Media Buzz: Social Pundit; Aberfield; Epiphany; Open Communications

AN online monitoring service is giving football clubs the power to manage players’ social media activity, alerting them to controversial tweets.

Social Pundit has been developed Leeds-based online marketing agency Blueclaw to help teams manage and monitor social media activity within their club. It has been adopted by British clubs in the Premier League, Championship and Scottish Premier League.

It is used by Celtic FC, Birmingham City FC and QPR FC – with new clubs set to adopt the platform before the end of the year.

Blueclaw said that since January 2011, footballers in the UK have racked up £424,000 worth of public fines for inappropriate tweeting.

Social Pundit allows clubs to monitor players’ tweets 24/7, sending email alerts to club officials when a player tweets something they shouldn’t, assessed against a database of over 3,000 trigger words – ranging from minor swear words to racist terms.

Furthermore, the system then ranks the offending tweet based on severity and shows how many re-tweets the tweet has had, so that club officials can quickly understand its potential impact and react.

Head of social media at Blueclaw, Sean Walsh, said: “Social Pundit will completely revolutionise the way clubs deal with a player’s social media activity. The service can be accessed anywhere in the world and allows clubs to not just find out what their players are tweeting quickly, but also keep an easy record of their best assets and worst offenders on Twitter.”

Social Pundit was developed in October 2012 as an online dashboard and piloted by Birmingham City FC.

Birmingham City’s head of media and comms, Andy Walker, said: “Social Pundit helps to act as a constant reminder to our playing squad that their status as role models requires them to use social media responsibly. In particular with Social Pundit’s Twitter tracking tool, alerts are e-mailed out to myself whenever one of our players tweets an inappropriate word and I can then act accordingly. It’s not a case of us not trusting our players as often an innocent tweet could be taken out of context and create a bigger PR issue.”
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ABERFIELD Communications is celebrating a trio of new food and drink clients this month, adding two leading British bottled water brands and the UK’s primary producer of ducks to its expanding client roster.

Water Brands Group, which owns Harrogate Spring Water and charity water Thirsty Planet, has handed its PR and social media over to Aberfield as it enters a significant period of growth.

Cherry Valley has tasked the agency with delivering a fully integrated campaign to reinforce its position as the number one supplier of duck to Chinese restaurants in Europe and to re-establish its presence in the grocery retail market.

Leeds-based Aberfield has also recruited former journalist Jenny Wilkinson to the team. Senior consultant Wilkinson brings over 11 years of PR experience, specialising in the finance, technology and public sectors.
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SKY Betting and Gaming has announced that it has appointed Leeds digital agency Epiphany to manage all aspects of its SEO strategy, including earned media and off-page creative, across its Sky Bet, Sky Poker, Sky Vegas and Sky Bingo brands.

Based in Leeds, Sky Betting and Gaming is one of the country’s leading online betting and gaming companies.  Sky Betting & Gaming consists of four core brands: Sky Bet, Sky Vegas, Sky Poker and Sky Bingo and one of the UK’s leading multi-sports websites, Sporting Life.  

Rob Shaw, CEO of Epiphany Group, said: “Working with Sky Betting and Gaming is a dream come true for our technical SEO, creative and PR teams.”
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OPEN Communications is celebrating a string of successes with an account win, appointment to the team and a birthday to mark five years in business.

Xamax, the work and sportswear clothing specialist, has appointed the team to manage its PR and provide support with social media tools in order to raise the profile of the business.

In addition to the account win, Rebecca Hart, former journalist, editorial assistant and keen blogger joins the agency as an account executive.