Matt joins board of Marine South East

Matt writes….I’m very pleased to have joined the board of Marine South East, the organisation funded in part by SEEDA (South East of England Development Agency) which has the task of tackling the critical issues affecting marine businesses in the region and supporting the economic development of the marine sector in the South East. As part of that role I will also chair the organisation’s PR and networking committee.

The role isn’t too onerous and it brings with it a great opportunity to get involved in the broader issues that effect the marine industry – both commercial and leisure – in the south east, and to meet many of the people involved. Key issues that MSE focuses on include training, innovation, development of clusters and raising the industry’s profile with the government. Hopefully we’ll be able to apply our communications skills to help get the organisation’s message across to the industry and its many stakeholders.

Major new client for ClearLine

We are delighted to announce that we have been appointed to handle the global public relations for Wilhelmsen Ships Services. Wilhelmsen Ships Service is part of Wilhelmsen Maritime Services, a Wilh. Wilhelmsen group company. It has the world’s leading maritime services network, with the ability to service 2 200 ports in 115 countries. The company’s main focus is to deliver improved vessel operating efficiency to the merchant fleet. In 2008 the company made 208,000 product deliveries to 21,000 vessels and handled 53 000 port calls. Wilhelmsen Ships Service has 4,400 employees operating out of 310 offices in 71 countries. For more information, see www.wilhelmsen.com/shipsservice.

ClearLine will be issuing press stories, including latest news on contracts, products, services, trends and other topical subjects, on behalf of WSS. Releases will be high frequency on a fast turnaround regular basis to both printed and web media around the world, reflecting the major position that WSS holds in the merchant shipping sector. The marketing headquarters of WSS are based in Oslo and we are very excited about working with the dynamic and friendly team that is located there. WSS is the latest in a growing number of clients in the shipping sector to be signed by ClearLine.

Viral marketing – a cynic’s view

It’s been the ‘latest’ hot thing for years now, and is invariably brought up by managers who think they have discovered that holy grail of marketing – publicity that catches the public’s imagination, yet is (almost) totally free!
Viral marketing is what used to be called word-of-mouth, boosted by an added kick of something that encourages individuals to actively pass the good news on to their mates. Amusing or quirky videos on YouTube have long been seen as the hottest ticket in town, creating your own computer game is another, as is giving product away to key parts of the target market. However our view here, having been through this with a number of clients over the years, is that it’s not as universally applicable as many believe it to be, nor is it free. Give it a try, by all means, but we would suggest the following caveats:
1. Most people don’t have the time to endlessly email their friends about their latest favourite consumer goody or experience. Viral marketing may be effective for 12-25 year olds, not so great for everyone else.
2. A good video – even a three minute short for the web – needs top-notch planning, scripting and production. These things take a lot of time and do not come for free. The more effortless and catchy a video seems to be, you can bet the more resources went into it.
3. Giving stuff away for free to spread the word – no problem if it’s small, cheap and, above all, disposable. If it’s not, then the process is cumbersome, expensive, and you’re cannibalising your own market.
4. Many kinds of viral marketing rely on good old advertising to get them going and sustain them, and that doesn’t come for free either.
The list goes on, but don’t get me wrong. We have no objection to promotions that use humour or something a little bit different in order to get a buzz going. We just ask that marketing managers think first before they promise the Finance Director that they won’t be needing any budget this year. Lifting your advertising profile above that of your competitors requires more than just a fertile imagination. Lots of resources and cash are needed too.

Two-day product launch for Navico

Mid-March saw us down in Lymington, enjoying some early spring sunshine as we worked with marine electronics powerhouse Navico on the European premiere of their revolutionary Broadband Radar.
It was a two-day event, combining on-the-water demonstrations with dry-land seminars. Day 1 was for the Navico EMEA distributors, while day 2 saw ClearLine in full action as around forty marine editors and writers from across Europe arrived with notebooks and cameras to find out what all the excitement was about.
Thanks to the hospitality of the Royal Lymington Yacht Club and Careys Manor Hotel, plus the wonderful weather, the event was judged a great success by all.
These events are major logistical exercises, withe the office sometimes feeling more like a travel agency than anything else, and there are always a dozen last minute details to be remembered and dealt with. But in terms of generating long-term media coverage they are unbeatable, and now that we are back at the office we look forward to seeing the coverage in the European leisure marine press over the coming months.

What’s going on in the superyacht sector?

