Wild Geese…

Goose: beautiful, elegant creature…but make it angry and it’ll have your eyes out. Just ask Adrienne Merrill, Business Development Director at Borkowski PR.

Adrienne, you see, used to do a bit of freelance work for ‘Tamsin’, who is now – as head honcho of The Supper Club (which we think is this) - a client of consumer PR shop Golden Goose (which, we note, is nominated in the best new consultancy category at the PR Week Awards).

Following things so far? So here we go…it’s a bit of a long one, but it’s Friday afternoon and you’ve got nothing else on, right?

OK, so Golden Goose organised a press event for The Supper Club last night, and Adrienne went along. Today, she decided to email her ex-client Tamsin telling her what she thought of the event and, in particular, Golden Goose. This is what she said (under the email title, “Great fun!”):

We all had such a great time last night, fantastic entertainment & drinks and music by the DJ was brilliant – we all danced until out feet hurt!!!

As for the PR from Golden Goose – well - the celebrity attendance was what……zero? Oh no, let me think now, oh yes Syed (the one that didn't even come second in what was that show, The Apprentice?) he was there.

And journalists, well now, I did have a pretty full house crack team of publicists with me try as we might to spot one, well I think it was what…zero? Oh, no, wrong again, Chris Sullivan was there. He did let slip to me though that he only popped in to see Mick (the lovely promoter) and he's not exactly a target writer for the Supper Club.

We all make mistakes.

Addi xxx

Which isn’t very nice is it? You might event think she was doing it to try and pinch Golden Goose’s client. Which then doesn’t make it a very good idea to copy the email to a member of the Golden Goose team…who, understandably, felt the need to forward it to her boss and Golden Goose joint-MD Miki Watson.

Miki gives Adrienne both barrels:

Dear Adrienne,

We're delighted that you enjoyed last night's Supper Club party; it was fabulous wasn't it!

I'm terribly sorry that you obviously don't know your media well enough to recognise some of the UK's most influential press by face. We were looking after Esther Walker from the Evening Standard, arranging a photograph feature for Karen Stretch at the Mail on Sunday Live Magazine, introducing some of our guests to Louise Hannah from the Mail on Sunday, arranging a 'date' with one of the country's most well known jockeys that is being written about by Katie Hind in the London Lite and entertaining the GQ editorial team who are writing about Tamsin in November. Oh and Helen Nugent from The Times was having a great time in VIP, along with Georgina Pattinson from BBC.co.uk whom, when she last wrote about an online networking client of us (BeautifulPeople.net), generated 9,000 hits for our client in one day. Pretty good contacts, don't you think? But as you don't know them, we thought we'd introduce you to them on this email; as we always like to help people out in PR here at Golden Goose...it's a pretty sad, bitchy industry when you don't, wouldn't you say?

As for Dave Benett...it's a shame he didn't get a lead picture for today's Diary, but Tam - he had a fabulous time and your picture has also made a story in today's London Paper with a great plug for the Supper Club..Zoe Griffin is very kindly posting us a copy for you now.

Regarding celebrities..well, I don't recall that the Supper Club was meant to be about celebrities? It's about a calibre of person whom you get to meet at the most brilliant soiree. I think last night ticked every box. I don't know if Borkowski solely regards celebrity attendance or celebrity association as the epitome of a campaign's success; but at Golden Goose PR we look at what we've generated in terms of column inches, brand identity and revenue for our client's business. Daily Candy, OK! Mag and London Lite pieces which ran even before the party started yesterday were only the beginning.

Anyway, I'm way too busy to write about all the other pieces of editorial we're working on as my phone is going and people are asking for pictures....

I suggest, Adrienne, that you get back to doing your job too.

Have a lovely weekend everyone,

Miki xxx

And, as Miki pointed out in her email, she copied it to quite a few of the highly influential journalists who were at the event…a number of which decide to provide their own comments, including Katie Hind from London Lite…

I thought that Golden Goose were fantastic last night. They never fail to help me out when I need a favour and this, quite often leads to fabulous coverage for their clients.

