Next Fifteen Group CEO: moaning Brits are a pain in the arse…

That's a slight misquote. But onto that in a minute.

Here’s a funny thing. If you visit the Next Fifteen Group's website’s homepage (skip the intro), there’s a bunch of little pictures at the bottom. Hold on a few seconds and they start changing. It’s all big teeth and ears….quite spooky. Rather like looking into the Tupperware boxes in a serial killer’s freezer.

Anyway, Tim Dyson is CEO of the Next Fifteen Group. Companies within the Next Fifteen Group – particularly Bite, Inferno and Text 100 – feature regularly in posts here at TWL sitting, as they do, right in the middle of the UK tech PR industry.

Ages ago, we sent Dyson a bunch of questions to answer as the first in a (most probably very sporadic) series of interviews with the big knobs of technology PR. He took weeks and weeks to come back to us – in fact we were about to give him a slating for ignoring us when he did. We’ve now taken as long to do anything with his answers. So here, for you reading pleasure, is an out of date chat with Dyson.

We’re good, aren’t we?

Around the world, in all the companies it owns, Next Fifteen employs about 900 people in 36 offices in 19 countries. In its last financial year (to the end of July 2006) the Group turned over £56m and made a headline pre-tax profit of £4.4m – both representing 30%-plus growth on the previous year. The Group is listed on the AIM stock market in London with a stock price of (at time of posting) about 80p, giving the Group a market capitalisation of £43m. If you ignore the massive spike in the Group’s stock price around the boom and bust of dotcom madness, it seems to be on a slow and steady climb upwards.

Dyson sits at the top, therefore, of what looks like a decent business. He’s a 45 year old Brit but has lived on the west coast of America for more than a decade. He’s got a wife and kids and that…probably a really big house and a nice motor (‘cos he gets paid a quarter of a million a year and owns 5.5 million shares in the Group). Let’s cut to the chase:

TWL: You're a Brit living in America , right? What's the most annoying thing about that? If it's easier, just rank your top 20.

Dyson:
1. Driving – it’s too easy to drive in this country so you don’t need to be any good at it.
2. They don’t have pubs which is presumably why they invented Starbucks.
3. Talking to Brits who are here that like to complain about the place but seem to have a great life.
4. TV – thankfully I don’t get much time to watch TV though.

TWL: Virtually all of the (Next Fifteen Group) revenue growth (in its last financial year) came from North America (OK, OK a bit in APAC too). Revenues in EMEA (an we're including UK in EMEA too) are virtually flat, with PBT falling quite significantly. Is there limited potential for growth across EMEA now? As an organisation, how much more resource are you focusing on the US and APAC markets against EMEA? Do European PR professionals who really want to do well need to emigrate?

Dyson: APAC is actually the place where the real new growth is coming but the market is still pretty small. There are clearly some great careers waiting to be had for people in markets such as China and India. This doesn’t mean that EMEA is anything like a dead market. Mainland Europe is still slow in some places but overall there are plenty of growth opportunities. When you look at a region, it’s important to look at what client mix agencies have when analyzing their growth. Agencies that service mainly large companies will be generating only modest growth in revenues and their margins won’t be doing much. Agencies with a mix of large, medium and small will produce more solid growth at all levels. I guess this means that if you are looking for a career with growth opportunities in a more established market like the UK then look at the agency and how smart you think the people are but also try and evaluate what the business growth of the clients is likely to be like in the next few years.

TWL: You recently blogged about the potential resurgence of 'big tech' and highlighted the stock performance of a number of the big names (quite a few being clients of your Group's). There was a time when your stock seemed to almost track the performance of tech stocks, but seemingly no longer. Why is that?

Dyson: Good question (Thanks! Ed) In truth our stock has now pretty well caught up with their growth in the last six months having risen from the 50s to the high 70s. It seems we now lag the market in that respect though.

TWL: What's the biggest challenge for the Next Fifteen Group over the next 3-5 years?

Dyson: People. It sounds corny but if we can continue to hire and keep great people we will continue to win good clients and grow.

TWL: What's the biggest challenge for the PR industry over the next 3-5 years?

