Yes or No, we need entrepreneurs

Charlie Laidlaw is a partner in Scottish PR agency Laidlaw Westmacott and a director of David Gray PR.

As the date for Scotland’s independence referendum edges closer, the decibel level from conflicting voices continues to rise.

What’s not in doubt is that the political, cultural and commercial landscape in the UK has changed in recent years, fuelled both by globalisation and the bewildering pace of technological development.

Commercially, we now live in an interdependent world where the concept of the nation state is itself being reinvented. 

In a 24/7 connected world, the internet has largely made national borders irrelevant, empowering companies to sell internationally and consumers to buy internationally.

We may still be proudly British or Scottish, or a mixture of both, but we also like Google, Amazon and all the mobile gadgets that make them work.

Hardly surprising then that the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the WTO estimate that world trade in global service exports grew in 2013 by 5% to $4.7 trillion – largely driven by computer and information services.

But it’s easy to focus too much on the big picture because the great majority of companies in the UK are micro-businesses – and if this sector isn’t working, then the economy is in real trouble.

To put that into perspective, over 30,000 Scottish businesses registered with Companies House in 2013.  In 2012, it was 25,500; in 2011, 24,000; in 2010, 20,700.

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) quotes Scottish government statistics to show that small and medium-sized enterprises now account for well over 90% of all Scottish businesses and for over half of all private sector employment.

If Scotland is to seriously consider voting Yes, then we must also be convinced that independence is a national and global opportunity for small companies to grow, and for entrepreneurs to create new ones.

In total last year, some 526,000 UK businesses were registered with Companies House – nearly 100,000 more than in 2011.

Of those, over 136,000 start-ups were in Greater London, more than one in five of new companies, despite having one in eight of the UK’s population.  In second place came Birmingham with 16,281.

A report from the Centre for Cities says that London is creating ten times more private sector jobs than Edinburgh (with just over 7,000 start-ups).  Glasgow saw more than 8,000 new registrations.

But London’s dominance in the entrepreneurial stakes carries dangers.  It’s a worry for London’s creaking infrastructure and inadequate housing market, but a nagging trend that should worry Scotland, and other parts of the UK.

Simply, we need entrepreneurial spirit to be shared across the UK, because regional economic growth and prosperity generates greater local demand for goods and services.

In other words, regional growth provides local opportunities for new entrepreneurs – the very people we need to succeed for the economic prosperity of all the nations and regions of the UK. 

It’s why interventions by the likes of Sir Tom Hunter are so important because his mission is to see Scotland embrace entrepreneurialism with greater enthusiasm – whether Scotland votes Yes or No, and Sir Tom hasn’t yet made up his mind either way.

He points out that Scotland, on a Global Entrepreneurship Monitor compiled by Strathclyde University’s Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, lags behind the UK as a whole, but that the number of high-aspiration entrepreneurs has doubled between 2008 and 2013.

While entrepreneurial activity is at an all-time high, we have some way to go to match the level of start-ups in, for example, the USA and Canada.  Part of the problem seems to be Scotland’s historical reliance on old industry, primarily shipbuilding, coal and steel.

The new Scotland has had to adapt to the demise of those few giant employers, but their cultural and social echoes still live on.  Compared with the rest of the UK, we want to leave education and get a job – creating our own company remains a second best for many.

But things are changing.  The Curriculum for Excellence is building the world of work into the curriculum, and colleges of further and higher education are focusing more on enterprise as an engine of growth, and a key driver of innovation, particularly technological development.

On that level it’s about the concept of creative destruction popularised by the Austro-American economist Joseph Schumpeter which is the “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."

Put simply, the new world economies are being driven by ever-changing technologies.  Adapt, innovate or die has never been so apposite.

Yes or No, Scotland the Brand is attracting worldwide coverage, and from salmon to whisky, golf to haggis, our reputation for product quality is internationally recognised.  It’s something that we have to capitalise on.

