Once upon a time, Jeremy Paxton, owner of our client the Lower Mill Estate, received an earnest letter from the son of a prospective buyer. The letter, sent by six year old Leo Park, enquired politely as to whether the new house being designed for he and his mother, Jade, would have a chimney large enough to accommodate the weighty personage of a certain Santa Claus come holiday season. We persuaded Lower Mill that, as a self build service, it was their duty to fulfil his request.

What’s more, all parties involved agreed to appear before the media to bring this heart-warming Christmas tale to the eyes of the world. We helped Lower Mill and the media to capture the moment at which the chimney was taken for a test run, with a cheery Santa lowered into the chimney via a crane.  Lower Mill were prepared to go that extra mile to sell the house and raise a few smiles. As the old saying goes, you get the publicity you deserve.

From the Daily Mail and the Telegraph to Emirates 247, from CBC America to the Times of India via Radio 2, The One Show and plenty more along the way, the happening captured the imagination of reporters and audiences alike.

A dream story, but one which was an absolute nightmare to organise. Rarely have I appreciated to such an extent the value of a good client: Lower Mill uncomplainingly took on the herculean task of keeping Health and Safety happy.

Time is money, yet the estate’s building company were forced to cease activity for the day as their staff could not be allowed to work around such maverick goings on. Jeremy Paxton had to personally assume the title of health and safety executive for the day to keep the insurers happy, a role which involved him personally going down the chimney before Santa. Finding a crane company willing to lift humans was an odyssey in and of itself: turns out there’s only one in England, and they don’t operate without a fully qualified driver and banksman onsite at all times.

The struggle of operating PR within the new economy is mammoth both for agencies and for clients. In simpler times, I took an elephant for a walk, had motorbikes driven through traffic, dangled circus performers by their hair, wrapped houses and helicopters, staged custard pie fights and swordfighting workshops, built chocolate billboards and had a full-blown party in a fish and chip shop. For all of them I had the full support of the client- always a necessity- and yet rarely were we asked to justify ourselves as much as we were this month, dropping one Santa into his most natural of habitats.

Social media and all the other new age publicity concepts have a huge role to play, but you still haven’t achieved real traction until you’ve brought something into the physical world, an increasingly fraught process. When I’m called upon to judge the PRWeek awards and other industry gongs, I always take the time to think about the sheer effort, belief and trust that’s gone into making remarkable things come about.

As the great Jim Moran once said, “It’s a sad day for American capitalism when a man can’t fly a midget on a kite over Central Park.”. The health and safety anoraks are closing, but they haven’t won yet. With the right client and a lot of chutzpah, you can still do incredible things. Just be prepared for the hard work, the stress and the heady joy if it succeeds.

The debate proceeded, the media machine turned, and I was powerless to change or influence it, or to explain my true point in any audible way. See any analogues?

The problem that the hacking scandal and the Leveson inquiry have thrown up is that, for most people, the media acts in just this way but writ large. It tantalises the average person as it touches on their daily lives, yet it is ultimately a mysterious and unalterable process to them.  When Jane Garvey asked me to clarify what it was I do this was brought home to me- would she ask the same of a solicitor or accountant?

The squabbles between the media and the famous are elevated to epic battles in the eyes of the public, who witness them through a filter. The reality is that this is a procedural question as complex and unromantic as its equivalent in any business. With tabloid journalism now largely driven by showbiz, and the public’s appetite for stories as ravenous and insatiable as ever, certain questions need to be asked and decisions made. However, they need to be made in a measured and demystified manner.

It would be better both for the media and for those in the public eye (who most often suffer the same banal problems as the rest of us) if the voodoo was stripped away.

In between the possibly hypocritical condemnations by the Tories, the possibly equally hypocritical support offered by Labour, the regulations of the City of London and the public dithering of the Church of England, there’s enough fuel here to keep the media busy for as long as the camp remains in place, and probably longer.

Dr Rowan Williams’s comments last week, in which he acknowledged the inequality inherent in the financial sector and called the protest ‘a real focus for people’s feelings and their imagination,’ were perceived by many as an antidote to the church’s infighting. In fact, they confuse matters further by acknowledging the ideological alliance between the church and the protestors while smartly avoiding the legal conflict.

