1600 people follow them on Twitter and a whopping 30,000 like them on Facebook. Now don’t think that just because it’s over that we won’t hear from them on these channels for another 6 months – wrong. These guys hold a captive audience and they know it – there have been postings, photos, and videos with responses in the hundreds almost every day this month, and there are no doubt lots of reviews due to come out in various long lead media outlets over February and March. They also have a tactical plan of media engagement leading up to the announcement of headliners, which is staggered from August onwards, as well as the release of ticket sales. Additionally, all messaging is backed up and reinforced by key partners ZM Radio and Music Television (MTV).

From a communications point of view, media of all shapes and sizes covered the event, with over 100 physically attending, reporting, reviewing, or photographing. Watch this space for future Tourism NZ video exports to entice travelers to our neck of the woods with captivating footage from last years festival. Organisers also had a camera crew following around the team behind it all for Behind The Vines - a blog style website that takes you beyond the curtain and backstage.

This festival cuts no corners in terms of safety either. St John set up with what looked like at least 30 paramedics, 5 ambulances and around the clock service to those who had a little too much fun. Fulton Hogan came in to reduce the rising dust twice daily with water trucks spraying the tracks, and there are just about as many security guards as there are festival goers too!

I’d highly recommend you get in quick for this as on New Years Eve it sold out with ticket sales reaching 25,000. Who knows, I might see you there!

 

P.S The showers for onsite campers were better than my own at home.

Written by Jess Miller. Photo from Rhythm and Vines (Official) Facebook Page.

 

WIKILEAKS: Chapter One ...

Just as anyone was, I was surprised to find The Sunday Star-Times revealed an exclusive story they had been hiding under their hats for quite sometime - the information relating to New Zealand in over 1500 cables from Wikileaks.
In short, the website (which has since been shut down) launched in 2006 for the purpose of publishing submissions of private, secret and classified media from anonymous news sources - more commonly known as the "government secret-spilling" website. With over 1.2 million documents the site was founded by a large group of people including journailsts, mathematicians, activists, and start-up company technologists from all over the world.
Recently, the legal action against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has made serious headlines globally, but wasn't as much of a shocker in New Zealand until some of our dealings with the US were revealed - rumours that we are pro-American circulating in full force.
Currently, there is a Twitter account with over half a million followers and the tagline "We open Governments". The activation of this account has been key in how the events have unravelled into the news. Users followed Assange's bail hearing online up to the minute after the judge gave journalists to tweet updates from inside the courtoom, one reporter saying it was 'an amazing nod to the fact we now live in digital age'.
I think this will be looked back on as one of the key defining moments to answering the question - "How were the barriers of news journalism broken down?". There is much more to this story that is yet to come, and we all watch with great anticipation.
Written by Jess Miller.

Pike River: The Darkest Hour

“To all those who have lost a loved one in the Pike River mine let me say: New Zealand stands shoulder to shoulder with you. Though we can not possibly feel this pain as you do, we have you in our hearts and our thoughts.”

– Prime Minister, Hon John Key’s address following the second explosion, November 24th 2010

I think it’s safe to say, time truly has stood still over the past few weeks as this tragedy unravelled in front of us. I’ve been through Greymouth and one of the things I still remember about it was that it was such a small community. I can only imagine the pain they are feeling right now, and as Mayor Kokshoorn said, it is indeed the town’s darkest hour.

I have and continue to pay close attention to the crisis communications of the Police and the CEO Peter Whittall as they have grappled to find answers to questions they never thought they’d hear. They have a long and difficult road ahead with the recovery process and the Royal Commission of Inquiry, and the rest of New Zealand waits in anticipation.

During the many press conferences held over those first few trying days, many hard questions were asked – and as the days continued, they became even harder. Superintendant, Gary Knowles was asked to compare the World Trade Centre’s terrorist attacks to the mining disaster, right before a journalist posed the question as to why he was organising everything when he was just a ‘local country cop’.

Not all journalists are like this though – hats off to the media for being considerate at the same time as seeking every possible thread of information.

From a crisis communications perspective, Pike River Mine CEO Peter Whittall has been a study in best practice because*:

“1. He was the right person for the job – the top company executive and a competent communicator
2. He stuck to the plan – tell the families first and then the media
3. He engendered trust through his straight, factual answers – all without getting flustered
4. He demonstrated competence and knowledge but also compassion – people believed him
5. His key messages were consistent and frequent – people knew that everything possible was being done” * Source here.

One of the most helpful resources I have been using to keep up to date with the news concerning Pike River is Twitter. I recommend you follow @pikerivernews for future updates and information about the disaster and add a yellow Twibbon to your page here. In addition, The Police have a great timeline turned newsfeed as does Pike River Coal.

To see the tribute U2 gave to all the miners while performing here last week, click here.

Written by Jess Miller.

 

Billion-dollar Crisis in the Orchard

November has not been a great month for our icon brand Zespri. Tests early November showed a vine-killing disease known as PSA had been detected in Te Puke, Motueka and Golden Bay, and has since spread up to the Hawkes Bay and Whakatane regions.

It’s pretty serious – already this has affected the future growth and export for a couple of years and the Minister of Agriculture David Carter has appealed for Government aid to help eradicate the bacterium.

"This is a extremely important export earner for New Zealand and they are dealing with a very severe disease," he said.

There is no doubt that the airborne bacteria will be hard to get rid of – other countries Italy, France, Portugal, Japan, Korea and China have been forced to live with it, and growers reports over the years suggest that the symptoms have indeed been in New Zealand for quite some time.