Dyson: Delivering value versus other disciplines. The PR industry is in a great place right now while the ad business is struggling. The most dangerous competitor is the one with their back against the wall.

TWL: What keeps you up at night (you can't say "kids")?

Dyson: I’m lucky in that one in that my kids sleep better than I do. I actually don’t tend to worry about specific issues in the business, instead I worry more about longer term issues that I’m trying to figure out that will affect the business. For example we have invested a lot of time and energy in the Clean Tech space as I truly believe this is a great area and a good area for us to be in. However, I know we have to become ‘greener’ so I’m looking at how we can do that. This is a long term challenge for us if we are to do it right.

TWL: Can you ever foresee a time when you'd shell out £1m for an anonymous, irreverent, beautifully-written and highly amusing blog?

Dyson: Can’t say I can.

TWL: Bugger. What a waste of time.

Stoned Junction...

I've just come across a blog called "PRefect - Grassing on the world of PR" written by Richard Stone, who runs a "London based PR and strategic communications firm" called Stone Junction. He doesn't post very often, but did yesterday about how business needs more rock stars.

Stone? Grass? I don't know what he's smoking, but here's a clip:

"In the PR industry we have Mark Borkowski, Chris Lewis and Matthew Freud. Without picking up an instrument, these people have transferred some of the qualities of Bono, Jagger and Gallagher into a world more used to spreadsheets, PowerPoint and red tape."

Far out...

New year, new job..?

Let’s face it, you’ve completely overspent at Christmas and the kindness of your employer in paying your December salary before the festive period now looks like the ultimate act of sadism as a long, skint January stretches out before you. You need some more money, and quick. You need a better job.

Obviously, for those looking for a new challenge, inspiring environment and, let’s face it, a whacking great pay rise, there’s only one place to go: Indigo Red. Yep, it seems that Santa stuffed a load of brilliant new PR jobs down the chimney of out lovely booze sponsor Steve Mallison-Jones. Here are just a few tempting morsels:

Associate Director – B2B Tech – Agency - London
Nice one for someone who’s been an AD for a while, I reckon…maybe your promotion (for which you’re clearly ready) has been “pushed back” a time or two, just until you’ve achieved one or two more of those SMART objectives…

It’s London-based, and you’ll be the lead on a global client, coordinating European offices (which means you’ll get to push lots of foreigners around…great!). You’ll be providing strategy for three parts of the client’s business: UK corporate and product, EMEA corporate and EMEA product. So, umm, that seems to be everything UK and EMEA then… As ever with these massive clients, you’ll also need to help the agency connect the different pieces of the account, making sure you’re all nicely integrated.

I imagine this one pays really, really well.

UK PR Manager – B2B Tech role – in-house - South
Ooooh look, an in-house role. Perhaps this is the easy street you’ve been looking for? Perhaps you’re at the top of the Account Management tree (or have just been promoted to Account Director and realised that it’s exactly the same job you’ve been doing for the past four years)?

Imagine being on the client side, eh? You get to push the agency around a bit…and they have to take you out to flash restaurants all the time. Even better, this company is partly involved in the gaming arena – which means funky consumer stuff and even flashier nightclubs! There is a bit of techie stuff, so you need to be able to talk both tech and games…maybe one for a tech PR who’s a games enthusiast?

Business PR Manager, Emerging Markets – B2B Tech – In-house - South
Another in-house role! It’s tech, but you need to be able to put technology into business context…so forget your bits and bytes and think profit and loss.

You’ll define the UK business PR strategy (something like, “get in the FT” should do it) and, I’m afraid, you’ll need to talk to people at the US HQ. But no doubt you’ll also get to go over there on a regular basis which, at current exchange rates, means a whole load of shopping. And you’ll probably be able to get an iPhone before anyone else.

There are also the usual in-house benefits associated with being the client to a load of local PR agencies and other vendors. You’ll also need to be able to speak to the in-house marketing people and “integrate”…which essentially means making them understand what PR is, and why it’s more useful than anything they’ve done lately.

Any of these sound great? Yes? No? Well, whatever, Steve’s got loads and loads more so give him a call on 01923 466555. And let him know TWL sent you...he's promised us a recrutiment fee in the form of a whole load more drink for the next TWL party...

