The Japanese authorities are only finding out now, and yet the full horror of the situation remains shrouded and shadowed. As the Fukushima reactor appears to be slipping ever closer to meltdown, so an ever greater number of PR trained scientists and experts come forward to calm the situation. Who is paying the platoons of nuclear experts to play down the crisis? I’d love to see exactly who the paymaster to the various foundations and universities is.

It doesn’t help that the Japanese authorities have been playing fast and loose with the truth, evacuating people and then claiming there is no radiation, as mushroom-shaped clouds billow out of ruined power stations. This has all been a fantastic exercise in news management but trust is in short supply.

Pouring oil on troubled waters is to add insult to injury in a country that has suffered a devastating earthquake and then a tsunami – the waters are slick with enough already.

What is needed is truth and transparency – not to the point of fear mongering of course, but a straightforward approach to disaster. It is also time that serious money is put into viable power alternatives – we cannot, as a species, afford to play so fast and loose any more. Can nuclear power really be seen as a useful option any more? More importantly, can we get serious debate on the matter without the waters being muddied and the issues drowned by lobbyists and PR distraction tactics?

It is a horrific irony that the Japanese, victims of the only two nuclear attacks in history, should risk falling victim to this self-made disaster. The only way to honour the victims of the earthquake and all its consequences is to change the way we think, to be straightforward about the consequences and to work towards a world where such things can occur with far less ease.

The next generation will otherwise pay a heavy price – those in power must step up and show a serious change in behaviour, before we all stew in the big powers’ toxic soup. PR is the only clear winner in Japan. Big PR is, without doubt, making a tidy profit from managing apocalypse.

I welcome the site – it’s not something good publicists should fear. In the spirit of transparency, I’m very comfortable to declare that on occasions I’ve let my imagination run riot. Once – or maybe even twice! – I have ensured that a dismal fact has not stood in the way of making a story work. Then, in an age when there were more journalists than PR, it was tough generating ink.

The ink-generating challenge has now come full circle. Bright young PR things outnumber the journalists. I for one believe the press release is an endangered species, thanks to misuse. The media owners, under pressure to slow an inevitable decline, have cast out costly experienced journos and replaced them with more cost-effective, energetic drones who can multitask as if they were born to it. These drones are fed into the ten-minute news cycle, which spins and churns and greedily welcomes a helping hand. Now, if the story sounds good, well hey; it was true at the time.

Laziness will always be a problem but it is too easy to lay the blame at the door of the journalists entirely, especially when the pressures they face are so immense. This is why I’m a little unsure about the tactics of Chris Atkins from Starsuckers, as reported in the Guardian, who helped promote the website by setting up fake websites and pushing fake press releases about dubious products onto the media (such as the Penazzle, a penis decoration, or the chastity garter for unfaithful wives). It seems to me that the journalists involved fell victim to a persuasive hoax and then rehashed the press releases a little too exactly. Atkins’s approach seems akin to threshing corn with a sledgehammer.

Press releases should not be unthinkingly sent out or unthinkingly repeated verbatim. I keenly hope that churnalism.com will help to eradicate the mind-numbingly dull prefabricated, brand-driven drivel that’s punted out by a collection of poorly equipped agencies. The level of noise makes it hard for the true craft of the publicist to flourish. The press release, for all that it is a 130-year-old mechanism, is still a useful one if it is not mistreated and abused. I hope it lives on.

Few people in PR, it seems, have considered the way that SideWiki will change the lives of beleaguered PR folk. I believe that, in time, this tool will significantly change the way brands strategize, think and exist. SideWiki is going to challenge PR by providing the masses with the tool for the ultimate expression of people power, something uncontainable that will need constant monitoring.

As the name suggests, this is a tool that allows anyone who wants to (and who has the right browser – Firefox or IE) to comment on anything on the web and have that comment displayed in a pop out window alongside for all to see. All they have to do is download the Google toolbar and they’re ready to go. SideWiki will change the way that everything is perceived, especially once it reaches more browsers.

A lot of the PR industry, however, is living like an ostrich with mange; only just summoning up the energy to bury its collective head in the sand. Too many PR folk are too busy pitching half-arsed ideas to see the real threat. The clear and present danger for sluggish PRs is the way that the net continues to develop and construct devices that enable individuals to increase their power. These devices shift as quickly as riptides and, at the moment, it seems that the only people that can survive them are the consumers they cater for.

SideWiki will make it impossible to promote one message and not be held to account. Organisations that have traditionally engaged only in one way conversations or broadcast models will struggle to survive in a SideWiki world. Angry at the latest government wrongdoing? Why not post your grievances next the department where everyone can see them? Find out the ethical practices of confectionary giant aren’t quite as ethical as its advertising suggests? SideWiki is there to help and any PR firm that fails to provide acceptable answers will be open to further public assault by irate consumers.