…and Zoe Griffin at the London Paper:

I also thought that the event was well organised and that the girls threw a fabulous party. Rather than inviting C-list celebrities that don’t fit with the image of the brand, they made the wise decision to have people who were influential in London and who would want to join Tamsin’s club.

So that’s Adrienne told. Still, she gets the last word:

I see you fantastically out bitched me! A true pro. I have much to learn. Sigh.

Thanks for the advice

Adrienne

It's quieter where we are, but we like it that way...

Fly me to the moon...

The BBC is reporting that Richard Branson has unveiled a mock-up of the Virgin spacecraft.

I've got to admit that I'm a bit cynical about all this public space travel malarkey...will people really want to be blasted off into space? Is there a market for it? How safe will it be? Or is it just another Virgin PR stunt?

Still, if the Beeb's reporting then it's got some credibility...and if Branson's billions are behind it, then I imagine it'll be a solid and serious effort.

Click here to see the mock-up. Quite something, isn't it?

Ch, ch, ch, ch, changes...

So if only a few months ago you'd topped the PR Week Top 50 Tech Agencies league table, what would you do?

That's right...you'd move offices and change the company name.

Which is exactly what our buddies down at Write-Image are doing. From Monday next week, they'll be residing in swanky new premises on St Martin's Lane and calling themselves Metia.

Metia? What's that?

Well, it's a place in Mozambique, that's what. Or (possibly of slightly more relevance) the Metia Framework is "A Generalized Metadata Driven Framework for the Management and Distribution of Electronic Media" (but you already knew that, didn't you?).

Ooooh, get them. How very "moderne"; how very "2.0".

There's a new logo too...looks like an orange teardrop. Click here to see the funky little animation.

There's a spring in my step this morning...

Why? Because I've got some stuff off my chest...a few things that have been bothering me for quite some time. And you could too, thanks to the gorgeous Amanda Chapel over at Strumpette.

Amanda's established the first ever PR confessional, and I reckon it could run and run...confessions that have already been, well, confessed, include:

"I haven't had a creative idea since 1994. OK - so that's not much to confess, perhaps - but I've been compensating for my idea drought by presenting EXACTLY the same plan outline and new business proposal to every single client I've pitched in the last 12 years."

"I bill for 8 hours of work a day, but really only do about 2."

"Forgive me Father for I have a new client that I hate so much that I spend countless hours plotting ways to make him look bad. I recently sent his boss the gift of an online porn subscription on his behalf and my only regret was that I didn't send a dildo instead."

Wonderful stuff...confess today and you're free to commit PR sins anew.

And most of all, my parents...

So, Lewis PR picked up the gong for UK Technology PR Campaign of the Year at last night's CNET Networks Awards for its Salesforce.com campaign. Hard to argue, really...it's all over the place.

Congrats to Lewis, commiserations to those left blubbing into their bubbly, which were Carrot, Octopus, Cohn & Wolfe, Rainier, Brands2Life and Banner, which must have been particularly galling for its Chairman and CEO Rod (Roderick!) Banner, as he was one of the judges.

Nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide…

I see that Tim Dyson, CEO of the Next Fifteen Group, and Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Tim’s Group’s biggest brand Text 100, have both been blogging about the same subject; how the ability to store and share video will impact organisations’ and individuals’ reputation management. Tim thinks it’s great that every speech that’s ever made by a company exec will be there to see for ever and ever; Aedhmar is more cautious.

We, of course, think it’s brilliant, as there’ll be plenty of opportunity to see overpaid, overweight, self-important execs taken to task over their performance and pay packets. Some of them might even trip over or spill water everywhere, which would be ace.

But what will be especially cool is when all these videos get tied together through video hyperlinks, like I’ve just read about in the Economist (you’ll need a subscription but if you haven’t got one, what the hell are you thinking about?). Basically, what’ll happen is that when you’re watching a video, certain aspects will be highlighted and you’ll be able to click on them to be taken to a related video or other information…just like static webpages today.

Brilliant, eh? Just think, you’re watching a video of some CEO chuntering on about how he’s laying off thousands of unfortunate employees and suddenly his underwear combusts! Click on the flaming pants to be taken to another video to see the same fatcat telling us last week how he didn’t foresee any redundancies taking place in the near future.