The future increasingly lies with entrepreneurs who can shape the new economic landscape, building new companies than can become big companies, and embed a growing spirit of entrepreneurship in Scotland.  That will also take more joined up thinking from politicians, think tanks, educationalists and business leaders.

While the big numbers of future economic growth will be global, the reality is that every new company starts out small, and we should celebrate small as well as big.

Whatever the referendum outcome, Scotland needs entrepreneurs like never before.

We are specialists in national and international PR strategy and delivery.  You can contact us at +44 (0) 1620 844024 or michael@laidlawwestmacott.com

To win an award you have to enter…

Charlie Laidlaw is a director of David Gray PR and a partner in Laidlaw Westmacott.

Business success involves determining a commercial and marketing strategy, setting realistic objectives, and creating a promotional programme to help make it happen.

It’s about engaging with customers and getting them to trust your company over a competitor.  It’s about image, communicating a sense of brand value and converting sales.

But how to create trust with potential customers who may not have heard of you?  However, one often overlooked tactic can provide the third-party endorsement that smaller companies generally struggle to find.

Entering business awards should be front-of-mind for any company, because excellence is something every company strives for – whether that’s customer service or technical innovation.

There’s a business awards scheme for every business sector, so finding an appropriate award category shouldn't

be hard.  In addition, there are personal awards - in HR, accountancy, marketing…you name the job title, and there’s an award to be won. 

Nor does it matter how big you are.  There are awards for start-ups, entrepreneurial awards, or  innovative new products.  Or there are awards in the workplace - for best practice in flexible working, best places to work, social inclusion, or recruitment policies.

Here are some tips on how to make your entry stand out from the crowd.

1.       Enter appropriately.  Writing a killer submission is a lengthy process, so best not waste time on an award category that you are unlikely to shine in.  Concentrate effort on the awards and categories where you really have something to shout about.  (If in doubt, speak to the awards organiser).

2.       Read entry guidelines.  Judges look for clarity and generally set an upper word count.  They will also indicate what they’re looking for to support your entry – whether that’s sales figures, customer endorsements, media coverage etc.  Focus on what’s important for your entry, and cut the waffle.

3.       Leave yourself time.  Writing an award submission takes far longer than people anticipate.  For a start, facts and figures have to be assembled, and other people in the company consulted.  Better to set a timetable that gives you time to think, rather than completing it in a mad rush.  (A rushed entry is rarely a good entry).

4.       Appoint a champion.  While several people in the company may have an input to the submission, put one individual in charge, and task that person to complete a draft of the submission(s) well ahead of the deadline.  (There’s nothing worse than an entry that looks like it was written by a committee).

5.       Make it interesting.  There’s no point being over-technical or using too much jargon.  Your entry should be memorable and interesting, right from the first sentence.  Think of it as an elevator pitch: grab the judges’ attention in the introduction.

6.       Make it real.  You’re justifiably proud of your company and want to shout about its attributes.  But beware of making unsubstantiated claims to be “the best” – using sales data to demonstrate healthy growth is a better way of demonstrating success.

7.       Get another view.  You might think that your submission is right on the button and has ticked all the boxes.  But get someone from outside your company to take a look at it.  A point you thought was blindingly obvious might not be that obvious to an outsider. 

In conclusion, what’s important is that you take the time to really understand what the judges are looking for, and how to make your entry stand up to scrutiny.

In our experience, every successful or ambitious company has a story to tell, about itself, its products or its people, irrespective of size or sector.  It’s how you tell that story that matters.

A PR spectrum from cock and bull to nursery rhyme

PR involves pitching stories to the media although, inevitably, some stories are better than others.  However, much better to make sensible use of the material you have, rather than turn it into cock and bull.

It’s what 18^th and 19^th century coach travellers did, so the story goes, when they stopped at a town called Stony Stratford, north of London.