Brand integrity has to be at the core of brand thinking if the brands are to survive this transparency. Companies will be compelled to consider taking a real position and relate to a set of ideas the marketplace cares about – SideWiki will surely force their hand into a position of fundamental and overwhelming transparency. For fashionable PR execs this transparency will either be terrifying or inspiring. I hope that, thanks to SideWiki, we will see the death of the myopic PR clone and evolve to a position where serious strategic thinkers in PR will challenge the other marketing dinosaurs.

The recession has herded agencies into a pit; they have been humbled in particular by ad agencies who are moving in on proven PR processes, eager to keep making money but who aren’t necessarily experts in that field. The American company Crispin Porter & Bogusky declared in a recent Campaign article that they had asked the agency to stop writing ad script and start writing PR releases instead. Very 1980s. Also in the mix are highly creative and respected agencies like Fallon and Mother, who are taking a firm hand in the PR aspects of campaigns.

PR companies must offer and embrace sophisticated monitoring and tracking devices to keep their clients up to speed, offer solutions and encourage brand bravery and transparency. If they don’t, they will die.

Predictable PR is on the red list of endangered species. The evolution of SideWiki is a seminal moment, when the industry’s destiny is in its own hands. Development forces contributing to the evolution of the web are threatening PR’s demise. PR budgets on the whole bring about reactive, crisis thinking, based on negative responses that threaten their clients’ spot in the market.

The Innocent brand signaled the way forward back in 1997. Lacking bags of readies to spend on traditional marketing, they chose instead to launch a multitude of catalyst conversations around their packaging and experiential events. They were a word of mouth success well before the full web revolution and have paved the way for many more campaigns using the new technology.

Applying the ancient conventions and old codes of conduct of communications to the new world of parallel influence will only accelerate the inconsequence of traditional marketers. The Social Media world encloses our personal and professional actions – the only answer for PR folk is to take a more active role in being brand custodians, representing a higher degree of brands and reputation management.

Ad agencies once proactively shaped vision but now PR is demonstrably just as capable at understanding and cultivating future thinking, if not more so. PR has always engaged in a two-way conversation and should be capitalising on this to earn their clients’ trust. SideWiki is a call to arms – there is no excuse for complacency, as failure in today’s landscape is public, searchable, and enduring.

Seventy Seven PR recently put up an adhoc poll to find out which PR firm people admire the most. A nice little NB on their blog site calls for honesty – “if you can AVOID voting for your own agency, it might make it a bit more interesting. We can’t police it, of course, but go on, give it a go…”. Sadly, iit seems that this has been ignored in some quarters.

If you can’t even trust some people to vote for companies other than their own, then what’s the point of the poll? It’s going to be a difficult world to live in, from anyone’s point of view, if it’s not even possible to tell what’s real and what’s merely a bit of desperate spin.

To see the poll, or even take part in it (honestly, of course) click here.

In an age when there is a need for transparency in all things, Neal’s Yard have to fight to support their brand – and part of that fight is in online debates with informed, and often critical, consumers.

If they can’t deal with the fact that people demand a conversation, the Neal’s Yard brand risks going further into meltdown than it has already; just look at the scathing comments all over the net and at the Twitter maelstrom.

People are fed up with lies and evasion and all brands must address this. The response of Neal’s Yard to probing questions is a salient lesson for other brands in what not to do.

“Over the years the public have become sick and tired of being ripped off and misled and as a result we are now in an age of brand transparency,” I told them. “Trust has gone – look at the government and banks. Where we are now, brands have to admit their mistakes.”

To read the full article, click here.

The media takeaway is that he is no celebrity cop. Unlike his predecessor, he claims that he is going to get on with the job. There’ll be no TV appearances, just the old, traditional values of public office.

Wake up my friend, this is the 21st century!

You have to be in the public eye and win their confidence. You might have hopes for anonymity but–neat PR sound-bite aside–surely you realise that the 24/7 news churn demands more? We don’t expect the three-ring Blair show, but we need transparency, a chief who can communicate with the media and the masses and can offer up a valid presence in a city that faces some major challenges for the constabulary in the coming years, especially as the prospects of civil unrest in the next couple of years look ever more likely.

“This post is part of my desire to both shine light on discrepancies in advertising and to attract people who want to use advertising as a genuine tool to build better customer relationships, products, and long-lasting brands,” she writes.

She is clear-eyed on what has brought about this need for transparency; the internet. She is part of the burgeoning conversation on the web about transparency and empowered users of brands. 

“A powerful global conversation has begun,” she says. “Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.

“So we have this rich, conversational internet happening, and the bloom of social media and social networks almost everywhere I turn. There are incredible opportunities for brand-building and even transactional results. Dell has sold over $1 million worth of refurbished computers on Twitter. More than ever people want to tell their friends about the things they love.”

The more this type of conversation can be encouraged the better, I say. It will be interesting to see what comes of it in the coming months, when recession will make it all the more necessary for people to feel they can trust the brands they are being sold and the people who are selling them.