Now that’s the kind of reality TV we like.

There's a new agency in town...

...well, there is if your town's Reading. And when I say new I do, of course, really mean "rebranded bit of an old and fusty PR company". The omens are great though; it promises to deliver "PR with pizzazz" and says it's "sparkling with energy, excitement and enthusiasm" and lots of other "e" words like its name, which is Escapade.

In my dictionary, escapade is defined as "a reckless adventure or wild prank". Reckless? This lot? I don't think so. They've organised a brilliant launch party in Reading for Wednesday night. The venue's booked, catering's lined up, entertainment sorted, outfits chosen. Everything's sorted.

Guests? Eh? Oh fu*k!

So yesterday, only three days before canapé leftovers for weeks, Escapade gets the invitations out (or at least, that's when our source got his). Christ, it can take more than three days to get to Reading if the M4's a bit busy.

So if you're in the area on Wednesday night, help out with the undoubtedly free booze and get yourself down to lsq2 (yes, really, that's the name of a bar and brasserie...it's Australasian...what can you expect?). As its website says, "lsq2 is very easy to find. Head for the new Ecotricity wind turbine and we are within a stones throw from there". Can't bloody miss it then.

Still, the very best of luck to the sparkly Escapade team.

Green journalism….

With the exception of The Guardian, the national newspapers are pretty poor at covering technology stories. Even when an organisation has splashed out for an advertising-led ‘special report,’ the effort made is sub-minimal.

Witness The Times on Monday and its ‘Carbon Champions’ double page spread. Funded by the Carbon Trust, which is funded by tax-payers, all six articles are outsourced to the same freelancer. Standards are bound to slip when that much pressure is put on one person, and it seems they did.

One of the representatives of the "UK corporate leaders group on climate change," Richard Barrington, talks of there being two CEOs in the future. One is the traditional CEO, the other is a chief energy officer.

If that hasn’t got "cheap PR soundbite” written all over it, check out the follow-on quote: “Barrington says that the UK could reduce CO² emissions by 3 million tons simply by persuading government departments to replace millions of energy-consuming PCs with “thin clients”, simpler machines with access to shared services, which is all many civil servants require.”

Richard Barrington’s day job? Working at Sun Microsystems flogging thin clients….

Web 0.9...

Back when TWL was a mere nipper, we posted about the seemingly endless wait for the new website from Inferno PR. That was four months ago, and the holding page had been up for a good few months by then...so it's fair to say that it's been a year or so since Inferno has had a web presence.

Well, worry not, my little chickadees, the wait is over! Late last week the new Inferno PR website appeared. And, we'll sure you'll agree, it's been worth the wait....and the need for such and extraordinary development time is clear to see.

There's the flashy, umm, animations at the...ah, oh no, there isn't, is there? Well, what about the funky streamed, erm, videoy thingamy...no, that's not there either, is it? Well, at least there must be a blog...everyone's got a blog these days, haven't they? Here it is...no...over here then...nope, can't see it there...here? Oh.

Maybe it's a retro website? Or, given the colour, possibly just budget?

Perhaps Inferno should've had a chat with newly-independent of sister-agency Bite Bullet Online? PR Week tells us that Bullet MD Alex Shaw has undertaken a one-man MBO of "three-strong Bullet" (which, after five years plus of operations seems a little, umm, 'under achieving') and that the company "expects to work with PR agencies outside Bite's parent company Next Fifteen." Shaw says that he and his team are "champing at the bit".

Looking at his picture, he's certainly been champing at something.


Shaw here, pies gone

Rumbled….

It was fun while it lasted, but we’ve been rumbled. An email from Ali Mohamed arrived, followed by one from Dr Jasir Kelsi.

Ali Mohamed works in the Bill and Exchange department of Bank of Africa, based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and recently discovered an abandoned sum of $11.3m. He kindly tracked down the anonymous TWL and asked for our account details so he could share this abandoned figure with us. As we were about to send our reply we suddenly remembered the equally enticing offer from PR Week and thought that maybe it was a clever bluff.