Travellers would refresh themselves in one of the town’s two main coaching inns, The Cock or The Bull, where fanciful tales and so-called news would become hopelessly embellished.  The two establishments still exist.

The town’s website says that “the High Street still contains a wealth of coaching inns that thrived in this period, including The Cock and The Bull; in these inns travellers vied with each other in the telling of outrageous stories…”

The story may or may not be true, but it’s an interesting angle on how – in the wrong hands – a perfectly good story can, through spin and exaggeration, devalue both the message and the messenger.

At the other end of the scale is the story so subtly told that its significance is hidden.  That’s best exemplified in our much-loved nursery rhymes, written in a bygone age when any kind of careless gossip could swiftly lead to the gallows.  Back then, subtle PR was a life-saver.

Take, for example, this innocuous rhyme:

Mary Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle shells

And pretty maids all in a row.

It’s actually about the 16^th century Queen Mary of England whose brutal persecution of Protestants earned her the nickname of “Bloody Mary.”  The garden is the cemeteries she filled with her victims; silver bells and cockleshells are slang for torture implements, and the maiden was a form of guillotine.

Queen Mary was also the inspiration for another rhyme:

Three blind mice, three blind mice,

See how they run.  See how they run.

They all ran after the farmer’s wife,

Who cut off their tails with a carving knife.

Did you ever see such a sight in your life?

As three blind mice.

This refers to three Protestant bishops who were convicted of treason and burned at the stake - but not before, reputedly, being blinded and dismembered.

Equally loved is this:

Jack and Jill went up the hill

To fetch a pail of water.

Jack fell down

And broke his crown,

And Jill came tumbling after.

Jack and Jill are King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antionette.  They both lost their crowns (and their heads) in the French revolution of 1793-94.

The derivation of this rhyme is more widely known:

Ring-a-ring o’ roses

A pocket full of posies

A-tishoo! A-tishoo!

We all fall down.

In the USA, the third line is often reproduced as Ashes!  Ashes!  It’s actually about bubonic plague in the 17^th century, with one of the first symptoms being a rosy rash.  For protection, people would carry sweet-smelling herbs with them.

Other rhymes describe historical events:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

No, it’s not about a giant egg.  It’s actually a large cannon that was sited on a tower during the English Civil War.  The tower was hit by cannon fire, and the tower and Humpty fell down.

Other rhymes are more complex:

Old Mother Hubbard

Went to the cupboard

To give the poor dog a bone

When she came there

The cupboard was bare

And so the poor dog had none

These are the lyrics that were published in 1805, although the rhyme is much older.  One explanation is that it goes back to Henry VIII, with the King wanting a divorce from Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn.  The “dog and bone” refer to the divorce, the cupboard is the Catholic Church and Cardinal Wolsey, the highest Papal representative, is Old Mother Hubbard.

One rhyme stands out for being utterly salacious:

Georgie Porgie

Pudding and pie

Kissed the girls and made them cry

When the boys came out to play

Georgie Porgie ran away.

This is poking fun at a (reputed) gay relationship between King James I and the Duke of Buckingham, who was also an (alleged) lover of the French Queen Consort.

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn't say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs.

The derivation of this is less clear, but is probably anti-Catholic propaganda.  Catholic prayers were said in Latin; Protestant prayers in English.  There again, "goose bumps" was 16^th slang for the symptoms of venereal disease – and being "bitten by a Winchester goose" was slang for how you caught it.  The “Winchester geese” in question were south London prostitutes.

Lastly, this:

Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home

Your house is on fire

And your children are gone.

The ladybird was regarded with affection by farmers as it ate aphids, and it’s thought that this rhyme may be about encouraging the bugs to fly off before the farmers burned stubble in their fields.  However, it may not be that simple.  Another possible derivation is that the rhyme was a warning to Catholics who wouldn’t attend Protestant services.

