The recent #qantasluxury Twitter debacle is a classic social media stuff-up. Here at PUSH, we often work with clients on what is often referred to as PR 2.0. It’s a dark art that is never straightforward. As an example, we have been working with a client in the past few weeks who was the subject of a particularly nasty social media campaign. As things turned out, a competitor brewed up the trouble. It’s surprising how often that happens. Looking back, the most important advice we gave our client was about the value of the pause button. We were able to convince them to hold fire at strategic points in the counter insurgency, as we like to call it. Like many things in this crazy social media world, it seems counter-intuitive. Conventional wisdom is that one needs to react to negative comments quickly. In their case, we counselled them to pause [...]

We are blessed to work with great clients who are committed to this online and social media thing. It makes our job a lot easier when that commitment is in place. But there is one recurring issue that our clients are struggling with. It’s the new pressures on time and resources that a commitment to digital and social places on you. You may be a politician, a retailer, or a sporting team (to use some totally anonymous examples ) but you will face the same issue. Our clients have become well-versed in the role of publisher. Not that long ago it was a completely foreign concept. No longer are you just a politician, retailer, or sporting team (to use some totally anonymous examples), you also have to become a publisher of content. Then social media comes along and moves the goal posts again. Now you have to engage in conversations [...]

 A lot has been written about Steve Jobs since his death. For PUSH, his legacy is simplicity and beauty. No person has championed these wonderful qualities more. Of course, the most obvious expression of these is the hardware and software that Apple creates. Without them PUSH would simply not exist. However, we often find ourselves using the Apple website as an exemplar of what a website should be. It’s often the perfect way to visualise our thinking to a client. It is the most successful ecommerce site on the planet, in dollar terms. Yet it is beguiling in its simplicity. And it’s beautiful. As Jobs said “Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design [...]