ShipCrunch

Clean Shipping Index Death Match: Richard Branson vs. Sweden

The guy who's made space tourism a reality is pit against the homeland of IKEA over....an index.

By Ryan Skinner (email)

So, despite coverage from a handful of major news organizations, Richard Branson's own clean shipping index seemed to kind of tank. The industry itself seems to think it, well, sucks.

Into the breach comes....Sweden! A couple of scientists from Sweden have apparently constructed their own comparative green shipping index. And, unlike the usually ever-so-media-savvy Branson, they made a little video about it. My response on seeing it: Neat-o!

Are shipping lists of value to readers or advertisers?

In the wake of a mini-tussle on the LinkedIn Marine Media group, I ask: How are lists of powerful people linked to the revenue streams of those publications who push them?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

It all started with an email from a trusted source at a shipping company. He complained that Lloyd's List, in putting a pirate among its top 10 most influential people in shipping, was legitimizing piracy, and terror. What about the families of those killed or taken hostage by these thugs?, he asked.

As a result, he told me, and I quote: "I just pulled my advertising with Lloyd's." I told him to keep the ads (if he got something out of them) and just criticize Lloyd's List publicly. It would serve his purposes better.

Interested to see if there was similar sentiment in the market, I started a discussion in the Marine Media LinkedIn group (just ask to join, if you're not already a member), describing this one advertiser's response, and asking if there were any other strong reactions.

Lloyd's List responded truculently. Deputy Editor, and soon-to-be editor, Richard Meade accused me of lying, current editor Tom Leander called me to ask if I had my facts straight and a commercial guy with Informa (Lloyd's List's owners) fired emails through.

For the record, I state: No, the advertiser is not a client. And, no, I don't know whether the advertisements were ordered, then rescinded, or if he had merely planned to advertise, then cancelled those plans.

If anything, this silly non-controversy showed two things:

1) Lloyd's List blows at PR. Why demonize the messenger? If a company Lloyd's List had covered negatively in its paper were to respond like Lloyd's List has, it would be a classic example of how NOT to handle a story.

2) Lloyd's List is particularly ticklish at the moment about the commercial aspects of this Top100 list. Patrick Neylan argued convincingly that the list was not created to win advertisers; why, otherwise, would they put a pirate there, which risks opprobrium?

Curious to see how the industry feels about such lists, I have started a poll on LinkedIn, asking whether the Top100 list will impact ad-buying decisions at Lloyd's List. That poll is embedded here:

The Ultimate Shipping Social Media Primer in 12 easy pieces

 

12 zippy articles to give any shipping professional the ultimate social media head-start

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Over the past two years, I have done my best to cover everything that moves in terms of social media and the shipping industry. This has resulted in 12 posts that, together, form the ultimate shipping social media primer. So, without further ado, here goes:

Social Media Basics

• Top Social Media Entrepreneurs in Shipping: These eight guys are shipping's social media pioneers.
• Biggest enterprise social media brands in shipping: Eight companies that have been doing it right.
• The state of social media in shipping: Five steps to social media in shipping ninja-hood.

Social Media Best Practice

• All-a-twitter: A chat with Lloyd's List's Mark Warner: Not with LL anymore, but good stuff nonetheless.
• A chat with Brett Keil - shipping's LinkedIn superuser: The guy's started shipping's best discussion forum. Respect.
• Shipping blog outreach: It happens. Really. - One shipping guy knows the new PR. Here's what he thinks.
• First-mover opens up in-house expertise to social network: TMC Connect created an online forum. Would they open it?
• Twitter: Special marketing sauce at maritime brokerage: FIS shares their approach to winning with twitter.
• gCaptain and the power of community: a chat with John Konrad: Shipping's blogger godfather opens up....

Social Media Tools

• Shipping in social media: Your twitter starter kit: A touch outdated, but still pretty good. Also see Coracle Voice's Who's Who in shipping twitter
• Six ways to start LinkedIn shipping discussions that succeed: This can be done right, and it can be done wrong. Do it right.
• 5 steps to empower your marine sales force using social media: Some quick and easy tips to big-time success.
• Define your business world: Wikipedia & Shipping: Don't get left behind. Talk about your technology on Wikipedia. Your competitors are already doing it.

Want to know more? Contact me. I love to talk about the topic, and I'm easy to talk to (in other words, I won't beat you over the head with a sales pitch...right away).

ShippingEfficiency.org: Slam dunk for the industry, or toaster stunt?

Is the Richard Branson-magic the stuff of industrial progress, or the stuff of smoke and mirrors?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Carbon War Room's Peter Browning dropped me, ever so casually, a press release from Cancun last night, informing me of the world's first carbon emissions data hub for shipping. Their press release is here: Download Carbon War Room unveils world’s first carbon emissions data hub for shipping . Washington Post, The Guardian and Sky News have already carried the news.