Nowadays, in an age of free speech, we can write what we want and make the meaning clear.  But we shouldn’t forget that the right of free speech has been hard won and that, in past times, it could get you into all sorts of trouble.

In PR terms, it was therefore better to invent a nursery rhyme than a cock and bull story.  Nowadays, neither end of the PR spectrum is much good!

Charlie Laidlaw is a director of David Gray PR and a partner in Laidlaw Westmacott. We are specialists in national and international PR strategy and delivery.  You can contact us at +44 (0) 1620 844736 or Charlie@davidgraypr.com or connect with us on LinkedIn or Facebook.

MI5 and PR for small companies

Charlie Laidlaw is a director of David Gray PR and a partner in Laidlaw Westmacott. He is also a former intelligence officer with the Security Service (MI5).

A long time ago in a place not far distant from central London, I was being lectured about the nature of treason.  What, I was asked, did the traitor see in the mirror each morning as he shaved?  Traitor or patriot?

It was an ambiguous lesson, without fixed context, given credence only by the fact that we both worked for the Security Service.  The context I only discovered later, and by then he’d already made his decision.

Now, a lifetime later, the business of intelligence has, for me, become the business of communications – from gathering information and keeping it secret to distilling information and making it public.

On the surface, there are few obvious similarities between those two very different worlds.

After all, the task of the Security Service involves shining discreet torches into dark places at the edge of reason and learning enough about the dragons that lurk there to keep them safely locked away

The business of marketing and public relations, by contrast, involves shining media spotlights to get companies and their products and systems  noticed.  It certainly doesn’t involve lights being hidden under bushels.

There is, however, one enormous similarity between the two.  Let me explain. 

Once upon a time it used to be that people needed products to survive.  Now, it’s the other way around.  Products need people to survive.  In a business context, and in a market economy, companies need customers to survive.

In a cluttered market, whether the product is baked beans, carpeting or a window system, every product needs a buyer – and most products and companies have competitors.  You have competitors, I have competitors – and we’re always working to invent a better widget.

What makes us successful, or not, is the glue that binds product to customer.  That glue is marketing – the diffuse process by which we attract enquiries and convert those enquiries into sales.

Within that conversion process, the central element in any successful marketing strategy is information.  We need to provide potential customers with the essential information to buy our product rather than someone else’s.

So far, so self-evident.  Yet that’s precisely the central element that a great many firms fail to recognise in devising marketing or promotional campaigns.  The information that customers need to make that buying decision is confused by poor messaging or corporate techno-babble.

Indeed, some firms’ corporate communications are so full of technical information to be impenetrable.  Time after time, I see corporate literature or websites that convey huge amounts of information that the firm thinks it wants to communicate - but not the essential information that the potential customer will want to hear.

Marketing is about much more than a glossy brochure or fancy web presence.  It’s more than pricing policy, distribution channels or glitzy advertising.  It’s certainly much more than spending oodles of dosh on fancy corporate identities.

It’s about recognising information as a valuable commodity and using that information to manage the human imagination, whether in traditional media or on new channels such as LinkedIn or Twitter.

Sounds fanciful?  Well, maybe.  Essentially, however, we buy a product because we’re pretty sure it’ll work.  We may know that the product has been around for a while, therefore it’s reliable.  We may believe that the firm producing it also reliable and therefore to be trusted.

It’s why large firms spend equally large sums of money on promotion and PR.  What they’re essentially buying, by communicating information about themselves, is customer trust.  By making their brand visible they’re buying market credibility.

It’s a marketing dilemma that many smaller firms simply don’t address.  To achieve visibility, so the argument goes, will cost us an arm and a leg and therefore we can’t afford the pounds of flesh, particularly when times are tough.  Except, of course, good promotion doesn’t need to cost the earth.

There is no reason why smaller firms can’t also play the promotional game – especially those firms in niche sectors who can legitimately claim particular expertise in specialist markets.  It merely involves distilling key facts and figures and promoting corporate and product information online and offline in ways that potential customers will find digestible.

