59° 56' N

The PR Power of Source - Where do things come from?

Global trade will hurt if the absolute good of local supply gains widespread acceptance. A strategy...

By Ryan Skinner (email)

No one knows where anything comes from anymore. The best bet is China, of course. Looking for a new microwave oven recently, I asked the sales attendant where three models were manufactured. He couldn't find out in the chain's ERP system, or on the packaging. It wasn't until I bought one and got it home that I saw it, sure enough: Made in PRC.

People want to know where things come from. Two examples:

1) A Norwegian power supplier recently aired a new, funky commercial that gives a metaphysical, soft interpretation to where its power comes from.

2) Newspapers worldwide recently carried a popular story describing how Sweden has introduced carbon labelling on consumer products. Now buyers can see how much carbon goes into making things.

People want to know where things come from. It's a lesson for anyone in shipping, or global trade.

Working for a major telecommunications company some years back, I covered a story on how RFID tags were being used to track inventories in complex logistics systems. In other words, I understood that things, down to all their essential components, can in fact be tracked.

It wouldn't take a genius ERP company to develop an "open source manufacturing" solution, which allows consumers to track down not only the precise source of their product, but all of its constituent parts down to where the raw materials were mined, extracted and refined.

And this is no pie-in-the-sky idealism. Another client of ours is conducting HSE surveys of all of its suppliers worldwide. It's not only a sound working practice; it's protecting yourself from liability. Just ask Nike and Mattel - two companies noticeably burned by bad practices in their supply chain.

This information should be turned over to consumers. Yes, you'll expose that carefully developed supply chain to competitors' scrutiny. But, is that so bad? I mean, if your competitive edge is using a supplier no one else knows about, don't you have bigger problems?

Give people the ability to track products back to the source. People want to know where things come from.

Anybody who knows of a company that offers this kind of thing, please share, or leave a comment.

Prayers Answered? A shipping emissions game

Combining mathematical simulation and crowd-sourcing as the solution to the emissions puzzle

By Ryan Skinner (email)

I remember a commercial from my childhood in which a guy who loves chocolate bars and a girl who loves peanut butter meet over a candy counter. If they combine their forces, Voila!, they get Reece's Peanut Butter Cups - chocolate and peanut butter in one go! (on reflection, that commercial has less than faint sexual undertones).

Well, I thought I might have stumbled on my Reece's moment when I saw that a Dutch research  group had launched a game combining shipping simulations and carbon emissions.

After all, I've argued before about the value of games as great tools to run safe simulations, and feed information and data back into live operations.

And, again, at a workshop on reducing ship emissions, I proposed two rather unconventional solutions: Mathematical simulations and crowd-sourcing. Couldn't you, I argued, create a kind of game or simulation that allowed players to test out technologies and operating profiles in order to optimize economy and emissions? The engineers in attendance weren't bowled over by my idea, as they seemed more keen to talk scrubbers, coatings and that kind of thing.

Alas, vindication! Reviewing a speech held by the Dutch PM opening Europort, I stumbled across this sentence: "...at the stand of the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands. There, skippers of inland barges can use a game simulator to determine the best way of saving fuel and reducing CO₂ emissions." Bonanza!

I've been to MARIN's web-pages, and the game is only given a mention. Whether they can or will put it online, whether it can be applied to blue-sea ships and whether it's just a cheap ploy or a real tool...all these remain to be seen. I'll ask, anyway.

A game in which players can test out the interactions between different technologies, their costs, their benefits, their unintended side effects and the rest, that's what I want. Could this be it?

Shipping's online advertisers take note

Even when you get data on your advertisements, you'll need to consider it carefully

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Online advertising's magic formula, I argued recently, was that it provides metrics. You can measure how successful your ads are, as opposed to old-fashioned circulation numbers and guesswork.

Now one of the lead marketing advisors for NIKE shares a post that adds spice to that magic formula. He says:

The problem is that the information is often misused or misunderstood by the people using it. And we are all to blame. We are all to blame because we obsess over the wrong data. We are all to blame because we have not done a good job of thinking about how we should best use the data, or even what we should measure.

And continues, later in the post:

On the surface, data appears to be truth. But, in fact, what data gives is a specific lens or interpretation or slice of truth. We don't often think of it that way, but it's the reason for the famous line "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

He saves his worst wrath for the kind of vertical ad sales that syndicate advertisements across networks (ref. those ads you are surprised to find in unexpected places - such as an ad for a local Norwegian grocery store popping up on YouTube).

Nonetheless, he makes a good point about content and valuation. Consider where you're putting your ads, and consider even more carefully what you're saying. Then show some perspective when looking at the RoI data.

That is, if you get any data at all, which was my initial gripe.