They have been regularly in touch with New Zealand press – every change in information, updates on press conferences and meetings has been extremely well handled and I commend Zespri on such a calm head amidst such a crisis.

In terms of channeling this information into social media it has reached Twitter and Facebook, but only because other news mediums have passed it on to their readers. Upon research I found a well used Facebook page with over 700 fans, and updates as early as last week – but with no mention of the bacteria or crops that have been affected. This is a large opportunity missed in reputation management.


The company also don’t have a Twitter account – by not doing so fails to bring their attention to what is being said in a whole new news media platform. You can’t stop the misinformation if you are not on it – but you can be the official channel of information to moderate and confirm and deny any rumours. It’s all about managing the messages – these are the arenas where people voice their opinions, much unlike the traditional news mediums. Zespri need to be clearly disseminating information on both.

 

News Nugget: Oktobor Animation Comes To Town

Omnilab Media and Oktobor, an award winning animation/visual effects/digital studio have launched Oktober Animation in Auckland's Sale St this month. The new venture has been created and launched in conjunction with Backyard Animated Pictures USA.

Oktobor GM Bruce Everett: "Oktobor Animation is a very significant CG animation business that will initially be servicing the world famous Nickelodeon Studios. 'm delighted to say we have already secured a long-term contract which will see Oktobor Animation have the great fortune of working on several high profile and highly rated television series including 'The Penguins of Madagascar."

Oktobor Animation will also provide openings to the growing number of regional CG artists offering up to fifteen 3-month paid internships up to four times per year to top graduates of local NZQA schools and between 120-140 contract jobs at their Auckland facility.

The Qantas Files: Why the Miracle Landing was Perceived as a Disaster

Qantas needn’t have had caused such a fuss earlier this month after one of their aircrafts ran into engine troubles on a flight bound from Singapore to Sydney. If their Communications team had been onto it they could have stopped the online grapevine spiraling out of their control into the hands of social media junkies.

It started with one tweet from a guy on board with an accompanying picture that made it look as though there had or was going to be a crash. Inaccurate reports emerged alongside more tweets painting a very bad picture for the airline. Further to this, people on Batam (an island near Singapore) reported hearing an explosion and seeing smoke, and reports of people picking up debris only confirmed the faux story being sent around online.

What really happened, according to Qantas, was an A380 aircraft operating from Singapore to Sydney experienced an engine issue soon after takeoff and returned to Singapore. The aircraft had 440 passengers and 26 crew on board, and landed safely.

Thankfully, nobody was injured or hurt. Twitter’s role in this case was very interesting because people were essentially correcting the news cycle in real time. Here, Twitter helped set the facts straight and confirm their safety, but it also made it very difficult for families of passengers on board to know if they were alright as Qantas’ reply with an official statement was very delayed.

Add to that their Facebook and Twitter pages said nothing and offered absolutely no help whatsoever, frustrating tweeps and other online users hunting the story worldwide.

Some of the comments to this blog of the incident suggest that we consider the point of view of the airline – with partner Rolls Royce involved there is a major process involved before an official statement can be released. Reports are now saying that Rolls Royce will not meet their profit target for 2010 as a result of the debacle.

Moral of the story here: have appropriate online monitoring in place so that in the event something dramatic happens concerning your brand and the discussion is rife – your attention is alerted to it immediately. This is a prime example that you cannot ignore Twitter as the fastest spreading news outlet in the world – whether or not it is regulated as entirely accurate news is another story – I am simply saying that it is an unwieldy beast that your business needs at least a firm grip on.

An update over the weekend revealed the A380’s had engine modifications made by Rolls-Royce, just months before this disaster happened. Read the pilot’s version of the story, here.

Written by Jess Miller.

 

How To Create The Perfect Facebook Fan Page

Video tutorial by Dave Dugdale of RentVine.com on how to create a “Fanbook page”

World Rowing Championships: Stellar Social Media in Action!

Yesterday Rowing New Zealand  finished up 8 days of hosting the 2010 World Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro for the first time in over thirty years. It was a pretty memorable occasion as it was also the first time New Zealand had qualified for a men’s and women’s eight since 2007, and the event drew over 60,000 volunteers, spectators and athletes – the biggest crowd ever documented for a World Rowing Championships!

Due to much of my work this year being affiliated with The New Zealand Gynaecological Cancer Foundation and their ambassador Fiona Paterson (double sculls rower), I noticed a lot of activity online around promoting the event well up to and now still afterward and I was very impressed.

My newsfeed on Facebook was updated very regularly by the official championships Facebook Page, which has over 8,000 fans. Some of their content included live updates of what matches were taking place and the winners, diary-style videos from some of the Kiwi and overseas competitors, and summary broadcasts of the highlights each day brought. The page was well customized with ticket, merchandise and entertainment tabs.

The official Twitter account was an extended version of the live updates – and catered to the mobile supporters keen to know asap who won what, when, and with whom! I also thought I’d mention here the official Youtube page with over 30 videos uploaded during the event, which is what impressed me the most.

Youtube pages are always hard to get off the ground, as the content needs to be interesting to lure views. RNZ did incredibly well with getting the Cambridge community involved in many of the clips, as well as highlighting aspects of the championships that are often overlooked (i.e. transport, volunteers, entertainment, local kids etc).

Well done Rowing New Zealand – if only you could have shown them how it was done for the Commonwealth Games (check out my review here) this year!

Written by Jess Miller.