Back in the Security Service bar, I wondered why Mike Bettany was speculating aloud about the nature of treason.  Soon afterwards, he was arrested for attempted espionage, trying to peddle the State’s secrets to the Soviet’s men in leather coats.  He was sent down for a very long time.

Mike, it seemed, also knew the value of information and how to sell it, for whatever expedient reason or moral justification.  For the Russians, that information may have been extremely valuable.  For Mike, poor sod, the price had a more personal cost.

As I said, it’s about information and its value.  The marketing and intelligence worlds aren’t that far apart.

We are specialists in national and international PR strategy and delivery.  You can contact us at +44 (0) 1620 844736 or Charlie@davidgraypr.com or connect with us on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Wally Olins: an appreciation of brand value

Charlie Laidlaw is a director of David Gray PR and a partner in Laidlaw Westmacott.

It’s hard to overestimate the impact that Wally Olins CBE, who died recently, has had on the marketing landscape, almost single-handedly inventing the concept of brand management and embedding the idea of brand equity into the minds of marketers and business leaders.

His belief in the importance of corporate brand for companies, charities, NGOs – and from countries to individuals - was pioneering, back in an age when advertising was all about product marketing.  Olins, who co-founded the international agency Wolff Olins, wasn’t interested in what went into a packet or tin; he was interested in the company behind it.

The Financial Times has described him as “the world’s leading practitioner of branding and identity,” creating a new discipline separate from other facets of marketing communications, such as PR and advertising.  He believed that, while companies created brands, the consumer had ultimate power – not only looking for utility in what they bought, but a connective meaning with the brand.

Back in the 1960s, many of his ideas were seen as wacky.  Now, the consultancy firm Millward Brown estimates that the top 100 brands worldwide were worth $2.6 trillion in 2013, up 7% on the year before.  Some of those brands, such as Google and Microsoft, haven’t been around for very long.  Others, such as Coca-Cola, have been with us for over a century.

Olins recognised that good branding needed to precede marketing.  To him, branding was more than a fancy logo, website or snappy slogan; effective branding should capture the essence and values of a company – a “pull” strategy that consumers could relate to.  Tactical marketing generates sales; strategic branding generates loyalty.

Over the years Olins advised not only companies but countries.  Perhaps most memorably, he advised British Telecom to change to BT, and encapsulated the brand of a new mobile phone start up in a colour – Orange.

 There are various inexact methodologies for measuring brand value – looking at a brand’s market share and how it is perceived (or “mind share”).  Using that yardstick, it’s possible that a brand might have a higher mind share than market share – perhaps because consumers, while liking the product, can’t afford it. 

In other words, brand value (or brand equity) can’t be easily measured.  Simplistically, Heinz charges more for its baked beans than a supermarket’s own brand.  But, leaving aside any differences in product, many consumers vote with their wallets and buy Heinz – branding has made the company synonymous with the product.

This in turn raises interesting questions on the value of intangibles: between a company’s book valuation and the longer-term intangible value of its brands.  For many companies today, greater corporate value resides in its brands than its balance sheet and bricks and mortar.

As consumers, we now have multiple choices – from competing companies selling the same kind of product, to buying them online or in an old-fashioned shop.   Our purchasing decisions are, of course, influenced by a number of factors, not least price – but so too by our perceptual view of the company selling that product to us.

No wonder then that successful marketers and business leaders now pay close attention to brand and reputation management, recognising that corporate value is as much to do with positive consumer perceptions as it is about profit margins and market share.

The branding landscape is constantly changing, complicated also by evolving trends and, not least by how we manage our purchasing habits between needs and wants – between those things essential to us and those things that we’d like to have, but don’t need.