So much for comments like ‘the rich will always be rich’ and ‘superyachts will never be out of fashion’. For the past few years the superyacht sector was viewed as recession-proof with the world awash with millionaires and billionaires looking for the ultimate lifestyle accessory, but no-one reckoned on the credit crunch and its impact on asset values and the supply of ready cash. The biggest casualties have been the Russians with their collapsing commodity empires and 60% fall in their domestic stockmarket – there may still be some extremely wealthy individuals in Moscow but they need all their spare cash to shore up their businesses and pay off their debts, so the volume of superyacht orders from east of the Urals will probably slow for a bit (read more here). Elsewhere wealthy owners of businesses are also being forced to dig deep into their own resources to keep their companies afloat as the banks seek to reduce credit lines and call in loans, all of which in theory reduces their appetite to spend on big ticket items – and they don’t come much bigger than a 30m + superyacht.
The trickle of news-flow from the yards doesn’t seem to be encouraging either, with the problems at Ferretti probably the most widely reported. Admittedly €1 billion in debt is quite a figure, but it does seem to be bad luck that their chief creditor is the Royal Bank of Scotland, currently frantically trying to reduce its loan book in an effort to restore its capital ratios. Elsewhere word is coming in on slow payments on work in progress, cancelled orders and new orders rarer than hen’s teeth. However, the long-term prospect may not be as gloomy as it appears at first sight.
Only last year many yards were reporting order books of up to five years of work. So with no new orders and, say, a pessimistic 30% cancellation rate, this would still give many of them several years’ of construction to be getting on with, surely more than enough to see them through the depression, sorry, recession. This alone should make the superyacht sector a good one to be involved with in these difficult times. That said, the big issue for these yards as for us all remains access to working capital – generally bank debt. Many a good company with a full order book has gone bust for lack of ready cash, and this must be the biggest hurdle facing these capital intensive enterprises. We’ll see. By some accounts bank lending is starting to get going again, and luxury spending is certainly not down and out as evidenced by recent good results from luxury brands Hermes and LVMH, and successful art auctions last week by Sotheby’s and Christie’s.
It looks like the rich probably will always be rich, thank goodness, just not quite so much as before.

Contact us for your free bespoke features list

Features lists – the annual schedules of planned articles and reviews published by magazines at the start of each year – used to be the bread and butter of publicity agencies in industries like ours.  Straightforward timetables showing what was going to be written, and when, made our lives nice and simple, and enabled us to give our clients plenty of time to pull together material and images.  It also helped the magazines to sell advertising by targeting specific sectors with guarantees of relevant editorial and expectant readers.

Times have changed somewhat, and in this fast-moving age a fair proportion of titles prefer to preserve their flexibility by keeping their lists either under wraps or simply plan on a shorter timescale, but there’s still plenty of information out there, with features planned on communications, water makers, wetsuits and much more in 2009, as well as sections dedicated to shows and events.

Would you like to get involved in a feature relevant to you?  You can submit text and images with a good chance of getting editorial coverage, and of course consider taking advertising space within the feature itself.  It’s high quality, targeted marketing and well worth the effort.  To find out what’s coming up that’s relevant to your sector, just email us at info@clearlinecommunications.co.uk and we’ll be happy to send you a schedule describing which magazines have editorial planned and when, with our compliments!

       

ClearLine client McMurdo reveals brand new PLB

The world’s most compact and affordable range of satellite personal location beacons

 

Marina Johnson of ClearLine was at the Miami Boat Show on 11th February to oversee the unveiling to the press of the ground breaking new FAST FIND Satellite Personal Location Beacon (PLB) range , the most compact, waterproof and versatile  406 MHz emergency location beacon available on the market today.

 

ClearLine has also conceived and built a brand new stand alone website for FAST FIND.  Visit www.fastfindplb.com to have a look.

 

FAST FIND is a potential life saver, weighing in at just 5.3 oz (150g) and with dimensions of D 1.34”(34mm) x  W 1.85” (47mm) x L 4.17”(106mm)  it will  slip into the smallest pocket or back pack compartment.  The user can set off in the most remote locations around the world, on land, at sea or in the air, and be confident of being able to contact the world’s professional search and rescue services directly if they are unlucky enough to encounter life threatening situations.

 

FAST FIND complies with tough federal and international standards.  It operates on the global COSPAS SARSAT 406MHz search and rescue satellite communication system, which is supported by international government search and rescue authorities around the world, so a call for help will be acted upon and fast.  The FAST FIND is subscription free and does not rely on commercial call centres.

 

There are two models in the FAST FIND PLB range, the FAST FIND 200 and the FAST FIND 210.  The 210 has integral 50-channel GPS for additional pinpoint location, further speeding up time of location.

 

All FAST FIND models transmit two signals simultaneously, one to the subscription free global 406 MHz satellite system.  The other (121.5MHz) is a homing signal designed to speed up the local recovery response process . Once activated, FAST FIND’s signals will continue to transmit for at least 24 hours, at a powerful 5 watt output, the 406 MHz transmission ensures that a call for help gets through whatever the conditions.