The whole affair’s like a messy divorce case: the issues are being ignored because everyone has a claim to being a victim- a problem the media has taken it upon itself to sort out. The entire confused, irrational mess was summed up by the Daily Express last week in an unintentionally genius bit of satire: a reporter camped out in front of the house of a protestor, armed with a tent and a sign reading ‘how do you like it?’.

It’s an interesting quandry: it’s hard to think of a recent protest of this scale which has earned itself so many column inches, and arguably, visibility is enough. The rational, we might argue, will draw their own conclusions. However, my fear is that the temptations of a juicy bit of finger-pointing will obscure the issues at heart far more effectively than a thrown fire extinguisher ever could.

Hall was somehow savaged by a panel which contained, amongst others, professionally ineffectual wall hanging Louis Spence and Chiles himself, the world’s least threatening man. Even worse: she has achieved the exact opposite of her presumed aim. Following her constant, whining ubiquity over the past few days, the only sane response is to actually feel sorry for Clarkson. She’s unlikely to make the money she wants, but even if she does, it’ll be pretty tainted now.

Rumour has it that Hall has fired Clifford following the debacle. It’s fascinating to me that this is the conclusion people have drawn: much more likely he’s quietly given her the shove. He sat next to her, blandly besuited like a court-appointed attorney in a police drama, ashen faced as she shot herself in the foot time after time. An attempted gag in which she turned the initials used to refer to her case under the injunction (a.m.m vs h.x.w) into a faux-provocative acronym fell flatter than Spence’s washboard abs. ‘Adulterous Motor Mouth vs. Hurt Ex Wife’, if you’re interested. Cue slow clap.

Not content with total sense of humour failure, she saw fit to run through the PR handbook of toxic ideas. The nadir? She came closer than anyone has for a while to evoking the Clinton Defence: asked whether she could prove the alleged affair, she replied simply ‘what’s proof?’.

Hall has been given a short sharp shock and taught a valuable lesson. Whether you feel you have a story to tell or not is irrelevant. Even if you think you’ve been wronged, you won’t be safe. Despite your indignation at a court gagging or whatever other justification you have,  as soon as you go to Max Clifford and release a publicity narrative which, despite Hall’s protestations, can only be branded a ‘kiss and tell’ by the tabloids, any gains you make will be tainted forever.
The price of this kind of fame is high, and Hall is paying it already. It’s a vicious circle of course: the greater her frustration, and the more she feels the need to defend herself, the worse she comes across. Her appearance on TSNS was defined by her manner: humourless, unsmiling, self-serving. Her claim that her book was never originally intended to feature details of the much discussed affair is somewhat dubious. Tellingly, it was backed up only by insistences that it would prove interesting solely on the basis of the revelations it offered into her clearly rather tiresome life.

What Hall should have realised is that, as soon as she appears on television she’s up against people with a script behind them and an audience already onside. Chiles is hardly the greatest humourist on British TV, but he got some big laughs at her expense, particularly when he referred to Clarkson’s considerable material wealth. Both literally and metaphorically, the laughter of studio audiences will render any sincere points Hall has to offer inaudible.

The lesson here is clear: kiss and tells never offer the gazillions they promise, and what pecuniary reward they do carry comes with a heavy burden. Hall’s punishment is almost classical in its irony. Like Sisyphus and his Stone, she is doomed to toil forever. Each new protestation of innocence and search for vindication will breed new accusations, and the process will fuel itself.

The knee-jerk reaction is to dismiss this out of hand. It’s not just crazy, it’s obvious. Surely even the voyeuristic, big brother guzzling, internet porn fed, fetid mess of a world we live in wouldn’t fall for something so desperate. It may be getting watched, but it won’t win votes.

Having said that, futurology is a tricky discipline, especially in the fad happy world of politics. Perhaps Lenart’s dance is so mad that it works. Lord knows we’ve been waiting for something to kick off the ‘digital elections’ repeatedly promised- and denied- through campaign strategies over the past few years.

Cameron fell foul of the net when his vote for change poster, complete with his staring visage airbrushed to Jordanian levels, was appropriated by a few ingenious trolls who created http://mydavidcameron.com/. The site allowed wannabe satirists to introduce their own accompanying slogans, with often hilarious results. It became one of the few truly concentrated, attention grabbing focal points of leftist criticism.

