This year, however, something was missing. As per usual, I totally reworked my presentation, but found myself surrounded by other speakers from TV, Advertising and elsewhere flogging the same shtick they’ve been peddling the last couple of times round the track.

Perhaps I’m being unfair to my esteemed colleagues: they all succeeded wonderfully in making PowerPoint their bitch, fleshing out each point with whizzing animations, Technicolor wankfests and glorious info graphics to the point of turgidity. However, at heart, they were clinging on, and they were offering old thoughts to some of the newest minds in the country. Once again, it’s the PR world that’s at the front line of culture change.

I’m filled with hope that PR could be right at forefront of communications culture change, but first we have to overcome the prejudices and obstacles placed in our way by a group of disciplines who are perpetually convinced that they are right. At the course, as in real life, they were putting lipstick on a series of proverbial pigs. The audience may have been comprised largely of vegans and vegetarians, but pork was most certainly on the menu.

When confronted with all this self-congratulatory bollocks, I’m reminded of an old Jewish joke: A rabbi is acting as marriage counselor and agrees to see a couple, but one at a time. The wife carries on about the husband, and the rabbi nods, over and over: “You’re right! Of course, you’re right.” In his session, the rabbi tells the husband: “Yes, you’re right. What can I say– you’re right!” After they leave, the rabbi’s assistant, who heard it all, asks: “Not to be rude, Rabbi, but how can they both be right?” To which the rabbi responds: “You know what– you’re right!”

He is an Ad man and Guru of considerable stature

I read and liked his book Creative Mischief.

Usually, Dave provides clear thinking and words of wisdom.

I’ve been preoccupied;

I missed his recent CampaignLive blog Stuntvertising.

I read the post, my heart sank.

This got my goat;

“Normally I’m not a fan of ‘stunt’ advertising.

The sort of thing that only runs once, in one place.

Hardly any real consumers ever see it.

This is really more PR than advertising.”

http://davetrott.campaignlive.co.uk/#ixzz1ZtOCZRUw

So Dave, please tell me what you really think of PR?

Actually, please don’t define the craft.

Correlation does not imply causation.

Instead, why don’t we meet for a lunch and discuss the issues.

I think it would be interesting.

Consider this;

PR folk in the modern world face a slew of fundamental challenges.

Its more about aspect, bearing and quality of status.

We fight to be heard because although we are more relevant than ever before.

Its a tough ask, as its farmed against a backdrop of outmoded cliché.

Its a daily challenge, forcing ‘the others’ to understand whilst projecting esteem.

More established disciplines in the marketing mix still fail to understand what we do.

To mash up a Groucho Marx’s quote “Anyone who says he can see through PR is missing a lot.”

I wish we could rid the world of all the PR clichés.

Guess it’s impossible in an age of land grab and the reason I created Borkowski.do

Here is a mash-up to end this succinct thought (big thanks to Duke Ellington)

Borkowski.do is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing

The campaign, which allowed people to sign up their friends to be ‘pranked’ with a serious of worrying emails from one of 5 colourful fictional characters, was a bungled attempt by the Saatchi suits to make the world’s most boring car company look radical. This is a textbook example of why forging the brand narrative is best left to the publicists: the creative excellence of Ad Agencies does not extend to long form narrative content.

In other words, it was a textbook example of advertising as insular and irrelevant communication. Instead of seeking to connect with any true brand narrative or profile, the Saatchi & Saatchi team betrayed their arrogance and remained convinced of their idea of what the brand needed, irrespective of what people actually wanted.

Ad folk lack understanding of the psyche of the news agenda: unlike PRs, they aren’t programmed to anticipate the downside, to work the worst case scenario into the fibre of their strategy.

Amanda Duik, the woman suing the company, was apparently targeted over a week long period with emails- genuine, for all she knew- from a football hooligan character called ‘Sebastian Bowler’, who came complete with his own S&S-created myspace profile and other web-based proofs of existence. She reckons she experienced sufficient mental distress over the terrifying period to sue for massive damages from all involved.

Those who don’t follow my thoughts closely might be surprised that I’m condemning S&S for this: what differentiates it from the kind of stunts perpetrated by myself and my influences? It’s certainly not because I’ve decided to clamber onto my high horse.

When classic Hollywood movie publicist Jim Moran placed a lion in a motel room under the name ‘TR Zan’ to promote the release of a strikingly similarly named movie, he caused a good deal more distress than S&S have here.

However, his stunt did what good PR does: it tapped into the popular conversation and interwove the brand narrative with it. It spoke of wilderness and adventure, which was exactly right at a time when movies were reflecting the increasingly adventurous spirit of the American public. It had also involved significant calculation of risk, and understood that inevitable bad press would be absorbed by the whole daring nature of the thing.

