15 January 2007

Trademark troubles…

I’m not sure if you remember, but back in September 2006, PRWeak said this:

“The most powerful and influential figures in the UK PR industry are to be profiled in a new book, published by PRWeek. Scheduled for publication at the end of this year, The PowerBook will be a Who's Who-style directory of over 400 leading industry figures.”

I’m fairly sure that the end of the year has passed now, and I’m waiting with baited breath to flick through, as PRWeak itself called it, “the UK PR industry’s first A-list.”

Has anyone seen it? It all seemed very urgent at the time, as again, back in September, PRWeak’s story stated that:

“Each individual selected under PRWeek's criteria will be approached by the magazine over the next two weeks. They will be asked to fill out a brief questionnaire, which will subsequently lead to a personal profile in The PowerBook - and ultimately a place in the industry's hall of fame. Please look out for this letter and respond quickly…”

Perhaps Apple – though currently involved with Cisco in a similar dispute of its own – didn’t like the use of the PowerBook name? I mean, they've even used the same IT industry standard embedded capitalisation.

We’re particularly anxious to see it though as, would you believe it, good old TWL was invited to be included!

Yes, that’s right, back on the 5th October, we received an email from Kate Magee at PRWeak which said:

“You are looking at something rare. It's an invitation to appear in the UK PR industry's first 'who's who' guide - The PowerBook - which is being published by PRWeek. Only a select group of powerful, influential or inspiring individuals are invited to appear in the PowerBook, which is scheduled to appear at the end of this year. It will be a recognised guide to the leading figures currently working in the UK PR business.”

We followed all the instructions very carefully and made sure we got in before the deadline. OK, so we couldn’t really provide “a recent, colour, head and shoulders photograph” but we did provide an alternative image.

So where is it? Anyone?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

>"The PowerBook will be a Who's Who-style directory of over 400 leading industry figures.”<

I suspect PR Week is still desperately searching for the other 385. Of the 15 that replied, I suspect that five are genuine 'industry leaders' and the other ten would probably like to be...

Anonymous said...

The email I received didn't say end of year, but January 19 - I'm hoping/dreading to see my ugly mug in a supplement bundled with Friday's PR Week.

....the world's leading.... said...

Ha ha ha! I love it!

Stuart, I think your comment validates the one from Anon...PRWeak has obviously had to send out a number of follow-ups to pad out it's little book!

Umm, no offence, like.

Anonymous said...

My keyboard is now wet and smelling of coffee cos I spat my hot beverage out reading that the Brucemeister has been sent an invitation. This post needs some sort of health warning.

And can you imagine just how bad the PR Weak book is going to be, especially when you consider how crap the league tables are. It's just going to needlessly inflate the egos of the nearlys and the has-beens, and make them insuferable (TWL excluded, of course).

figgis said...

Maybe its the Brucinator's fascination with timesheets that has propelled him into the top 400?

If you're filling in a time sheet in 5 minute blocks and listing out each individual magazine you read, how much time do you spend on admin a day?

>I've just had a quick look at my timesheets, which show that I used to spend about 5-10 minutes reading it. Last week's edition took me 25 minutes.<

http://www.stuartbruce.biz/

Anonymous said...

When filling in his timesheets, how many minutes do you think he allocates to "filling in my timesheets"?

Anonymous said...

>"so we couldn’t really provide “a recent, colour, head and shoulders photograph” but we did provide an alternative image."<

don't tell me - you photocopied your arse instead...???

figgis said...

>don't tell me - you photocopied your arse instead...???<

how many groupings of 5 minute intervals did you put into your time sheet for that then TWL?

....the world's leading.... said...

Lots and lots...it's a big arse...and we wasted loads of paper too because we couldn't work out how to reduce the image size to fit it onto a single piece of A3. In the end, we separated our cheeks onto two pieces and used a Pritt Stick on the join.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, feeling a bit sick at the thought of that.

I think we would all do well to remember that the really inspirational PRs in this industry of ours tend not to be the ones that shout about it and, crucially, are the ones doing the work - yes really.

Anonymous said...

"Baited breath"? I can't quite conjure up the image in my mind. Sounds slightly painful though.

Anonymous said...

Don't expect to see it anytime soon - we (the two of us here 'invited' for inclusion) got countless letters, emails and even telephone calls telling us to fill it in

The thing is...being number a hundred and something (you can work out your ranking from the URL they ask you to click on) you feel like a bit of an idiot taking part.

I know we take ourselves a bit seriously sometimes, but not that seriously.

I mean, can you really see yourself going:

"Hey guess what Mum - I'm the 210th most powerful person in PR...in the UK, not the world"!

....the world's leading.... said...

That's brilliant! I hadn't even noticed the URL thing. That being the case, we're a brand new entry, pop-pickers, at a rather impressive no.392 (out of 400 remember!).

Mind you, we are only 9 months old...

Anonymous said...

Even better, because the URL works on yourname/rank number, if you have the patience you could probably log on as someone else by guessing how "powerful" they are - so borkowski/35 or something like that, and fill in their form for them!