In a retail context, the best examples are low-cost entrants such as Aldi, Lidl or Poundland.  They have built brand value on the simple fact that we’ll pay more for things that we want, but insist on low prices for the things we need.  On the back of that simple psychology, they are building strong and valuable brands – while others, such as Woolworth’s, saw their brand equity fade to nothing.

The term “brand” comes from the Old Norse “brandr” meaning to burn – used, among other things, as a way of identifying cattle.  The oldest brand is reputed to be an Indian herbal paste, Chyawanprash, in continuous use since about 1000 BC.

So, in appreciating the intellectual rigour of Wally Olins, it’s nice to know that he was only rediscovering best business practice from long ago.

You can contact us at +44 (0) 1620 844736 or Charlie@davidgraypr.com or connect with us on LinkedIn or Facebook.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words*

Charlie Laidlaw is a director of David Gray PR and a partner in Laidlaw Westmacott.

It’s something that we all learn at school and, at one level, it’s a pretty easy skill.  After all, to misquote Somerset Maugham, all the words we need are in the dictionary – it’s just a matter of arranging them in the right order.

Of course it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it’s a skill that more of us now need as the internet and social media continue to drive a voracious information landscape demanding much greater participation.

However, whether it’s writing a brochure, website, blog, article or sales email, getting the right words in the right order can be a daunting task.

Here are some quotes from literary figures past and present that illuminate the writer’s craft.

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.”  (CJ Cherryh)

The absolute basic rule of writing anything is to write it.  Too often, we worry endlessly over a sentence or paragraph, before going onto the next sentence or paragraph, and then worrying about them.

Much better to write everything down first, and only then go back and edit.  That way, you’ve laid out all your thoughts and better able to see how they might fit together.

The American novelist John Irving once remarked that “more than a half, maybe as much as two-thirds of my life as a writer is rewriting.”

It really doesn’t matter whether your initial draft is good, bad or ugly.  The important thing is that it’s complete and can now be rewritten, edited and rewritten again.  In other words, have the courage to write badly.

Or as Ernest Hemingway more graphically put it: “The first draft of anything is shit.”

“A writer without a reader doesn’t exist.”  (Harlan Coben)

Once you’ve written your initial draft have a good, long think about who will be reading your blog, article or email.  A potential customer?  If so, what do they need to know about your product or service?  What benefits can you offer them?

You might be (justifiably) proud of your new gizmo and the technologies embedded in it.  Your potential customer probably couldn’t care less: they only want to know what it does and why they should buy it.

“A writer’s job is to tell the truth.”  (Andy Rooney)

It sounds obvious, but there’s no point in writing marketing materials that are dishonest.  However, less obvious are the marketing messages than don’t sound authentic.

If your new mousetrap is better than the rest, explain why it’s better.  Statements like, “we’ve just invented the best mousetrap in the history of the world” just won’t be believed.

Look again at what you’ve written.  Can each claim be substantiated?  If not, delete.  The advent of the internet and social media means that there is no hiding place…and dubious claims could come back to haunt you.

 “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”  (Stephen King)

When you first start out writing, that blank screen or white piece of paper can be off-putting, stopping you from starting. 

However, do take Sir Terry Pratchett’s advice: “There’s no such thing as writer’s block.  That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”

The best way to learn is to read what other companies are saying in their articles or blogs.  Okay, they might be writing rubbish but, by reading the best of them, you’ll get a better idea of what good writing looks like.

After that, it’s about practice.  For example, why not initiate a blog strategy and aim to have something posted every month?

“A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” (Thomas Mann)

Very few people, professional writers included, find writing easy.

But what’s important is to express yourself honestly, with a message strategy that resonates with your target audiences.

Get that right and most other things should follow.  And remember, you don’t have to be a great writer to write great material.

After all, Robert Benchley said:  “It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

That same success could be true for your company and its products.  Honesty and authenticity are more important than great content.

However, best also remember Robert Heinlein.  “Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”

Only joking.

*Mark Twain

Drones, connected things and ethics

Charlie Laidlaw is a director of David Gray PR and a partner in Laidlaw Westmacott.

