My Media: Alan Tyrrell, Group Media Relations Manager, Hibernian Aviva
8 December 09
Newspapers:
In my role I read them all. That would vary between hard copy reading and reading online on the various websites. Our media monitoring service would supply us with relevant clippings and cuttings for our industry and matters related to important issues like road safety, healthcare and pensions. Certainly the Lex Column in the FT would be one I would dip in and out of quite regularly. Also mainstream business and financial magazines.
Journalism:
Generally the quality of writing, reporting and broadcasting here in Ireland is just super. They really work hard at their craft. The odd time I would dip into some of the German papers that are available here; Die Zeit, Suddeutsche Zeitung and I would also read some of the UK publications but not as frequently.
Radio:
I'm a bit of a flicker in terms of the radio. I use public transport to commute to work, so I listen to the radio in the morning and the evening for prolonged periods. George Hook is always great. For relaxation I listen to Phantom a bit too and on the opposite end of the spectrum, 4FM. And I don't think there's anyone in the country that gets away with not listening to Joe Duffy at some stage during the week.
Television:
Mad Men is one series that we're going through at the moment. In one of the episodes, 'Carousel', there is a pitch process and it is just amazing how the producers catch the intensity of a pitch and also the 'brilliance' when it all comes together and hits the mark - anyone doing a pitch should take a look at that one. It really gets into the emotional stress, pressure and buzz that's involved with pitches. I like The Thick of It on BBC, and Scrubs is always good for a laugh. Obviously I would also watch the news and current affairs programmes, but for downtime I would go for DVDs more so than TV.
Books:
I read a book a couple of years back, Stasiland, and it was all about real life stories from East Berlin. It was an amazing insight into how different the world can be depending on who is in charge. I would read a lot of books, and the style of book I go for varies from fiction to non-fiction to a little bit of history. The Shipping News is what I am reading at the minute. It's a fantastic read. The ability of the author to put just five words into a sentence and to have such power behind them is incredible. It's one more amazing example of the beauty and power of language.
New Media:
I wouldn't really use Facebook that much with work. I would certainly use social and new media a good deal, LinkedIn for example. However, I am much more of the school of thought that it is actually better to meet people in person, to sit down and have a cup of coffee face-to-face.
Adverts:
A really cool ad I saw recently was the Age Action Ireland one, and it uses the character DJ Hip Op. It's a clever, innovative use of communication tools with a great twist. In the realm of communications - be it advertising, experiential, PR etc, the abilty to create something special that interrupts your schema and drive home a message is what's most important. An older ad execution that I think achieves this was for Virgin Atlantic. It featured trays of eggs, wrapped in a Virgin Atlantic wrapper, and placed on a baggage carousel in the airport with the tagline 'Handled by Virgin Atlantic' - quite clever.
Recent Flooding:
As the country's largest insurer we are focusing on the recent floods and I think the most important thing about our response to the flooding was that the reality of our customers matched the promise of our communications. The dedication of our front line staff to the people who fell victim to the flooding proved a real moment of truth for us, and certainly a moment that we are quite proud of. A kind of internal comms mantra we're using at the moment is '4,500 and Zero', and that's 4,500 calls to our claims line and zero of them dropped. That took a huge effort from the people on the front line.
Our ability to activate our business and to launch the advanced payment option, and basically to stand by our promise which is 'Looking out for you' has been a real source of pride in the past few weeks. Flooding is a hugely traumatic experience. We were proud and satisfied that we could be there for our customers.