Dr Jasir Kelsi was in touch shortly after, having discovered an abandoned $20.5m while carrying out his day-to-day duties in the auditing and accounting department of Bank of Africa, based in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. His email even included a link to a BBC news page (no link provided for obvious reasons) as proof of the terrible accident that had killed the original owner of the money and all his family, leaving the cash available to any gullible, er lucky, claimant.

Once again, although almost taken in, we eventually decided that this might not be 100 per cent true. Our hopes lifted briefly based on the CIA World Fact Book pointing out that Burkina Faso’s “industry remains dominated by unprofitable government-controlled corporations,” which would explain all this cash hanging around in various departments of the national bank, but we still played it safe.

Similarly we had suspicions about emails from VIP Casino, the Euro Millions and the National Lottery of, yep, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on the basis that we never entered those competitions (not as TWL at least, anyway).

So, we’ve been rumbled. It’s spam city in our in-box. Bloody internet, full of faceless wide-boys causing trouble. But it did put us in mind of Will Sturgeon’s classic investigation into 419 scams….

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…

Isn’t it a pain when you go to a party and someone else is there in exactly the same outfit? You just have to laugh at the coincidence as the prickly heat of humiliation creeps up your neck.

But how about when you arrange a party and someone upstairs is having a much better party at the same time? I wonder how that feels?

Well, you could ask Edelman client dotMobi, which no doubt thought itself the height of cool in organising a press party last night at London’s Century Club, only to discover that upstairs a certain Mrs Gordon Ramsey was celebrating something or other (her reflected glory?) with all of her hubby’s celebrity mates.

We’re told that more than one person decided to duck out of DotMobi’s dull do and sneak their way into the Ramsey love-in…and were surprised to see one particular celebrity getting stuck in while his colleague and mate was battling for his life in a Leeds hospital.

Yes, that’s right…only hours after telling the BBC – apparently from close to Dickie Hammond's bedside – that Hammond and his family were "the most important concerns we have", Clarkson clearly found himself rather more concerned with the canapés, bubbly and what ever else was on offer at the Century Club (Top Gear?).

'ello mate...

'ello Danny.

I'm not sure how, but I'd failed to notice that Danny Bradbury is blogging. And better than that, he's having a go at PR people...here he is chastising someone for having the temerity to contact him regarding a feature on deadline day (post headline: "Oh, for the love of Christ"):

"The feature had been displayed on my online features list for about a month, and colleagues in this PR person’s company received email about it via my automated system as soon as it was posted. The information, in short, has been in that organisation for a long time. So doing this makes a PR exec (and their company) look incompetent. Who’s training these people?"

Ouch. Still, he doesn't go as far as naming the person or, indeed, the company involved, though he does drop a hint:

"This is the same large PR company that recently decided to ‘break new ground’ and start up a virtual press office in Second Life. Very innovative, but while it’s out messing around with avatars, virtual reality and all that jazz, it’s missing real-world press opportunities for its clients, who are presumably paying it a lot of money for the privilege."

I can't work it out...can you, dear viewer?

Ah, how sweet….

“AVEVA Group plc, one of the world's leading providers of engineering data and design IT systems….”

More hard core reporting from SiliconFen Business Report….

Loose-bladdered, BBC extra, mobile industry hunk...

Is there no end to this man's...ummm...talent? Following his appearance detailed below on Click Online, Gareth Davies - member of Edelman's tech team (part-time, I imagine, judging by all the other stuff he gets up to...) - also appears as a 'hunk' in Fone!, the UK's "innovative and audacious" mobile trade weekly.

Here's the evidence...if I was Stuart Smith, I'd be asking some serious questions...

A fool and his money…

There’s been lots of excitement this week across the PR industry following the sale of Financial Dynamics. Not only because, at $260m, some agency heads who’ve spent the last decade flogging their guts out have been reminded that some rainbows do, indeed, have a pot of gold at their end, but because it wasn’t Martin Sorrel handing over the cash! It was a management consulting company. Which now means that there’s a whole new bunch of cash-rich companies ready to buy your PR agency.

Of course, those of us that have been around for a while know that this isn’t the first time that the management consultants have got stuck into the industry. In June 2002, PricewaterhouseCoopers bought OneMonday (since renamed Next Fifteen) for £3m.

