Posts Tagged ‘edinburgh’

Bo Burnham’s been making up for the PR slip that saw him – or possibly his PR company – reject his nomination for the Malcolm Hardee ‘Act Most Likely to Make a Million Quid’ Award. And he’s been doing it with grace.

It’s hard to tell if it’s his PR doing it or if – and this is perfectly possible – he’s so plugged in to the web that he’s acting on his own. His digital promotional skills are pretty strongly evident – just look at his YouTube channel and the large following it has. His online fan club shows his social media prowess of to very flattering effect. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s great to see that the fairy godmother of Edinburgh publicity, Liz Smith, has won the Bank of Scotland Herald Archangel Award. It has taken more than three decades for her to get the pat on the back that she so richly deserves, given the amount of help she has given others for so many years; some justice for the old school, who tend to be overlooked in the internet age.

There’s a proliferation of websites emerging at the moment, offering emergency PR advice for Edinburgh, but what use are these with ten days of the Festival left to play with? A show or act needing to get reviews needs help from an experienced publicist. Of course people need to start somewhere, but recognition for Liz Smith will hopefully highlight the need for both beginner publicists and producers and acts to seek out the x factor brought by experience if they are going to make any of their incursions into digital or traditional media work and work well.

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As the true scale of the disaster brought about by the worst flooding in Pakistan’s history becomes clear, it’s good to see that the British tabloids are supporting the humanitarian aid relief by giving acres of coverage – to the aftermath of the first episode of X Factor. Good to know they have their priorities in such well-oiled working order and are so keenly supporting the disaster zone that is the early rounds of Simon Cowell’s show.

I’ll be examining the manipulative new age of PR and social media, and how the herd is motivated to reshape our lives, in Edinburgh next week. My lecture is one of the key events in the inaugural Edinburgh International Marketing Festival on Tuesday 24th August at 17.30 and the lecture aims to reveal exactly how important PR 2.0 can be – and to stir the hornet’s nest a little.

In the brave new world run to the tune of the ten minute news cycle, where traditional media has been reduced to merely commenting on and affirming stories that are broken on Twitter and in the blogosphere, almost at the speed of thought, and where advertising budgets have been slashed down to the stump, what else is there but PR? Read the rest of this entry »

Whilst I was in Edinburgh last week a young publicist, just starting out, bounced up to me, having recognised me, and asked if I’d give her some advice on the publicity game.

We sat down for a cup of coffee and I asked her what she was working on. She told me that this was her second Edinburgh and that she was working on three shows for a producer who was going places. Alarm bells went off in my head at this, so I quizzed her a little about her circumstances.

It turns out that, after the 13 hour coach journey up to the Festival, she was bunked down in a flat procured by the producer, which she was sharing with two other people, and that she was earning £100 a week for the entire four week run of the Festival.

This struck me as deeply exploitative – a producer who wouldn’t even stump up the train fare had hooked an enthusiastic young publicist on the promise of greater things to work on if all went according to plan. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m up in Edinburgh at the moment, watching the excitement at the Fringe’s street level crank up several notches as the performers prepare for a multitude of launch parties.

Whilst it’s great to see all these performers building themselves up into a state of anticipatory frenzy, I am left wondering why the Scottish media aren’t doing the same. I’m particularly puzzled as to why they are more excited about the Edinburgh Tattoo, and the musty smell of Empire that only comes with a collection of people charging around with cannons. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter is the place on the net to have fun with publicity, as a brilliant new Halloween stunt, featured in The Sun, proves beyond doubt.

“Twitter users will get the chance to communicate with departed showbiz stars this Halloween — in the world’s first online séance,” proclaims the paper. “Tweeters can choose which of their deceased idols they want to talk to, pick a question — then follow the ‘Tweance’ in real time using the social networking site.”

The ‘Tweance’ has been cooked up by Angels Fancy Dress, doubtless keen to move some spooky costumes this October. Mundane considerations aside, they clearly have an almost psychic understanding of the way the web works and, more importantly, the way people engage with social networking sites; they have drawn in all the triggers needed for a publicity windfall – celebrity, the chance to communicate with dead celebrities and the opportunity for millions to nominate who will be spoken to and to see all the answers coming out in real time.

They’ve brought in “top psychic” Jayne Wallace, who has already “contacted the spirit of Jade Goody in a séance organised by The Sun” – she “will quiz four late stars nominated by Twitterers between 10am and 12pm on Friday October 30”.