Being seen to be doing something: OMSA at the gates

Sometimes a press release is an end in itself, as a recent OMSA press release displays

By Ryan Skinner (email)

A few weeks ago I wrote a mildly controversial rebuke of the IMO's passive approach to the media, arguing that its failure to get in front of the news cycle was costing it jurisdictional authority. If the IMO isn't seen to be in control, others will leap to control.

Now OMSA, the US Offshore Marine Services Association, displays exactly what I was talking about. In a recent press release, OMSA "applauds" US government efforts to pursue foreign shipowners for tax violations.

This message is not intended for the IRS, nor for the foreign shipowners themselves (though it will not escape their notice), nor the general public, who - more often than not - could care less. This press release lets OMSA's stakeholders know that OMSA is on top of the situation, and even suggests OMSA is responsible for the government's intensified controls.

This press release required little effort of OMSA, but it reminds all of its stakeholders that the organization is in control. The IMO would do well to take notice.

Emissions reductions in shipping: Where tomorrow's projects are

Is there a better place to see the future of shipping than Norway's maritime R&D funding plans?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

In an article two weeks ago, I talked with a leading newbuilding consultant at Wilhelmsen who believed that those shipyards who will survive this downturn will focus on R&D investments. Whether it is Norway, France, Finland, US, Korean or Chinese yards, much of this R&D funding will come from the government. So what are these countries prioritizing? The answer may be as good an indicator as any of the future of shipping.

Shipping media, tear down this pay wall!

The pay wall in many shipping media titles will fall, but only after a few things happen

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Much good online news is free. News pundits argue that it will stay that way. Then why is so little content from the top shipping titles available free online? Why do they bury their news like some paranoid squirrel under what is called the pay wall - the online subscription barrier?

For the time being, these titles argue that they couldn't abandon the pay wall if they wanted to. And, in many cases and among many editors, they probably do want to, in order to build their readership. Revenue from web advertising just doesn't cover the cost of keeping a modern news organisation afloat.

That isn't the whole story. Given a little trust in the market and aggressive marketing on the part of these newspapers and advertisers, the pay wall will fall. In fact, it must.

10 technologies to change shipping - #4 A profusion of propellors

From contra-rotating to pulling ones, propellor design will change shipping in coming decades

By Ryan Skinner (email)

I'm no naval architect. Like any other lay person, I rely on the observations of the experts, then assess what it means. It takes no knowledge of hydrodynamics to conclude that novel propellor arrangements will change shipping.

Why? A few major reasons:

Read how Wärtsilä designed a marketing path of its own

Designafish.com is far from run-of-the-mill marine marketing; nor were the results

By Ryan Skinner (email)  

I like to draw attention to the great, the new and the wild in thinking PR in the marine and shipping business. So I had to talk to Wärtsilä about its designafish.com campaign.

If you haven't seen it yet, go there. Now. Then come back.

I asked Mikael Simelius, Wärtsilä's VP for branding, how Designafish.com came about, what it cost them and what results they've seen.

The PR value of a race that isn't a race: Floating LNG technology

Shell, Flex LNG, Hoegh LNG and SBM Offshore in a "race" that all will likely win

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Consider a painting by Jackson Pollock (right). From seemingly random splatterings of paint, art afficionados interpret a whole world of characters, events and happenings. If a person is involved enough, he will find a story in just about anything. Engineers are no exception.

Bloomberg.com recently carried a story that would certainly get shipyards' and suppliers' mouths watering. Shell would build three mega-ships to exploit gas fields near Australia. These were the first of a new kind of technology: Floating offshore LNG production facilities.

The article described how Shell was vying with Oslo's Hoegh LNG and Flex LNG to be the first to liquefy natural gas aboard a ship. In fact, they're not the only ones. SBM Offshore, one of the world's major FPSO engineering companies, is on the same path. (Pictures of each project are at the bottom of this article.)

A race! Ah, how exciting! One immediately imagines the Americans' race against the Nazi's to develop the nuke. Or even the battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD. The idea of a race stokes our imaginations. Competition is the best kind of motivation.

But, in this case, the race is pretty much a fabrication.

Making a name: E-marketing and ship crewing

Maritime Connector's founder Eric Superina talks about his experiences, hits & misses

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Courage and tenacity: Two qualities you'll need to get ahead as an Internet entrepreneur. Talk to Eric Superina of Maritime Connector, a net-based recruiter for ship crews, and you'll discover he's got bushels of both.

First of all, he left a successful career as an officer with major shipowning companies like Höegh LNG and Golar LNG, just as the manning crunch was setting in, to start Maritime Connector. Then, only one year into operation, the company had pushed its way up to a remarkable page-rank on Google. Novel tactics were getting success in a relatively novel Internet market for manning, and the company had notched up some remarkable successes.

I asked him how he's gotten Maritime Connector's name into the market, which channels it used, which tactics, which hits and which misses.