In true Nick Ross fashion, “he’s waiting, for your call.”

The man from Piat d’Or…

Loyal readers, we’ve often said that if you’ve got something to launch or an announcement to make, you should think about using the extremely well-read and influential pages of our little TWL blog. Oddly, few people choose to take us up on this kind offer. Can’t think why.

Oh yes. It’s because they think we’ll rip the right royal piss out of it.

But that’s not always the case. Just usually. It’s worth a try though, isn’t it? Now we’re getting almost literally millions of visits every day from around the world, imagine the exposure you could get yourself. And any publicity is good publicity, surely?

One man who’s willing to give it a go is freelance consultant Mark Pinsent. He came to our Christmas party, don’t you know? Lanky fella…shiny hair. Anyway, a couple of days ago we received an email from Pinsent letting us know that he’d started a new blog. This didn’t exactly fill us with enormous amounts of New Year joy, as we assumed it’d be yet another tech PR blogging about blogging which, to be honest, we’re a bit bored with (more on that later).

But no, it’s not the case! Pinsent lives in France, apparently, and in common with TWL has for many years been an enthusiastic consumer of wine without having the first clue about what he was shoving down his neck. But he’s decided to change all that and start learning stuff…and he’s going to stick it all on his new blog, Red Vin Man (there’s nothing like a good pun, and that’s nothing like…etc etc).

Go and have a look. Go on. It’s great. A really, really good read.

Oh, yes, and Pinsent’s promised us that if his stats show a whole bunch of people flooding to his blog from TWL, he’ll send us something fruity with great legs and a fantastic nose. Though he can’t vouch for the rest of her.

I thank you.

PS – Another thought! Maybe he can advise us on the booze for our next TWL drink up? It’s coming soon…more on that later too.

iCan be so good for you....

Apple shocks the world by having Dennis Waterman launch the iPhone.

A cure for cancer….

It might as well have been for the avalanche of sycophantic coverage. But, no, it’s actually a phone. Oh sorry, a reinvented phone.

Yes, finally, for all those fools that rushed out to buy an overpriced proprietary MP3 player called an iPod, there is something else for them to waste their money on.

Steve Jobs has pulled off the old Jedi mind trick again and launched an iPhone, which is also a phone and a ‘breakthrough internet device.’ Of course most people didn’t know you could break through the internet, thinking it was just a fantastical ‘looking glass’ scenario but, lo, Apple is wonderful. And you use your finger to dial. Visionary.

So, hoorah, look forward to plenty of politicians eagerly talking to youth magazines to fill “who’s in my iPhone” columns, and charts dedicated to knowing whose number has been downloaded most this week.

These will be the same magazines, of course, that are hungrily consumed by those unquestioning enough to pay £5 for a magazine whose sole editorial purpose is to make their readers feel materially inadequate.

These sheep-minded consumers – frittering away their hard-earned cash on Nero coffees, Nike trainers, Tommy Hilfiger, Hollywood blockbusters and plasma TVs – exercise no independent thought before buying whatever it is that everyone else is buying. The world and his wife have one. Now I do too. I’m an individual. I’m thick. It’s Apple. It’s great.

Choose Apple. Choose a gadget. Choose a statement. Choose proprietary. Choose to look like a cock who’s wearing white headphones. Choose something with shit batteries. Choose poor security protection. Choose not to choose, you utterly ignorant over-paid twat. Choose to work really hard to get a job in journalism at the BBC and then undermine yourself by writing a great big advert for a new product.

And all this before it’s even available. Not only that, but of course us laggards in the UK have to wait not only until the iPhone is actually launched, but until it’s available through someone other than Cingular. In fact, until it’s available through a UK operator.

Marketing, Jesus. Bill Hicks was right.

It’s even enough to make you remember that Microsoft isn’t so good at marketing after all and, indeed, isn't quite so evil.

Apple iPhone mania is here. Run for the hills.

Murphy's Law...

For reasons best known to himself, Andrew B. Smith over at Object Towers has decided to give Ian "I keep my lunch in my beard" Murphy a platform for a typical moan (typical, that is, of IT hacks in general and Murphy specifically).