Google has just announced that it is buying a company that manufactures high-altitude solar drones capable of flying for years and designed to beam down wireless signals.

The idea is that the drones will help to connect people in poorer parts of the world and provide a stimulus for economic growth.

It’s where science fiction meets science fact, with enormous implications for all of us, not least in the ways that new data streams are collected, analyzed and stored.

In a way, it’s a marketing dream: a connected and inter-connected world in which big data streams just get bigger, allowing for marketing messages to become ever more precise.

A United Nations report released at the end of last year suggests that some 40% of the world’s population is now online, with mobile broadband the key driver of the global information and communication technology (ICT) market.  In 1995, it was less than 1%.

The International Telecommunication Union report also estimated that by the end of last year, there would be some 6.8 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions – almost as many as there are people on the planet.

IHS Inc in the USA estimates that there will be more than eight billion internet-connected video devices by 2017 – 1.1 devices for every global citizen, and virtually double the figure in 2013.

Cisco believes that the number of connected devices will reach 50 billion by 2020, with much of the growth coming towards the end of the decade.  That’s several times the world’s population.

The reason for the projected upswing isn’t just down to solar drones finally connecting the First and Third Worlds, but the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT).

At the moment, we’re mostly connected to the internet via computer or smartphone.  But the Internet of Things takes connectivity further, allowing us to control our world in new and interactive ways.

Forget about Doctor Dolittle talking to the animals.  Pretty soon we’ll be talking to our refrigerator, oven and central heating system, telling them when to come on and what to order from the online supermarket.

In many ways, those technologies already exist so it’s just a case of embedding connectivity into new generations of gadgets.  The size of the market is immense, as a number of economic impact reports make clear:

Cisco estimates that between 2013 and 2022, $14.4 trillion of value (net profit) will be “up for grabs” for enterprises globally.  “We estimate the potential economic impact of the Internet of Things to be $2.7 trillion to $6.2 trillion per year by 2015.”

Gartner says that “the Internet of Things will include 26 billion units installed by 2020.  IoT products and service suppliers will generate incremental revenue exceeding $300 billion, mostly in services, in 2020.  It will result in $1.9 trillion in global economic value-add through sales and diverse end markets.”

In many ways the Internet of Things is already with us.  For example, internet advertising already makes use of bits of personal data to send us personalised messages.  As data mining and profiling becomes more accurate, combined with the geo-locational functionality of our smartphones, the ethical dilemmas begin to pile up.

A report on the ethics of the IoT by Delft University of Technology says that “when boundaries between public and private spaces get blurred, and are invisible, users would feel a sense of unease: they do not know what information they actually share with whom.

“Many of the developments that are about to come will reshape parts of our society and change the way we interact and make use of technology. In that context, a debate on the future values of living is necessary.”

A paper published by The Internet of Things Council goes further.  “While in many ways we may imagine the advent of the Internet of Things not only as the first major evolutionary step in the existence of the internet, we also may conceive of it as a step in the evolution of our species.”

Another paper for the Council makes clear that IoT “applications can be a great plus for users, helping them save energy, enhance comfort, get better healthcare and increased independence. In short it could mean happier, healthier lives. But those sensors also collect huge amounts of data, which brings ethical challenges—particularly when it comes to privacy and identity.”

How the Internet of Things develops is an ethical issue for all of us, whether personally or as businesses: we may make use of the technologies to effect business or personal benefits, but how do you prevent your fridge talking to your insurance company?

Ethical dilemmas aside, the potential for manufacturers and the marketing industry is staggeringly large.  The Internet of Things may seem like an abstract concept.  It is, however, a near-reality, even if it takes a drone to deliver it.

 We are specialists in national and international PR strategy and delivery.  You can contact us at +44 (0) 1620 844736 or Charlie@davidgraypr.com or connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Google+.