Posts Tagged ‘change’

Is there any excuse for a deferral, hidden behind the familiar “no comment”? For the first time in my career, I find myself pondering this Churchillian aphorism. “No comment” is a splendid expression which I am using again and again.

My old cohorts launched a new offering via PR Week last week, which naturally pasted me onto the front page. Lordy, what a headline. Last week I had nothing to say; I guess when I do, I will. Some wag on Twitter correctly observed that I’m quick to offer opinion as a rent-a-quote on public affairs yet remain tight-lipped on my own. The media landscape can be a funny old vista, if viewed from the outside rather than from within. It’s fascinating to listen to opinion about an idea I’ve provoked; sometimes it’s funny, sometimes cruel, sometimes wide of the mark – but always absorbing. Read the rest of this entry »

“Can PR be honest?” people outside the industry have been known to ask. Can it, as an industry, stand up and tell hard truths occasionally? There seems to be a suspicion that the industry takes in the less scholarly in the same way the clergy used to in centuries past. People prone to toe the party line.

My son Janek sometimes says to me, a little pointedly: “But Dad, you just sell stuff!” I tell my friends in PR and advertising about this and they recount similar stories. The people behind the PHD video (see clip below) have misjudged the next generation if they think that they will all gladly follow where marketing wants them to go. I have always tried my hardest to make my working life about more than just selling.

Yet it’s difficult when PR is in the process of change. I guess its understandable that so many PR firms are desperate to win and keep clients that their will to challenge is weakened. Take digital PR; so many companies find it easy to step into it but, without careful preparation, it can be difficult to handle on a day to day basis. Some do it very well, others stumble. Charlie Sheen is proof that any freak can draw a crowd – but his failure is also proof that you can’t polish a turd. A crowd can see into the heart of a brand and is more than willing these days to say if the emperor is wearing nothing at all. Read the rest of this entry »

The confidence and utter belief in the State of Israel the Israeli government have displayed, as they justify their violent attack on the ships attempting to bring aid to Gaza, is breathtaking. Both factions in any war tend towards insanity of some sort, but Israel organise theirs with terrifying rigour.

They have an enormous number of silent supporters waging their PR war for them, and some not-so-silent ones. Take the NeoCon pollster and political consultant Frank Luntz, for example. After the Gulf War, he advised American Jewish leaders to incorporate mention of Iraq into every mention made of Israel because “Saddam will remain a powerful symbol of terror to Americans for a long time to come. A pro-Israeli expression of solidarity with the American people in their successful effort to remove Saddam will be appreciated.”

Israel has a global network of people helping them ride any PR storm. There is always a PR storm and they always seem to ride it. After Gaza residents, in the wake of the Haiti disaster, started a well-documented campaign to send money to Haiti because they were ‘in the same state’, a number of bloggers reporting this were attacked and, in some cases, silenced. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe McElderry has lost out to Rage Against the Machine – it seems that a significant proportion of the British record-buying public really have turned on Simon Cowell and given him a festive slap under the miseltoe.

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…

A new year, a new American President, a new sense of austerity and asperity pervading the world and yet still no sign that sections of the PR world are little more than spam-merchants, pumping out press releases at the mill without any thought or caution, any sense of building the brand.

Press releases promoting all sorts of tenuous fluff are churned out daily at these dark, satanic mills and the fog they create smothers the good, creative, insightful and careful work of the many of the conscientious publicity agencies out there. The real problem is that the general public and the press more often than not only see the fog from these press release mills and assume that this is what PR is – an unthinking, scattershot form of cold calling.

It’s been like this for a while now – the invention of email has made it possible for the emptiest of stories to clutter up the inboxes of media outlets and make the journalists responsible for sorting the wheat from the chaff tear out their hair in despair as they read ever more unnecessary copy – and, given that it’s cheap, it’s becoming ever more widespread.

This should be cause for reputable publicity houses to tear out their hair too – this sort of lazy publicity, perpetrated by clichéd perky, bubbly types who post off any old story to any old media outlet in the hope that it gets printed and follow it up with badly researched over-familiarity, is bad news for the business. Yet not enough is being done to curb it.

The trouble is, it doesn’t cost much for the client in the short term – but it is so ineffectual that it is a waste of money. A client is then less likely to go to a more reputable publicist, assuming that they’re going to be short-changed again. The real cost lies in the loss of respect for good publicity, the sense of ennui that builds in the people who have to deal with it daily.

A good press release should have an interesting story that relates positively to the brand or client and it should be targeted at the people it matters most to; if there is wider interest in the story, then it will spread naturally, putting out roots via word of mouth, through social networking and throughout the traditional media. There’s nothing wrong with perky and bubbly press officers, but the bubbles, if they are pricked, should contain something; such as good sense and careful planning.

PR is not and should never be a cold-calling business, plaguing people into agreeing to plug a brand. A relationship should be built between press officer and media outlet; one that allows them to be familiar and know what the outlet they have approached requires.

That relationship also needs to be preceded by a good understanding of the client or the brand the press officer is promoting. PR should be about promoting a good story that makes sense, that remains true to the source and that doesn’t just clutter up inboxes. Trying to sell trampolines by sending out press releases announcing that they are likely to fly around the garden in stormy weather, potentially causing “huge amounts of damage to gardens, property and potentially … serious injury if they hit a passer-by”, as one company did in 2008, is proof that there are too many press officers out there who do not recognise the need for brand integrity and who would be better off sending out emails offering to help “increase the size of your organ”.

Time for a change, I’d say. Let’s sideline the press release mills and leave room for the sort of PR that actually helps the client, the brand and the people it’s aimed at to make an informed decision.