Now, you’ve just done the obvious thing and assumed that PwC picked up the company at a bargain basement price…when all it actually did was buy the rights to the name OneMonday.

And why? Because, at the time, PwC was going through the process of re-branding itself to ‘Monday’ - a process that reportedly cost £75m and actually came to nothing (the eagle-eyed amongst you will know that PwC is still called PwC) - and wanted to ensure there wasn’t any confusion.

So that turned out to be one of the best bits of business Tim Dyson, CEO of Next Fifteen, did that year…or indeed any other. Particularly as OneMonday was just the name of the group…not a recognised PR brand. And the name had only been around a year or two. And Tim came up with it in the bath one Sunday night., saying something along the lines of “one monday a massive management consultancy is going to pay me so much money I won’t need to go to work tomorrow…”

So, what odds on PwC knocking on Tim’s door again? First the company name, then the company?

We contacted Tim. His response: “LOL”

Lots of Lolly, presumably.

New series of Extras...

Not the Ricky Gervais one...no, this is much funnier.

You know the job of the PR...always work behind the scenes, never become part of the story. Not if you work in Edelman's tech team, apparently.

If you watch this issue of the BBC's Click Online - a piece about mobile internet - and can bear to bear to suffer the unoriginal ramblings of a number of 'industry experts' - then you'll also be able to pick out half of the Edelman techies acting as extras in the piece.

See that fella at the bus stop fiddling with his mobile? That's Gareth Davies, that is (he's looking a bit pensive, isn't he? Maybe he's just pissed all over the floor...yes, that's the one). Her on the park bench? Sasha Manners...Gareth again...then strolling past is ex-Microsoft press centre stalwart Georgina Hart.

Before you go rushing off to Haymarket CV in hand, however, the foxy young thing that looks like she's sitting in front of Brighton's Royal Pavilion isn't one of the Edelman team. Sorry. But the one on the bus is! She's Polly Fegen.

Apparently, though, there was a bit of a screw up during filming. They'd lined up mobile internet guru Guy Goma to speak...and guess who turned up and nicked his lunch? Only that fraud Kewney.

Don't keep The Man waiting...

Back in the sultry days of June, we highlighted an apparent contradiction by our buddies at Lewis PR. In the past, Lewis had been happy to have a dig at others who had decided not to submit financial information for inclusion in the PR Week league tables. Morgan McLintic, no less, roughed up Firefly, saying that "Fortunes will wax and wane...but I don't think the response should be to yo-yo in and out of the tables at a whim"...but then this year Lewis itself decided not to provide information. Do as I say but not as I do?

In the grand scheme of things, however, the PR Week league tables aren't that important. I mean, not being in them is hardly going to drive your business to the wall, is it?

There are, however, some things in business that are quite important. Like submitting your accounts to Companies House on time. And once again, this seems to be something that the Millbank Tower posse has overlooked.

If you go to the Companies House company information search page, type in 'Lewis Communications', click through and scroll down, you'll notice that there's a big 'OVERDUE' by the 'Next accounts due' line.

Of course you might, like I did, assume that this is normal business practice...you know, keep them waiting a bit, buy yourself a few more weeks to, ummm, get the numbers straight.

Apparently not, because I checked, and all these giuys managed to get their accounts in on time: Firefly, Hotwire, Bite, Text 100, Edelman, Band & Brown, Brands2Life, Inferno, Nelson Bostock, Johnson King, Porter Novelli, Consolidated Communications, Hill & Knowlton, Burson-Marstellar...

So what possible reason might Lewis have for being late?

Call centre girls make the rocking world go round….

Every male client seems to have a misplaced assumption that PR girls are “hot.” In the tech world, of course, “hot” probably defines a far wider range than in many other disciplines. Whilst I wouldn’t place myself in the “hot” category (even within the realms of tech), I still notice far too many glances, nay, stares, at my cleavage.

Yet, having been blessed with a client mix that is somewhat CT heavy, I can’t help but think that if male clients really wanted a cheap thrill they should manage a call centre. Call centre girls are – without doubt – gorgeous.

