Archive for May, 2010

New media commentators have decreed that the age of the personal PR minder is dead. “Long live Twitter” is their clarion call. It’s the new communication tool for folk in the public eye. Openness and willingness to feed the twitter cycle offers an opportunity to unveil the ‘real you’; to be judged as well as to engage in an open, public conversation.

Who needs a flak when you talk directly to the people? The evidence that stellar Twitter personalities – in the shape of Ashton Kutcher, Jonathan Ross, Stephen Fry and Sarah Brown – have benefited from this thesis is proof that they are shining examples of successful DIY #PR 3.0. Read the rest of this entry »

David Cameron is THE great communicator in the new era of politics. His effortless performance on the Today programme earlier must have sent a shiver down the spine of the journalistic community. How will they get at this moderate, articulate, confident, unflappable and frankly relentless Old Etonian

OK, Dave is enjoying surfing on the bubbly froth of post-election hype and confidence, but frankly he is a fit-for-purpose, well-designed, media-facing PM. A shiny Middle England man in an M&S suit broadcasting his POV like a airline pilot transmitting a pre-flight weather forecast. Evan Davis could not get a word in edgeways . Instead, he was left covered in Cameron-slick as the PM steamrollered his questions.

Obviously Dave is briefed very well and is prepared for every battle; after all he is an ex #PR flak. But I detect a secret weapon lurking in his arsenal and I suspect has been trained well to apply it with maximum force. It’s a frightening technique I have not witnessed before – one that seems unique to Smooth FM Dave. Read the rest of this entry »

BP’s PR machine has been in overdrive of late; their latest effort at saying “look how hard we’re working to sort the oil spill out” is a live roving webcam monitoring the clean-up effort. I’ve tried to go on it but it’s never operational – either broken or offline. Whether that’s by overload of people looking or by design remains to be seen.

I wonder what Barnum would have done? Yesterday, I went to see an exhibition on him for the 200th anniversary of his birth in Sheffield at the National Circus and Fairground archive at the University of Sheffield, run by Vanessa Toumin. It was brought home to me once again that Barnum never lost an opportunity to network with the famous people of his day, such as Mark Twain, and make sure that he and his ideas were deeply embedded in the 19th century conversation. Read the rest of this entry »

The Treasury team stepped out into the sunshine to announce George Osborne’s raft of cuts which aim to make recovery a sure thing – a wise move, as it’s always easier to disguise bad news in good weather.

There was a fair bit of tough news to swallow all round, but what intrigued me was the way that Osborne deferred to Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, when it came to handing out the truly hard-to-swallow news.

This is where the coaltion comes into its own for the Tories; they have more seats and more cabinet members than the Lib Dems, but they get to share the pain equally. Should these cuts in spending create a double dip recession, as Labour predicted, the Tories will work hard to offload the worst of it onto the shoulders of their coalition colleagues, as they did today.

So Sarah Ferguson has been turned over by the News of the World this morning? Reading the front page, it was as much as I could do not to yawn. Yet another sorry tale of money grubbing in Banana Republic GB.

The cash for access sting is unsurprising; it indicates that some people close to the Royals see it as a right to leverage their access for cash. Yes, it’s a ruthless turnover and it just about ticks the public interest box – but wake up, cronies; this is what the NOTW does, so very well. Read the rest of this entry »

Clegg and Cameron are making a surprisingly good fist of unity thanks to the brand new and shiny PR machines behind the scenes, not to mention the PR machine that is Cleggameron. It’s working so well that even Rory Bremner admits to being unsure about how to satirise them.

I can’t help but feel a little unease at the way they present themselves, and the PR wheels running the Cleggameron image juggernaut. I wonder if this honeymoon period will last longer than the usual ones – remember Tony Blair amiably wandering down Downing Street predicting that by the time he left office, the gates Thatcher had installed to keep the terrorists out would have been removed? How ironic that seems now. Or Gordon Brown’s five minutes of popularity when he took over? Read the rest of this entry »

Looking carefully at the one-eyed Manga nightmares that are the 2012 Olympic mascots, I have been wondering at the designers’ thinking – and not as negatively as you might suspect. I think there may be a classicist at work behind these Cyclopses.

According to Hesiod, the Cyclopses were strong, stubborn giants who were “abrupt of emotion” – they were also synonyms for brute strength and power, and their name was invoked in connection with massive masonry.

I wonder if these mighty mythological monsters are what inspired the designers to create the Olympic Terrortubbies? Are they meant to symbolise mighty marketing? Or does the fact that, if you stand them facing one another, they look like the 2012 logo have anything to do with it? Read the rest of this entry »

Top PR marks to Gary Lineker for withdrawing from writing his column for the Mail on Sunday in protest over their handling of the Lord Triesman story. Lineker has done the right thing by distancing himself as effectively as possible from the Mail on Sunday’s stance – even though they have offered him the opportunity to keep the column and still criticise them explicitly.

His departure, from an extremely well paid job, sends the clearest possible signal to the paper’s editorial – and to the paper’s readers – that he is serious when he says: “I think this story goes against the national interest because the country is behind the 2018 bid, in which a lot of people invested a hell of a lot of time.”

Gary Lineker has revealed himself as a British sporting hero once again, thanks to his actions. I wonder if the Mail on Sunday will run the next part of its story about Lord Triesman this coming weekend. Can they really allow themselves to be seen to be going against the national interest? I can’t wait to see…

Mascot merchandising from the Beijing Olympics

The London Olympics committee launch the 2012 Olympic mascot tonight on the One Show and everyone with an interest in design is hoping that it’s not a dog’s breakfast, like the logo, which looks, most unfortunately, like an abstracted version of a Simpsons porn cartoon as drawn by a committee, all of whom were wearing blindfolds.

That they are launching the mascot on the One Show is a good sign – they realise that they need to get momentum underway to keep the Olympic brand in the public eye in as positive a way as possible. It’s absolutely wonderful PR, getting this slot on Primetime TV, which will see it talked about through the night after a couple of days build up and should take away some of the sting of the post-logo criticism.

There’s no doubt that they will be using the mascot to keep the cash flow to the Olympics steady – people will doubtless be buying it as a collectors item – but my hope is that they will be honouring the best British designers in a way that the logo just didn’t.

Do they believe that Britain has an appetite for great design? I hope so, because if they fail in this, it’ll be an indication that political correctness and quango culture will have forced the Olympics away from a celebration of all that’s great about Britain – the Olympics celebrations should never just be about the sport. Will the committees have the bravery and initiative to make this a great Olympic mascot? Here’s hoping.

As long as the mascot is not an actual White Elephant – that would stretch Britain’s capacity for irony just a little too far.

There’s quite an outpouring of anger in the wake of Melissa Jacobs’ kiss and tell on Lord Triesman – some of it is even being directed at Max Clifford, who is attempting to sail over the affair with the caveat that he was only doing his job.

It’s worth bearing in mind that, had this been a high-ranking politician, people would be doing all they could to find out whether Jacobs had planned this and would be doing all they could to destroy her. As it stands, it is unlikely to get investigated fully and the only true losers will be football fans – particularly if Triesman’s unguarded slurs on the Spanish and Russians lead to the UK not hosting the 2018 World Cup. Read the rest of this entry »