Across the pond, Boston senator Scott Brown ran into controversy earlier this year after guerrilla online tactics instigated by his communications department majorly backfired. Senior Republican advisor Eric Fehrnstrom attempted to artificially create the kind of satirical bite that grew naturally from the David Cameron affair when he set up a fake twitter account for Democrat Allan Khazei (@crazykhazei).

Apart from being disastrously unfunny (sample tweet: “Just read Scott Brown’s book. He isn’t the only one who had it tough growing up. I once got a splinter.”) the whole affair generated a storm around Brown’s use of public funds- an area of debate more or less untapped prior to the revelations. It was the exact opposite of a political communications campaign’s intended effect.

In short, whatever they say to the contrary, political brand advisors know bugger all about how to harness the internet: Obama’s web success aside, online campaigning is still uncharted territory. So who knows, perhaps in twenty years’ time Lenart will be hailed as the messiah and cabinets the world over will look like the B Team of a home counties branch of Secrets. If Theresa May is looking to try something similar, I hear Vaseline on the camera lens works a treat.

While Mike Tindall’s injury excludes him from the final team, his presence will be felt nonetheless. A little while ago, I posted a short note warning that, following reportage of an early wild night out across the tabloid press, the England team faced potential PR disaster should they fail to perform. This week that’s been stepped up and nailed down with the long-running tale of his ‘mystery blonde’.

After renewed interest in the story on Monday, the Mail outed the girl as old family friend, and ex-lover, Jessica Palmer on Tuesday. By Wednesday, she was gleefully reported to be going into hiding.

It hasn’t, by any means, been the worst sporting publicity disaster of all time. Even Ryan Giggs’s superinjunction scandal, itself surprisingly minor, far eclipses it as far as recent tabloid splashes go. What’s important, though, is that this coverage has well and truly brought the team out of the back pages and into the front.

It’s a crucial rule. Unless they have a particular promotional goal, sportspeople, artists and other specialist figures should do all they can to stay in their back pages comfort zone: sports reportage, reviews and all the rest of it. This is where they are judged (more or less) solely on their performance. This, therefore, is where they have the greatest degree of control over the way they appear.

Once you’re out in the front pages you’re exposed, buffeted, ravaged but occasionally sent soaring into the air by the capricious winds of tabloid- and hence public- judgement. It’s a whole different game, and the stakes are higher. Tindall’s shenanigans are not disastrous-yet anyway- but they’ve dumped a whole new load of pressure onto the team.

Should tomorrow’s game go well, this will all blow over- it’ll be high spirits, a drunken mistake, perhaps even a piece of necessary team bonding. The public with put it down to a bit of banter in the dressing room and ascribe it as one of the reasons for the team’s success. If this is the case, Mike would still do well to keep a low profile, let it blow over, and thank the black gods of publicity he’s been spared.

Should the game go badly, however, the tabloids have proved they have ammo to make this run, and it’s a safe bet they can find plenty more. Events like the RWC have a narrative automatically imposed upon them, and Tindall’s indiscretions will become written into it as the reason it all fell apart- symptomatic of a lack of dignity, or drive, or focus.

Watch this space, though you probably won’t be watching as closely as Mike will tomorrow afternoon.

What is it with snack moguls? First Fredrich Baur, retail genius and inventor of the iconic ‘Pringles’ can, had his ashes buried in one of his beloved crisp receptacles back in 2008, and now this fantastic news item from West, presumably a sight that roughly resembled Doritos’ stoner student target customer after a big night in. The real genius of the retail surpremo is represented by these almost mythic funerals: these were guys who truly lived the brand, who integrated their lives and their behaviour into what they were communicating. There is something unimaginably inspirational about these two men, who know who to grab column inches even from beyond the grave.

Their heritage is rich. When Gordon Selfridge came to London, he made a fortune out of the women’s lib movement by promoting luxury shopping as a lifestyle choice, a statement of freedom: he was unafraid to be a huge character and to consciously attract huge characters. He encouraged women to look at his freedom, to look at that of his wife, and to demand this for themselves via the medium of their wallets.