Whatever you think of psychics and the possibilities of contacting the dead, there is no escaping the fact that there are plenty of people out there who believe – and no doubt that they will be following this Tweance religiously as well as nominating their favourite dead celebrities and sending in questions. This could go right round the world.

What excites me most about this is the way that Twitter is being used to break new ground. I ran the first ever Twithibition, an exhibition of great publicity stunts at the Edinburgh Fringe, in the summer. This Tweance is the next step towards making Twitter the communication channel of choice for the world, a place where things can happen instantly and effect real change whilst you watch. It’s thrilling.

All I need to decide now is whom to nominate…

Here’s an unedited version of the piece I wrote for yesterday’s Independent, on My Edinburgh.

Trawling Edinburgh Festival for the sites of my old publicity stunts, celebrated in the #Twithibition I have just launched, has been a contemplative experience. The stunts celebrated 25 years of mischief, but that was then. What is now? I thought it worth considering how the Festival has evolved as I trekked around the city putting up posters.

I have been going to Edinburgh for years and there is always much that is astonishing, vibrant and beautiful on offer at the Festival – of this year’s crop, Sian Williams’ one-woman show for The Kosh at the Gilded Balloon and Shed Simove at Belushi’s are two to look out for. Sian Williams is the same age as Madonna and considerably sexier; she is compelling to watch. Shed, inventor of the Clitoris Allsorts, is like Trevor Baylis on crack.

But despite the amazing things that are, as ever, on offer, it’s clear that Edinburgh is at a crossroads. Arguably, some City grandees are not able to organise a piss up in a distillery. Princess Street has been dug up just as the Festival started. What planning genius came up with that one? Producers report resources have been pulled away from the Festival; the Assembly Rooms, mid-renovation, was a building site in week one, with one of its auditoria unfit for purpose – the council should be shot for not readying it for the Fringe. The insanity of moving the Film Festival to June is nearly as bad as serially under-funding the International Festival.

I believe that the blame for all this lies at the door of the city fathers, who appear to be unconsciously frittering the spectacle of Edinburgh away, dissipating the energy that has, for many years, seen journalists fighting tooth and nail to get up there every August to run up their expense account and discover the latest bright young things on the international arts scene. Even the bright young things are being discouraged from coming, as student accommodation gets ever more expensive in the city.

Venue controllers bemoan the lack of media attention outside of Scotland. Spreading out the festival over five weeks is a mistake; they should be condensing it to three! Considering it is the largest Festival of its type in the world, the coverage Edinburgh gets, outside a few broadsheets, is pitiful, with little or nothing in the news pages. The fledgling Manchester Festival seemed to get it right, but Edinburgh has slipped – it’s not seen as one of the greatest shows on Earth any more.

Tellingly, the BBC sent fewer staff to cover Edinburgh than went to T in the Park. Even the Scotsman is only using six reviewers. In a tenuous economic climate, it is foolhardy of the Edinburgh council to disregard the impact, and undermine the vitality, of the Festival and the revenues it brings.

There is, at least, good digital representation being developed to help build audiences – I am addicted to the iFringe app for iPhone – but the Festival needs to keep drawing in new talent and audiences and media. It can’t rest on past laurels as, to punters in their 20s, the Festival icons of 30 years ago are vastly distant and mostly irrelevant. Forget the past – the Festival needs to focus on what’s happening now. Stretching the Festivals out so that the Music, Film, Book and Fringe, etc, become ever more separated is preventing the sort of international coverage that Cannes enjoys from happening in Edinburgh. Something needs to change if the Festival is to remain relevant in another 30 years time.

To read the article as printed, click here.

To follow my #Twithibition, click here and search the site for #twithibition. For more information on the stunts recorded in the #Twithibition, click here.

If you thought the Enron fiasco was PR hell or that Starbucks charging rescue workers at Ground Zero for coffee was a publicity disaster, spare a thought for Sir Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin, whose PR strategy, in the wake of the collapse of RBS and his monster pension, has amounted to little more than ducking below the parapet of his ivory tower and hoping that all the nasty things being said about him in the press will go away.

He has no chance of that happening since the protestors came out and stoned his Edinburgh home. His is the high watermark of PR disasters; he is soaked through with the bad press. It is lapping at his shoulders. What he needs, of course, is a decent rescue package, of the sort that the sly old PR foxes, who I wrote about in The Fame Formula, would have concocted to salve his image. With that in mind, I have five solutions for him.