Behind that Scottish or Northern accent is an absolute peach of a girl. In no way are they fat-bottomed 30-something housewives earning a part-time crust. Just look at this, this, this or this. Call centre girls are hot. Call centre men, on the other hand, are high achievers, stressed, bored or – apparently– black (1, 2, 3). “Not equivalent,” say red-blooded males. “Girl is not equal to man.” Fine, put “call centre boy” into Google Images and you get geek or disabled. I love the smell of 'ism in the call centre ….

Doppelgänger..?

Crikey, I've seen some lookalikes in my time but this is extraordinary! Surely this must be the same bloke...but how can it be? He appears to be working at two different UK PR companies at the same time...here and here.


------Warder - Edelman -------------Warder - Weber Shandwick

Tsk, tsk...with an online guru like James Warren on board, at the very least you'd expect Weber to be able to keep its own website up to date, wouldn't you?

It’s my trumpet, and I’m going to blow it…

Ahhhhh, the smell of self-congratulation, the bright lights, cheap wine, over-cooked chicken, dusty dinner suits, flimsy dresses…hmmm…drunken young idiots, lecherous old fools, lost knickers, lost morals, champagne, cocaine, cognac and cigars…it can only mean one thing…it’s nearly time for the 2006 PR Week Awards!

By all accounts the lists have been shortened. How do we know? Well whispers and rumours abound – and, of course, people have started shouting it from the rooftops. First of the press with its “aren’t we great?” piece seemed to be Hotwire PR which, it tells us on its home page, has been shortlisted for “not one but two” (Hotwire’s own bold) awards.

Companies shortlisted in “agency” categories were required to present in front of a judging panel…Hotwire revels in telling us all about the experience:

“Being a creative bunch, when called upon to argue their case to the Specialist Consultancy of the Year judges, the Hotwire team shunned traditional PowerPoint for a more interesting approach. The Hotwire representatives instead donned Hotwire-branded t-shirts and carried a series of presentation cards with core facts that showed why we deserved the award. The whole team of seven enthusiastic, passionate and determined PR practitioners wowed the judges with not just their approach, but the underlying performance of the agency over the past year.”

Surely the judges will be the judge of that? Unless the Hotwire team knows something we don’t? “Carried a series of presentation cards”? Carried a suitcase full of used twenties more like.

Anyway, best of luck to Hotwire and, indeed, anyone else who’s been shortlisted. In fact, if you have we’d like to know about it…and then we’ll run an unofficial viewer-voted virtual awards ceremony of our own.

By the way, The World’s Leading is planning on being at the PR Week Awards. If anyone fancies hosting TWL, do let us know…failing that, just at the bottom of the left-hand staircase of the Great Room in Grosvenor House there’s a fire exit. If someone would be kind enough to pop the door at about 9.00pm, we’ll be outside if our gladrags ready to party.

“Highly motivated, results-driven….”

Reading the PR section of Media Guardian always raises a wry smile. Tantalising roles await those with exceptional skills and enthusiasm. ‘Strategic thinker’ is usually up there, along with ‘outstanding client handling’ and ‘creative.’

But let’s be honest, ‘strategic thinking’ constitutes less than two per cent of your time. ‘Outstanding client handling’ means taking regular bollockings from an emotionally unstable marketing manager without taking it personally and ‘creative’ is within the confines of American corporate tastes.

So how about a bit of honesty….

Are you easy to convince? Will you churn out countless twelve hour days as a result of self-inflicted inefficient working practices? Are you impervious to the fact that your clients and journalists hate you and everything you stand for?

Well then you could be working for us!

We’re looking for insecure subservient people that will do anything to please. Our demanding roles require you to generate interest in some of the dullest products on Earth. Up for the challenge, you’ll enjoy counseling our clients who will then refuse to listen to your advice and insist purely upon product news releases that highlight the additional features within v 2.7.

Not motivated by money, you will enjoy exercising restraint when made to stay late in the office due to nothing more than your client not having bothered to ask you for something earlier in the day. Whilst trying your hardest to juggle several different clients – all in utterly different areas of the market – you’ll love the instant rough and tumble the very second a status report gets sent 30 minutes late or contains a typo.