In part it’s a question of money: ad firms, arguably, have too much. Insular ad campaigns are bred when teams have the time and the resources to ponder their angles until they’re warped out of all recognition, over-thought. PRs, by contrast, are fleet footed. Their spatial awareness of the publicity landscape is second to none because careers spent responding to repeated brand events in real-time have honed their instincts and trained them never to slip up.

It also adds weight to a pet theory of mine: of communications professionals, it’s the PRs who skew furthest to the right (creative) side of the brain. Rightbrained functions, both numerical and linguistic, are much more involved with the comparative, the contextual, the pragmatic. While the leftbrain has the advantage when rigorously pursuing a clear, single minded idea, it must be difficult to wrap a leftbrained mind around an idea as mutable and intangible as a brand narrative.

While I think that Duik is probably taking this rather too seriously, her lawsuit should come as a warning to ad folk everywhere. In the modern world, the hierarchy of ideas does not flow from the comms professionals to the public. Communications must be discursive, responsive, and above all, narrative. Nobody understands this better than a good PR.

Snippets like “Later, the Telegraph’s party goes to dinner at the Goring Hotel in Victoria, where I sit next to Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 – it is a real-life James Bond moment” and “Back in the gym for 5.45am where my personal trainer Gary nearly kills me – but luckily he is gorgeous to look at so I don’t mind” really set the tone, if a tone can be found in amongst the slew of names of the successful, rich and famous.

It was a relief to find this piece, by Ivan Clark, on Brand Republic. Thank god for Ivan – whether it’s the exact truth or exaggerated for satirical purposes doesn’t matter. He pricks and deflates the heavily shoulder-padded, driven and boastful efforts from people like Collins.

“Alarm wakes me at 8.00 am,” writes Ivan. “Lie in bed smoking Marlboro Red whilst listening to R4’s Today Show. Now replete with the bluffers guide to what is important to the London media village, I get up.”

And: “These adlads and adettes seem to find themselves most interesting. Park my moped right outside the office. Everyone else is still at the gym, I pop round the corner for a toasted egg and bacon sandwich with brown sauce. I need the carbs and protein ‘cos it’s nearly 11.00 am and time for the traditional Friday lunchtime in the pub. See lots of famous faces but can’t remember who, as by the time I get home at 9.00 pm, having gone via my local, everyone looks like Jedward.”

I don’t know anything about Claudine Collins’s life, but from this extract I worry that she’s taking her work – and herself – a little too seriously, which could lead all too easily to bitterness in later life. The beauty of Ivan’s piece is that it is a stark and funny reminder that a job is just a job and that the real business of living takes place as much outside one’s workplace as within it.

So what will shape the future? And who will shape it? The screaming headline in PR Week warning of ad agencies encroaching on PR territory misses the point a little, I feel. A good PR agency is stronger than people think.

“Ad agencies have always been a threat,” a friend in PR admitted the other day. “WPP et al have been buying PR agencies for decades. What matters is contacts, culture, energy, creativity, bullshit and bollocks. And, of course, your last piece of coverage. And that means scum-sucking, news-junky, urban cosmopolite ambidextrous grasshoppers like us.”

He’s right. Ad agencies have always been at the centre – but now the centre cannot hold, and they are looking for new ways to play the game. If ad agencies are attempting to encroach on PR’s turf, it says more about the dire straits that the advertising agencies are in than it does about PR’s fragility.

Whenever I’ve been asked to get involved in a campaign led by an ad agency, it has become abundantly clear that they do not really understand the power of stories or true public engagement.

Ad agencies never really catch the public conversation – they’re too busy letting their account men get the client dependant on them to understand the relationship PR has with media, client and public. In PR, we listen, we tell hard truths when they’re necessary, we break bad news gently. Ad agencies say what the client wants to hear and rarely challenge the client unless they’re fishing for a bigger budget for a TV campaign.

But there are fewer and fewer big budgets as the traditional homes of the advert fracture and disperse like tear-gassed teenagers. Consequently there fewer and fewer places where the ad agencies can force their clients’ agenda on the public in return for the sort of remuneration they have been used to getting.

Ad agencies have always been about control and control does not allow for listening. They do not get that great advertising does not automatically translate into great PR.

This is why they will fail to encroach on PR territory if we stand firm and use our knowledge of the ebb and flow of the news agenda carefully and well, if we remain honest and listen to the client, if we refuse to let desperate ad agencies change our agendas to suit their failing ones.

The ad agencies are dinosaurs, desperately trying to make sense of a rapidly evolving media world. PR agencies – at least the smarter, better ones – have been making a good fist of the required gradual development and evolution over the last seven or eight. Consequently, these PR agencies are the ones who can see, just a little more clearly than most, the shape of things to come.

There have been some hugely influential, wonderful and funny booze adverts over the years – just think of the often-surreal Guinness campaigns, or of Carling and Heineken’s best efforts. It would be a terrible shame to lose these creative campaigns and some of the minds behind them to a health and safety-regulated puritanical streak.