Throughout his career, he ran his store less as a business than a story factory. He invented the clapometer, he maintained extraordinary contacts throughout the national media, he orchestrated fabulous window displays with top celebrities. Selfridge, like West and Baur after him, understood that being a true brand ambassador means treating each day as a news item, investing each step you take with narrative flair. He was Selfridges, and he lived by one of his most powerful maxims: “People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”

Even going back as far as my idol P.T. Barnum, we find the tradition of the showman retailer. Before the FeeJee Mermaid, Tom Thumb and his great travelling roadshow, Barnum was a store clerk, and apparently an excellent salesman. This stuff isn’t coincidence: the retail world represents the beating heart of what all communications and sales industries do. On the shop floor, it’s sale or nothing, and it’s a cradle that has taught some of the best the art of haggling, cajoling, dazzling, even deceiving. What’s more, whole retail brands have been built on those personalities that rise to the top of such a world.

There is nothing more inspiring than having a marketing mind at the top of the tree: when a showman is running an outfit, their communications strategy isn’t something pasted on top of a rigid corporate interior. Their very essence, all of their activity, is informed by the spirit of the big risk and the hard sell.

The question is, where are the inheritors of this tradition? In these days of corporate retail groups, where shareholders reign supreme and ideas often have to pass through so many hands that they’re killed off before delivery, is there room for another Arch West? I see a lot of truly ambitious kids in the course of my work, I only hope some of them resist the pressure, keep the fire, and remember even at the age of 97 that a funeral is just another stage to be mastered. As Ken Campbell, another recently departed showman, once said: “the anagram of funeral is real fun”. Let’s hope that we in the commercial world don’t all now take ourselves too seriously to remember this.

The conference as a whole seems to have been getting more coverage than any other party conference in recent memory. Journalists can sense the chinks and cracks forming in the lib dem PR armour. All this is fuelled by the #ldconf twitter discussion which is more overwhelmingly negative than even a cynic like myself could have predicted, with some particularly quotable intrusions from John Prescott, who recently responded to journalists irate at accreditation issues with the somewhat inflammatory tweet “Is the #LDConf accreditation crisis at a conference centre proof they can’t organise a p***up in a brewery?”.

This last example may seem minor- journalists will always find something to whinge about when covering an event- but it’s quite telling. This lack of organisation makes more explicit what should be implicit to any communications professional following the conference: clearly, the Lib Dems do not have the money for the PR counsel and management they desperately need.

In theory- and not just in an ideal world, either- this shouldn’t matter. This is because the party have a meme that they’ve tried to put out- summed up, basically, as “Nick Clegg is an extraordinary man, thank god he sacrificed his own ambitions for the good of the country.” If this had caught on, it would have seeded the same kind of homespun, open charm Clegg exuded in the run up to the election. The odd blunder might have been forgiven- there was a time when Clegg got all his capital from appearing human.

However, this was before Clegg stepped into the especially unflattering light which the public reserves for politicians. It was easy, before, to position unpolished, shallowly responsive opinions as the honest alternative to the overly ideological posturing of Brown’s Labour party and the airbrushed simpering of Cameron’s pre-election Tories. However, trying to position yourself in the same ‘awkward barstard’ slot whilst actually occupying the corridors of power is impossible. You’re no longer a crusader: at best you’re a backstabber, at worst you’re a blunderer. Leading educationalist Wes Streeting summed up the mood of the one-time party faithful earlier this week: ‘One your side’ is #ldconf slogan. Should’ve been ‘right behind you – stabbing you in the back’.

In short, the niche that once propelled the libdems into the mainstream has become too complicated to manage without more help than they can afford: awkward not for the powers that be, but for the party members themselves, and no matter how hard they work it will prove difficult for them to attract the kind of major figures they need. Their name is too sullied already to carry the clout that Labour or the Tories might within the communications industry. Come back from Kosovo Alastair Campbell, there’s plenty of work for you here.

They are the fastest means to create indelible brand infamy. Some of them are put under the microscope and picked apart by media cynics, myself included, but the greatest stunts are those which nobody spots as stunts. I should know, I wrote a book about them.

These days, the art of good PR is to generate captivating narratives, because the story has become far more important than the truth. Consumers are setting up information networks and are happy to be governed by social media connections. They expect the information to come to them in the instant – hardly anyone seeks out information elsewhere any more. They want it all NOW!