 

FAST FIND also includes a unique SOS LED flash light facility which is manually activated to further assist in speeding up the users recovery during night time rescues.

 

FAST FIND will operate in temperatures down to -20°c and its integral battery has a user storage life of 5 years,  so there’s no need for constant battery changes and re-charging.  At only £185.00 plus VAT for Model 200 and £225.00 for Model 210 the GPS inclusive model) there’s nothing else to pay – no subscriptions, no network or call charges!

 

FAST FIND is manufactured by McMurdo, who have produced emergency location beacons for more than 20 years.  The company has used the latest developments and improvements in electronic design and manufacturing to produce its latest world beating personal location beacon.

 

Like many other search and rescue agencies around the world, US Coastguard aircraft and ships have long been familiar with McMurdo’s range of emergency location beacons and have the technology to home in on FAST FIND’s signals fast. 

 

Orders are now coming in for FAST FIND and ClearLine has been busy sending information about the new product to the press and providing further information.

Interesting times…

We’ve just sent out the first issue of a planned monthly newsletter.  The aim, like any newsletter, is of course to bring our name and capabilities to the attention of prospective clients – no shame in that – but we have also set out to make it useful to those who read it.

It’s aimed at chiefly at smaller companies – those that may have only a handful of major events each year that they’d like publicised – and it also sets out to address the fears of those that have a poor view of public relations agencies.  The number of tales that we hear of firms that have been stung by agencies charging them fixed retainers and seemingly to deliver very little is disconcertingly large.  Monthly fee arrangements do work well for companies that produce a regular flow of announcements and other work, and help with budgeting and cash flow for both sides, but such a set-up is not suitable for the ad hoc projects that are typically generated by a smaller firm.  For that reason we are keen to get the message across that we are delighted to quote fixed prices for individual press releases, copy writing or any other sort of marketing assignment.  Simple as that – you have a job, we’ll give you a price. It doesn’t matter if a task takes longer than expected, once agreed the price holds good.  We think it’ll be a valuable service, and has already seen us work with some innovative smaller companies over the past few months.

We are, as they say, in ‘interesting’ times – and we all need to be adaptable to come through it in one piece.  In fact, times like these can create all sorts of unforeseen opportunities – the trick is to be out there looking for them.  We’re optimistic about the future here at ClearLine, but we recognise that the shape of our business model may be rather different in a year or two’s time.  Interesting times, indeed.

London Boat Show – some thoughts..

Big gaps, wide open spaces, and lots of discounts – it certainly didn’t feel like a normal London Boat Show.  At the time of writing we don’t have the final attendance figure but it has to be well below 100,000, but what was interesting was that, while almost everyone we talked to spoke of a ‘lost’ autumn in terms of sales, most people felt that their individual firms would get through the downturn OK and be ready to push ahead when things pick up again.  That bodes well, and reflects the feedback we had from Earls Court last month where we were surprised by the numbers of exhibitors who reported good sales.

Of course, there’s no doubt that the British marine industry in general is a good deal more gloomy than its European counterparts. At METS in November the atmosphere in the zones inhabited by our mainland compatriots was a good deal more cheerful than those with the Brits.  In part that comes from the far greater publicity given to the dire economic situation in the USA by the UK media than is the case in Europe, and also because of the much lower levels of personal debt that Europeans have compared to the residents of the UK and US, giving their economies better prospects of a faster upturn in consumer spending.  Also countries like Holland and Italy have a far greater exposure to the superyacht sector than the UK which, despite growing reports of cancelled and delayed orders, still has long enough order books at present to see it through the lean years.

So, it’s bad, but it’s not the end of the world.  All we do now is to pray for a fine spring and a hot summer and those gaps at ExCeL may yet become nothing more than an unpleasant memory.

ClearLine in Ft Lauderdale

Marina from ClearLine was at the Ft Lauderdale Boat Show in Florida at the end of October supporting our client McMurdo, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of emergency distress beacons, VHF radios and NAVTEX.  Despite the economic downturn that is being suffered in the USA, there was a good turnout at the show and continuing and growing interest in McMurdo’s products, especially the handheld Personal Location Beacons (PLBs) which can get you rescued anywhere in the world.

 

ClearLine plays an important role in supporting our clients’ distributors through our PR and marketing communications, and one of our key tasks at the show was to liaise closely with McMurdo’s US distributor Revere Supply Inc to discuss future marketing and publicity planning.  ClearLine has a powerful database of press contacts both in printed and online media in the USA, including marine, aviation, commercial maritime activity, outdoor adventurers and other sports, and our international press release programme ensures distributors are thoroughly supported in their key role – to sell products – by a robust and successful PR programme.