It seems to me that the campaign to ban the booze ads is little more than a PR exercise designed to sidestep the sort of potential legal claims that the tobacco industry have been dealing with. There are better ways of reducing binge drinking – heavy fines and policemen empowered to breathalyse people whether they are driving or not would be a start, as would fixing the price of alcohol in the supermarkets. If a drunken lout is arrested and is found to be over the limit apply heavy penalties and heavy fines of £1000 and more. This should apply equally to people driving home from the pub after a few too many, whether they’ve hurt someone or not.

But banning the advertising would a terrible shame – the effects of the adverts are often as pleasurable than the drink they’re selling. Good advertising is something to enjoy, in much the same way as a fine wine, a good whisky, a chilled lager or a well kept ale; sparingly. Everything in moderation – including booze advertising!

It’s an interesting move in an uncertain time – M&C Saatchi are always capable of causing a political dust-up and have created unforgettable, election-winning slogans such as Labour isn’t Working. They helped win at least two elections for the Tories in the past.

It seems likely that they will be going for the jugular this time as well with a strong, negative campaign; it’s worked so well in the past, after all. But we are in a different space now, thanks to the internet, which allows the power of the crowd full control, and thanks to the lack of trust in politicians in general. Can a traditional, hard-hitting campaign hit all the buttons in such a space?

At a point where the Telegraph has won every award going for its exposé of the expenses scandal and Dispatches has this week caught on camera various MPs shamelessly discussing how much it would cost for their lobbying services, a negative campaign could just as easily backfire and become a PR disaster. The internet is where the conversation is and the conversation about politics tends to revolve around a lack of trust for all sides of the political spectrum.

Have politicians learnt anything, I wonder? The lack of traction in the polls is due to disillusionment with the system and the machinations of political life, not just a poor ad campaign. Will bringing in the big guns to sort out the ad campaign really help?

Bear in mind, however, that the Saatchi campaign is being lead by Jeremy Sinclair, one of the top creatives in British advertising and a great thinker. It will be fascinating to see how their campaign shapes up when it breaks next week.

Next up after that is a debate at the University of Westminster on Monday, February 15th on Celebrity Brands: Desire, Dollars and Danger? It’s an equally topical debate, asking if we are near the limit of public interest in celebrities, or if there is no limit, whether celebrities mirror or lead society and if they need or deserve greater protection from the media. Bearing in mind the Tiger Woods case and the more recent John Terry meltdown, we’ll also be discussing what the risks and benefits for brands of associating with celebrities are.

Chewing over the issue with me are Max Clifford, Julian Linley (ex-Heat editor and now creative director of Bauer Media), and the advertising guru Trevor Beattie. The debate will be chaired by Trevor Morris, Visiting Professor of Public Relations at the University of Westminster, and the co-author of ‘PR- A Persuasive Industry?’ It should be a fascinating evening.

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.

I suspect that this may have something to do with the corporatisation of the industry – there have always been interesting people in both PR and advertising but as the money gets bigger, so the personalities and the opportunities for risk-taking reduce.

Mad Men, which is starting on the BBC again, is proof of the changes that have been wrought, but it’s a shame that the fictional world this excellent show portrays has obscured the real characters who created the industry. They seem so utterly real – and make real ad men seem insubstantial by comparison.

The Fame Formula is a celebration of the huge characters of PR, of the risk-takers who built the business up. It would be good to see something, be it book or documentary, that gives a greater focus on the real characters of the advertising industry too.

It’s an upset, but its significance lies in what the power of the Internet might achieve next. Motivational balladry versus an old, shouty agit pop record should cause a few smiles and quite a few more spluttering grannies in front of Top of the Pops on Christmas morning, but it won’t change the world. But the methods to get said agit pop record to number one could just help change the world.

Any number of ad agencies and PR companies say the understand the Internet and all its uses. This is little more than posturing; if we’ve learned anything from the net, it’s to expect the unexpected and that no-one can truly predict what uses people will put it to and what they can achieve if they put their minds to the task in hand.

If the Internet can be harnessed in a similar manner behind a cause like cutting CO2, behind the Climate Conference in Copenhagen or whatever comes next, then there is a chance that real changes can be made in 2010 and beyond without people running up huge carbon footprints going on a protest holiday. Playing with the charts is all very well, but the real business that social networking-savvy people need to address is the process of using this small victory to springboard significant changes on the world and fight the welter of greenwashing, disinformation and distrust.

Perhaps this is all a romantic dream – but if Rage Against the Machine’s trite but pleasing net-powered chart victory can be translated into actual societal change through like-minded people working together in the coming years, then it will have been worth it.

If PR firms, ad agencies and people eager to make a difference don’t get it together and work on making this happen, then the military industrial complexes will – they are, without doubt as I write this, working on ways of utilising the net for their own ends.

Trivial as the chart battle of Christmas 2009 may be, its knock on effect could be real, organised changes made via the power of the Internet. That’s my hope for 2010…