Archive for January, 2010

Given the current debate surrounding PR, PR spam and how to further the better practices of PR in the 21st Century, the news that 3am has fallen out with Peter Andre’s management, CAN Associates because CAN wanted to control every aspect of a minor story about Andre teaming up with a coffee emporium can’t have come at a worse time. 3am’s account makes for riveting reading. Click here to find out more.

PR is living in interesting times at the moment. As traditional marketing and advertising suffers a confidence slump, the best people in PR are carefully repositioning themselves and the PR industry into a lead practice that can take on all aspects of the modern, digitally savvy rapid-change media. But for every good and forward-thinking PR firm, there’s always one who wallows in the clichés of the industry, as CAN’s attempts to out-Kingsley Pat Kingsley have proved. Read the rest of this entry »

The more we hear from the endless Brangelina rumour mill and the less we hear from anyone officially representing the couple, the more likely it seems that there is some truth in the suggestion that their long romance with the tabloids and each other is over.

But in amongst the suggestions that they’re losing it because of lack of Oscar nominations, that Jolie is seeking comfort in the arms of Wyclef Jean and so on ad nauseam, why has there been so little concern about what happens to the family? Read the rest of this entry »

I hope you’ll forgive me a brief bask in the news that The Fame Formula has crept back up the Amazon charts and is currently at number 4 in the Film and Performing Arts Bestseller list, as well as moving slowly back into the running in the overall chart.

It certainly seems like the Fame Formula is finding a life of its own again – I’ve recently received a number of emails and tweets from people who like the book. I’m humbled by their praise – and intrigued by one tweet that insists that the book has more to say about the ad industry than most books actually about the ad industry.
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Over the years, my company has worked with a great many heritage brands – from Horlicks to Gordon’s Gin, Hovis, Selfridges, R White’s Lemonade and of course Wispa. I understand, as a consequence, that these sorts of brands – usually on the back of iconic advertising campaigns and careful PR that pushes all the least sickly nostalgia buttons – connect with the public deeply, right in the heart.
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The Independent requested my opinion on the hotting up of the Russell Brand and Katy Perry romance – and more particularly the way they are being aggressively pushed into a Brangelina-shaped hole. Or should that be RussKat, as the Independent puts it. To read more, click here…

Is PR spam the new chlamydia? Certainly it’s being fulminated about an awful lot as the latest social disease that may have infected us all, although we’re too often too ashamed to check out the symptoms.
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Speculation surrounds the departure of Jonathan Ross from the BBC after 13 years – did he jump or was he pushed?
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I’ve had a dose of New Year cheer after yesterday’s blog – I’ve just learned that the episode of Eric Schwartzman’s wonderful weekly podcast On the Record, covering all the latest issues in the world of PR, in which I discussed The Fame Formula, is the second most popular download of last year. Most cheering of all, the interview was recorded in August 2008!

If you never heard the podcast, it’s still available by clicking here. It’s also well worth subscribing to the On the Record podcast – there’s always something interesting to listen to…

I spent a little of last night, as the festive season faded and a whole new year and the return to work hove into view, watching the latest iteration of Celebrity Big Brother wipe it’s arse across my TV screen. As the usual array of desperate people, half-arsed film heroes and one hit blips on the music radar began to settle into the Big Brother house, in much the same fashion as their predecessors had last year, I got to thinking – is 2010 going to be any different from 2009? Will we have ANYTHING new in the coming months, rather than just a retread of everything that’s gone before? As we seep into January, it seems not. Read the rest of this entry »