• The Reggie Perrin plan: Sir Fred could leave his clothes on the beach and disappear, becoming an urban legend akin to Lord Lucan. Unlike Lord Lucan, he would be expected to come back after a reasonable amount of time has passed, and other bankers are outed, so that he can resume his career as a pantomime villain after he’s had a decent rest.
• The Michael Jackson play: Another alternative for Sir Fred is to fly out to the King of Pop’s retreat in the Middle East and get advice from Jackson’s team of image specialists on how to make a comeback with reputation renewed. If he takes this option, expect a 50 date inspirational lecture series at the O2 Arena in 2010/11 under the title ‘Financial Disasters and how to survive them’ it may even sell out if anyone can afford to go. He could make a fortune by selling merchandise – £2.50 for a single rotten tomato perhaps?
• The Leonard Cohen plan: Alternatively, Sir Fred could renounce worldly matters, cast off his possessions and become a Buddhist monk. Ridding his soul of the weight of the seven cars, numerous houses and vast quantities of money to go and wallow in the richness of the universe would certainly help shred his karmic PR debt. One word of warning; Leonard Cohen tried it and didn’t give up the money. Instead, it was stolen by his accountant. To be tried only if Sir Fred’s intention is serious.
• The Charity play: If the ascetic life doesn’t tempt him, Sir Fred could always just set up a charitable trust to dispose of a large part of his income.
• The Tootsie plan: Finally, if all else fails, Sir Fred could find his way to a Swiss clinic, transform himself into a woman and, so disguised, come back and get a job at RBS. Once there, he/she could reinvigorate the failed bank in the same manner as he did between 2001 and 2006 and then, just as he/she is about to be awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, he/she should disrobe on the steps of Buckingham Palace, wipe off the makeup and declare that Fred the Shred is BACK (keeping fingers crossed that RBS doesn’t suddenly collapse again in the meantime) and fighting for the reputation of bankers everywhere.

In the wake of the attacks on Sir Fred Goodwin’s Edinburgh home, apparently by a group calling themselves Bank Bosses Are Criminals, it’s clear that the attacks on Fred the Shred are a necessary distraction for the Government, who are looking for ways to recoup their status in the wake of the banking disaster and are gladly hiding behind his him and letting him take the blame.

But the biggest PR concern in the affair is the amount of money Goodwin is spending on the two slick and expensive PR people who are keeping his head below the parapet. They might not be able to prevent the angry brigade from throwing stones at one of his many houses, but they are still sucking up a hefty percentage of the money Goodwin has taken from the taxpayer in an attempt at keeping his name out of the press as much as possible.

It seems as if Goodwin is not prepared to take the knocks when things get rough, despite having been extremely keen to take all the pleasant handouts, all the fruits of good publicity, that came his way before the financial world came to a shuddering halt. He’s got a knighthood (for services to banking), a pension to die for and a list of awards – including Forbes’ Businessman of the Year and European Banker of the Year – to his name and yet he seems determined to hide and rest on these laurels.

If Goodwin is determined to keep the £700,000 a year pension he’s taken from the now part-nationalised RBS, he should carefully consider the amount he is spending on his PR budget. Despite their best efforts, his PR people cannot actually keep him out of the press. Two high-powered publicists command an annual fee that could keep a small charity ticking over nicely for a year. It would surely be better PR for him to drop his failing suppress agents than to continue paying them. Given the current state of affairs, he is powerless to stay out of the press, however much he pays his publicists.

And let’s not forget that Fred the Shred is merely the tip of the iceberg. If he, as the most obvious villain of the day, can have one of his homes attacked by Bank Bosses Are Criminals, then there are plenty of others who will suffer the same if nothing is done to create a PR strategy that actually addresses the grievances of the British public.

The lesser-known bankers – and the Government – are not Hollywood movie stars from the 1930s – all their dirty secrets are out and in the public eye. They do not need suppress agents to keep grim reality at bay; it’s far too late for that. What they need is a strong, constructive PR strategy that squarely addresses the grievances people are directing at them.

There needs to be a PR turnaround, from venture capitalists, from Sir Fred, from the Government too. No one can afford to replicate Goodwin’s strategy of hiding and hoping that the fuss will die down. If they don’t – and they keep throwing money at protecting themselves – the small acts of grievance such as the stoning of Goodwin’s Edinburgh home by Bank Bosses Are Criminals could turn, before too long, into full-scale ire and serious social unrest.