The post has me giggling though, as it seems to be the blog equivalent of a telephone call with Murphy. Smith gets in with 28 words at the start and then Murphy chips in with 904 of his own! Murphy even describes a couple of typical examples of phone calls between himself and flacks, one of which ending with, "And on it goes"...

Yes it does, Ian. Yes it does.

Well maybe, but only if you play your cards right...

In a less than subtle post on his blog summarising his 2006, Bruce (no, not that one) puts the feelers out for a new job...sounds like he wants to "do a Mayfield" to me. Needs to be up north though.

Anyone?

Handbags….

Drawing on lunchtime chores to fulfil a contractual obligation to write a blog, IT Week’s Lem Bingley tells us The Business Names Act 1985 states that there are some words you can’t use in a business name without permission from the Secretary of State “to avoid the public being misled into believing that a company has a size or status that is not justified.”

One of these words is ‘register’ which gives Lem the opportunity to question whether The Register (“you know, the red-top web site with a vulture fetish”) has the relevant approval.

Lem starts the piece by saying he’s “unlucky enough to have been voted the Company Secretary of a small, non-profit firm.” Anyone care to guess the firm in question?

On the Rob….

CFO Europe’s cover story this month is the ‘power play’ that has taken place at VNU, the troubled Dutch media group. The magazine points to the messy scrap as 2006’s prime example of ‘activist’ shareholders rising against management.

It’s a cracking article, even though some of the financial world jargon is a little alien to tech PRs. All those crazy European names make it hard going too (Knight Vinke is a personal favourite – it sounds like the brand of something that retails from vending machines in gents’ toilets).

Most fun of all is Rob Ruijter, VNU’s CFO since early 2005, taking a typically direct Dutch approach when distancing himself from recently departed CEO Rob van den Bergh.

“Rob – and this is a personality issue – never had a great relationship with his investors. He had little sympathy for young people with these laptops doing their models, and that showed. For you not to like it is one thing; for you to show it is another.”

Don’t need double spacing to read between those lines.

What is interesting is that this ‘poster-child’ of European shareholder activism hasn’t been covered in the relevant VNU journals; Accountancy Age or Financial Director. Indeed “shareholder activism” produces very few returns on the online versions and neither mentions anything to do with VNU’s tortuous M&A trail. Whether this is more reflective of management diktat, journo self-censorship or VNU’s search engine is not clear.

As far as the world of tech PR is concerned, the only relevant thing in all this is that the bit of VNU we deal with (Business Media Europe) has been raffled off to 3i, a venture capital group. Although the ‘VNU cuts 10% of jobs’ headlines don’t apply to BME, it’s still a potentially worrying time for the journos we work with (especially Boomerang Thomson if ‘last in, first out’ is applied).

While on the 3i acquisition, the 3i news release quotes Erik Hoekstra, who is described as the ‘prospective CEO of BME.’ Bravely risking the carrot dangling in front of him he says:

“We are delighted to work with 3i. They exhibited compelling sector knowledge right from the start, coupled with a proven ability to operate alongside us in the various European markets where BME is active. We are convinced of the exciting growth potential of BME, and in partnership with 3i we are looking forward to making it happen.”

So there’s a retort for the next time a VNU journo complains about a generic “we’re delighted” quote in a client’s news release.

Right at the end of the news release it mentions that Rob van den Bergh acted as a Senior Adviser to 3i during the transaction. Wonder how Rob Ruijter felt about that?

Back to work blues...

Hello. You back yet? Gagging to get back to work, I bet. Did you have a good Christmas? New Year? Hope so.

Did any of you bump into one of those very annoying City types who spent most of the Christmas break wondering what they might spend their obscene bonus on? Will it be property, a yacht, or an Aston Martin? Maybe all three. Sure, being in a creative industry and not having to get trussed up in a pinstripe has its upsides, but you can't deny that a few more readies wouldn't go amiss.

Still, I'm sure a few of you got a little something extra in your end of year pay packet. Well you might have unless, as we've heard, you work at either Firefly or Lewis. Apparently, neither of those agencies was in a position to give anyone their customary Christmas bonus this year.