So if you can rustle up six tier one level media for the CEO of a mid-size tech company at just three days notice, send us your CV! And if you can see the funny side when he cancels the day before he arrives, call us right now!!

As our clients are US-based technology companies, a second language is not required. However you must be able to chat politely about everything from fine wines to 802.11 standards, and not let your spokeperson's share options get you down. You’ll have the ability to laugh at strangers’ IT-based jokes and enjoy voluminous levels of reporting.

Naivety essential.

Gremlins on video….

We like IT Pro, Chris ‘356 years experience’ Green, Iain ‘ex-Text’ Thomson and the rest. We’re also impressed with the new site and think – and hope – it’ll do well.

However we, and others, have a creeping suspicion that all is not well with the videocasts. Is it a collective hallucination, or has the ‘latest video’ section got a whiff of ‘not very latest anymore’ about it?

What’s the score King Kong?

Biting the hand that feeds IT….

El Reg’s strapline could be nicely applied to Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. In a familiar ‘I-can’t-be-arsed-to-use-the-delete-button’ moan, Jeremy suggests a black list of tech PR companies so that he can block “email from all the big names in Tech PR.”

Having pimped his blog out to Google ads, the post carries adverts from Weber Shandwick and a range of other PR companies (click back and forth a few times to get the full range as they refresh).

Isn’t it ironic….

Is that a cucumber in your pocket...

Or, ladies of the industry, are you just pleased to see these?

We know you're the ones that really wear the trousers round here, but are you wearing the right trousers? Well now there's no excuse, because top class fashion company Sole Mio has developed the specially-designed 'PR Girl Pants'!

They're available on Amazon.com for a entirely reasonable $8.99 (reduced from $59.99). Let's look at the details...

Elasticated waist for those long client lunches...Blackberry-sized pocket at the rear....special business card pocket up front...boot cut for walking all over your clients...reinforced knees for 'special' media relationship-building (or simply begging for more budget)...and they have a mechanism that causes them to spontaneously combust when you're telling porkies...

And for all those male clients of yours, there's even a small mirror in the pocket. Why? Because he can see himself in your knickers...

15 voicemails of fame….

“I had 15 calls from a PR today,” says a notable IT journo.

Not mentioning any names, but it drove him mad to the core…

Shallow? Me? Whatever...

I'm conducting an experiment.

Every now and then I pop over and have a look at the Johnson King blog...you know, the one called 'Whatever...' We've talked about it before.

I think they're probably glad for my custom. The posts on the site rarely attract any comments, so I'm thinking they don't get many visitors. So I'd like to help them out.

Next to each post is a picture of the author. The latest post is by Jacqui Depares. She's a right little stunner, don't you think?

Can someone from Johnson King pop by and let me know whether you've noticed a spike in visitors? Maybe the Blogmeister General himself?

Happy to be of service.

One hump or two..?

As regular viewers will know, every now and then we like to bring you news of people and organisations claiming to be "the world's leading" in whichever particular niche they've carved out for themselves...or some cunning PR has carved out for them. Sometimes, we do discover the hen's tooth of a proper world's leading (remember the world's leading sparrow expert?).

While this morning's find might indeed be a true world's leading, it does seem to be one of those that's operating in such a small and specialist area that by default it is the global authority. We give you:

"CVRL, the world's leading camel milk research institute."

You'll be delighted to hear, I'm sure, that "after 20 years of intensive scientific research" CVRL (which is based in Dubai...well it wouldn't be much use to be based in Cambridge, would it?) is launching its first camel milk product which is called...wait for it...Camelicious ®. An inspired piece of product naming, we're sure you'll agree.

How long can it be before we have Laughing Camel Cheese Triangles and I Can't Believe It's Not Camel?

Who needs enemies..?

Blimey, Wagg Ed is getting some stick at the moment, isn’t it? First this, and now ZDNet's Tom Foremski gets the knife out on his ex-FT mate and now Wagg Ed UK MD Paul Abrahams.

Still, lovely to see that even an ex-FT hack gets excited about a piece of coverage in PR Week, eh?! Ego a go go, as Robbie Williams once said.