Basically, we're talking about a web-site, with a back-end that claims to provide ship charterers and supply chain pro's with vessel efficiency information. It's built on the IMO's EEDI and the CCWG's CO2 index.

I'm not going to dive into the merits of EEDI and the CCWG methodology. Leave it that they have some soundness. @freightinvestor responded to my tweet arguing that shippingefficiency.org was a slam dunk for the industry thus:

Now, I've had my issues with Carbon War Room in the past. And, again, I would argue they're making the same mistake. Once again, they ask for widespread participation, while they only follow up with the few who serve their interests.

But, alas, you can't get upset when the big kids won't let you play in their sandbox, if they manage to build a great sand castle. Many in the industry have argued that a widely inclusive and democratic process on big, industrial questions is impossible. Better to work with a coalition of the willing. Perhaps that's the rhyme and rhythm of this kind of progress.

The question remains: Is what they've constructed merely a pretty sand castle, or is it something better and sturdier?

As PR stunts go, slapping a metaphorical energy efficiency tag, like those we see on dishwashers and toasters, on to the side of a post-Panamax container ship has some merit. It's cute, straightforward and easily comparable. It just might fix an industry problem, allowing buyers of shipping services to select based on a vetted standard for environmental performance.

If there are any problems related to the public value of shippingefficiency.org, it's these:

1. It could kill moonshots. That is, when you create a nice and easy stepwise way to enable lowered emissions (if small), then you sap the energy from bolder efforts to gun straight for zero emissions.
2. It doesn't really do anything about overall shipping-related emissions. Coal-powered production of goods in one country will not suffer, compared to cleaner-powered production in another country. That is, we're only looking at the relative efficiency of moving things, not producing them. Arguably, shipping could say that production isn't it's problem. From a PR perspective, though, it is.

Shipping web-sites that aim to bite off as much as shippingefficiency.org has, and chew it, are few and far between. Shippingefficiency.org doesn't solve shipping's emissions problems, but it puts a decent face on the effort, if only for the industry itself.

Got opinions? Anyone leaving a comment here, sharing their opinion of shippingefficiency.org, I promise to forward to Carbon War Room's Peter Boyd directly. Let's put some opinions on this.

Shipping marketer, who the hell are you talking to?

Probably 70% of marketing efforts in this industry are box-checking exercises. Who are you talking to?

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Tell me if this sounds familiar: A new pump/box/widget/port-service is going to be launched, so the marketing people put together direct mailings, a press release, maybe a press conference at a trade show, a product sheet, an advert for a few trade mags, a new product web-page, maybe an e-newsletter and (dare I say it?) a blog post.

Lots of marketing boxes are checked. We're good. Then someone asks the marketers: "So, who did we reach? Who read your stuff? Who liked it? Who came back for more information?" Then the marketers say, "hey, that's sales job!"

No.

I take it for granted that at least 70% of marketers and marketing efforts in shipping (and probably more) work just like this.

Collision over port-area pollution, e-Navigation and shipping secrecy?

An irresistible force hits an immovable object in the immediate vicinity of voters. Ouch.

By Ryan Skinner (email)

Shipping's long pleaded its innocence in environmental terms. It argued for efficiency in supply chains, even as smoke stacks belched SO_X and NO_X into port-side populations' lungs.

Suddenly, shipping's going to get the terrible opportunity to put some figures behind its words. That is, ships' operators are going to be asked (at the sharp end of a law) to reveal their emissions figures to port authorities.

Why? Because they have these figures, because port authorities know they have them and because new technologies for port traffic make them important. What's going on here is the collision of emissions monitoring, greater attention to emissions in port areas and e-Navigation.

e-Naviwhat, you say? Many imagine e-Navigation as just an extension of ECDIS, whereby you'll get your charts on a screen, along with weather information, tides, blackjack, sports scores and your horoscope, or something along those lines.

But e-Navigation is more than that. It's about tying ships much closer to shore authorities. We're talking about setting up a big, fat data and communications pipe between ships coming to ports and shoreside authorities.

One of the often-stated goals of e-Navigation would be a rationalization of port traffic, so that ships would not steam hellbent-for-leather to a port, then idle just outside the port waiting for a slot. It would be folly to believe that shoreside authorities aren't going to demand a feed of emissions data from each ship coming to land from, say, 100 kilometers away.

Will shipowners and operators freak out to hear they're going to have to give all and sundry full access to their pollution vital signs? To their schedules? And to their operating profile? I imagine so. After all, Maersk recently announced that they would give shippers with full, certified emissions data related to their shipments. They never said they would publish the same on a Times Square billboard.

Particularly for port areas, greater transparency and novel technology are set to slam into the interests of secrecy. What's your take?