A research by Dunkin’ Donuts and CareerBuilder shows the PR industry is the 4^th most caffeinated industry in the world! Apparently PR professionals rely a lot on coffee throughout the workday to keep their productivity and increase their energy and motivation, with 63% having two cups or more and 28% drinking three cups or more a day. How interesting!

These results come from the US, but in my opinion they’re transferrable to the rest of the world. However, with one exception – the UK, where tea seems to be very, very popular. For example, at the PR office where I work now half of the team drink tea and no coffee – that’s certainly impressive, don’t you think?

I am a coffee addict; I love the smell and the warmth! But I’ve been trying to reduce the amount of coffee I have a day and to choose decaf instead whenever possible. I guess that’s what many PR pros have been doing during the past 12 months too, because last year the PR industry was not the forth, but the second most caffeinated industry!

Does this make PR a stressful profession? I’ll leave that for you to decide. 

Pinterest has been gaining more and more popularity not only among individuals, but also businesses  using the platform to engage with their audiences and effectively promote their products/services.

As a brand it’s not always easy to keep up with social media and be ‘available’ and active all the time. Tools like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and inbuilt scheduling options such as the one on Facebook have allowed companies to automatically share content on their Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn platforms with pre-determined posts.

Scheduling in advance is now also possible for Pinterest with a new tool called Pingraphy, which makes it easier for brands to manage their Pinterest accounts and reach their audiences at all times. It can also save them time because as we all know pinning is very, very time-consuming and is also addictive – once you start, you can’t stop and so you spend even more time pinning.

What’s great about Pingraphy is that it’s free and easy to use. Just with a few simple steps you will be able to schedule your pins for the entire week or month and make sure you are always active on Pinterest to engage with your followers.

Sounds good? Here’s how to start scheduling your pins: 

I have finally found some time to write this blog post! I’ve been planning it since my dissertation results came out end of July; at first I wanted to just present the survey findings in a text form with lots of explanations, but then I thought, no, an infographic would be perfect. And here it is - my first infographic! It shows in a nice visual way what I found from the survey I conducted with PR professionals earlier this year.

In addition to the online questionnaire I also carried out interviews with PR pros from the UK, some of which I will post soon. So, stay tuned! (update: here's the first interview with Heather Yaxley.)

As for the dissertation, now it’s time to brag a little bit :P I was very happy about my result and the positive feedback I got – my mark was 75%, or a First as it’s called in the UK (for the ones unfamiliar with the UK grading system, here’s a simple grade chart). I consider this an achievement, first because I don’t have much practical experience in Public Relations (or more precisely, didn’t have at the time), and second because I am not native in the language I wrote the dissertation in – English, which is just another foreign language for me.

As happy as I am, I still have a second dissertation to write and one more term back in Germany to finally finish my entire BA degree in International Business. Yes, I know how complicated it sounds…

So, getting to the point, below you’ll find the results of the online survey I conducted for the dissertation, which was entirely targeted at PR/Communications professionals (I have not included the participants’ profiling; however if you wish to have a look, just get in touch with me). Once again I would like to thank all survey (and interview) participants. I admit gathering enough questionnaire responses was one of the major difficulties of the project.

Again, the infographic below only shows a summary of the findings, the actual results are much more detailed and in-depth as all survey questions not only had pre-determined answer options, but also open-ended questions asking for explanations, more details and opinions. Nevertheless, the following should still give you some food for thought.

I’m becoming more and more interested in sustainability, so when I saw this campaign I was thrilled and frankly quite happy that big corporations are taking a step away from being massive profit machines to more human and caring organisations not only when it comes to production, but also when they make marketing decisions.

To promote the eco-conscious nature of its BlueMotion vehicles, which are powered by innovative, energy-saving technologies specially designed to reduce both fuel consumption and harmful emissions, Volkswagen and Ogilvy Cape Town created a very smart print ad campaign to reinforce recycling in South Africa. The idea behind it was to develop print inserts that help save paper, not waste it.

“The BlueMotion Label” advert allowed people to easily recycle their magazines once they’ve finished reading them by sticking the inserts onto the front cover and dropping the magazines into a post box to be sent to a recycling plant.

Volkswagen and Ogilvy Cape Town saw an opportunity in the lack of recycling options in South Africa. People there have easy access to post boxes, however not every neighbourhood has formal recycling bins – 77% of magazines in the country are thrown away. The campaign effectively turned post boxes into community recycling bins.  

I have discussed Facebook with many of my friends and work colleagues and quite of few of them have told me “Oh, I hate Facebook!” (to be clear, I don’t!) However, they still use the platform for various reasons, including because all of their friends and family are on it (and not on Google+), or for business and marketing purposes. So, for all of you who don’t like Facebook and/or want to stay in touch with family and family only, here’s JustFamily – a new social network just for family.

You probably ask yourself “Why should I join yet another social media site?” Here’s why according to the founders of JustFamily:

"There are lots of ways to share “what’s happening now” with friends and the world. But family is different. Family is the only social group that cares about the past, the present, and the future. We’re building JustFamily so families can share life together and stay close in a private place, away from work and friends.”

Well, that sounds reasonable to me. Therefore, I decided to join the network and now I want to show you what it looks like and some of its features. The site is very clean and easy to navigate – I assume because it’s supposed to be used by the elderly people of the family as well.