It’s too early to suggest whether the Bourne/Withers mother in law email leak was a stunt or not, but if it is, then it might be ill-advised. If you’re of the school of thought that all publicity is good publicity, then it has been a success because it’s embedded in the media psyche. But a wedding is an intensely personal, emotive event.

What does it say about this wedding planning entity when a brand launches with a viral like this? It makes even me wonder whether I could trust them not to do something equally rogue and renegade on what may be the most important day of some people’s lives. If you are using stunts in this way, you need a strong infrastructure to manage the fallout so it can be used positively, not negatively.

Social media grips a story like this and runs with it. Social Media creates its own ego systems. To survive, brands, businesses and celebrities should ride the shift in public perception and develop market strategies to work these ego systems. They need to recognise the shifts for what they are, however – the public has taken built in obsolescence at the heart of celebrity and business and celebrates it wholeheartedly – the nation no longer cares for yesterday’s cast offs. It only cares for the now.

Some might say if it weren’t a stunt then it should have been because everyone has covered the story. But I wonder where will “Mise en Bouche” go next? Will this generate more orders, business or brand notoriety? The viral age means speed is key, it amplifies everything and publicity has been proved to be a double edged sword. A surge of publicity like this brings notoriety, but it can mean that there’s no control of the situation which can get out of hand very quickly.

If they planned this all along to publicize their wedding business, then fine, but they need to be able to back it up. Are they prepared for the overnight brand infamy and how they should best use it? The publicity stunt finds itself in a totally different age, one where we can all see the strings being pulled or have access to a back story.

Is this a DIY effort or is there some clever stunt agent in the wings, planning the next move? Whether you’re talking about celebrity fall out, a footballing agent using a stunt on the back pages to his clients’ worth or brand disaster, the first 24 hours are crucial. Whether this was a stunt or not, they need to take control of the media and the truth about it, pretty quickly. The vacuum is packed with tweets and sound bites focusing on the conspiracy of the feat

If it is a stunt, declare it and build on its genius in a positive way, rather than running away and being embarrassed about it. Bourne and Withers et al are spending too much time denying that it’s a stunt rather than harvesting the fame. Make yourself fantastic not just a flash in the pan. Don’t allow a vacuum to be filled with a wave of sceptism and doubt.

Anyone can get talked about, but where does the brand traction catapult the meme? More importantly how does it move forward from that? You need to know where the conversation’s going and how to build something meaningful. Why not celebrate what you have done? Highlight your successes, no matter how partially complete, or short of your original goal. Celebrate to boost your energy, raise your spirits and use your positive successes. Whatever the truth is about the Bourne and Withers story, what we do know is that the audience doesn’t actually want facts, they just want an unbelievably good story.

An edited version of this article appeared in The Guardian

Take Charlie Sheen, for example. He’s been a chaotic hellraiser for years, but only now is the extent of his hedonism and mania coming out, in a giddy rush. Or take the arrogance of Prince Andrew, which is coming out now and souring many of the deals he was hired to make, trading on hs royal status.

It’s not just toxic celebrity that is being outed; the tobacco industry is also having to cope with the effects of transparency, notably the latest victory for the Smoking Kills lobby. First they got the truth put on cigarette packaging and now the packs will no longer be on display in shops, having also had their attractive design peacockery removed.

But the tobacco industry is far more powerful than any celebrity. Their PR has the biggest budget and the subtlest minds it can find who are prepared to sell death in a tube of paper. Edward Bernays, the father of the publicity industry, is a prime early example of sophisticated campaigns for cigarettes – he got millions of women hooked on them by associating smoking with freedom and the victory of the suffragette movement.

There is no way that they will not have thought of something to counter the disappearance of iconic designs; perhaps a tactile edge for the blank packets, making them wonderful to feel? There is no doubt that big tobacco will comply with the new rulings on the one hand whilst looking hard for ways around it on the other.

But they will be up against it – the coming years will see the integrity of brands and what they stand being outed and, going forward, the brands that will survive are the ones who’s strengths lie in transparency, integrity and brand truth. A brand or celebrity caught lying or filibustering is likely to suffer for it.

Click here to see what Ivan Clark has to say on the matter as well.