Now Firefly we can understand. After all, losing the huge Motorola account to Edelman this year would knock the wind out of any agency's financial sails...it's more interested in survival than shelling out extras. We hear that the current staff levels are well below the 70 boasted on its website. Still, Firefly has come back once from the departure of a big spending client and we're sure it'll do it again.

Lewis not paying any bonuses is a bit more puzzling though. Perhaps there's a clue in the agency's refusal last year to submit numbers for the PR Week league tables? They might have shown a dip in revenues (though we're sure Lewis would deny this) but it's maybe more likely to be related to the excuse given for not coming up with the numbers: that Lewis was concentrating on its international expansion. Expensive old business, that, especially if the new international offices aren't pulling in the buisness they need to.

Anyway, happy New Year.

Heroes beats Celebrations...

For the past few days I've been running a head-to-head review programme between Heroes and Celebrations. It's no contest! Heroes wins every time. There isn't a single duff one in the tin. OK, so I can take or leave the white chocolate Dream, and there's no real need to stick a nut in a Caramel, but look at the competition. Topic? Galaxy Truffle? Bounty?! Too many left at the bottom of the tin. It's no contest.

So, before I go and throw up, all that's left is to wish all our loyal listeners a very merry Christmas indeed.

And as someone on Not the Nine O'Clock News once said (I think), "Remember this old Korean proverb this festive season. A dog is not just for Christmas. With a bit of luck, there'll be some left over on Boxing Day."

Get stuck in.

Don't try this at home...

Cheers to El Reg for brightening up my morning with this little video.

It looks like a bunch of people keeping themselves amused while waiting to be rescued after being trapped in a building. The managing director decides to try some ill-advised gymnastics.

Stick with it until about a minute and a half in...it's worth it.

Adelman…

It seems like Edelman’s got over the fake Wal-Mart blog stutter and is happily ploughing on with it social media ambitions. A week or two ago, the company announced its StoryCrafter social media news release format. There’s been a lot written about that already, some of it claiming that Edelman has merely stuck its own name on other people’s work. But then last night, I read this headline:

Edelman and NewsGator Team to Offer Conversational Ads

It struck me as a bit odd, because I thought Edelman was a public relations company…so what’s it doing offering ads of any kind (conversational or otherwise)?

This is the deal: “The NewsGator-powered product tracks media relating to pre-specified subjects, extracting nuggets from blog posts, mainstream media, and video and photo sites. The PR firm will pluck the highest quality content from those sources based on criteria set by its clients; the choice bits will then feed dynamically into the chosen advertiser-branded units.”

“Units” in this context means things like banner ads. So, basically, there might be a banner ad from, say, BMW on the Auto Trader website containing lots of positive comments from blogs and other media about BMWs; comments that Edelman has selected from the stuff pushed to it by NewsGator.

Excuse me for asking, but what on earth has that got to do with public relations? Edelman doesn’t create any of the content; it merely sifts through and chooses content (“based on criteria set by its clients”, remember) which has been created by other people. Edelman doesn’t then place any of that content in the media itself; it just floods it into banner ads (presumably designed and planned by the client’s ad agency).

I’m really struggling here. Have I got this wrong, or has Edelman made a significant strategic shift in the focus of its business?

H&K Christmas party craziness...

Only just picked this up from James Barbour's blog.

So, last week H&K had its Christmas party...a suitably flash affair for one of the world's wealthiest PR companies. Clearly they decided that some home-grown...umm..."entertainment" was in order, part of which consisted of a number of the 2006 graduate intake doing a little routine to Madonna's "Hung Up."

Hung up? The fella being Madonna for the evening should be strung up. Can we have a name please James? And an invitation to the next party, of course...

You can watch it here.

Is it annoying? Yes, it is….

It is no secret that marketing directors, media spokespeople and their ilk within technology companies enrol on the same distance learning courses.

How else do they all believe that two marketing dollars is divisible by five PR campaigns? Where else do they get the impression that 5pm is an acceptable time to issue a ‘by the end of play’ request?

The latest incarnation of the postgraduate marketing course in fuckwittedry has left a particularly unsavoury scar across the tech-marketing landscape. It is a self-serving twist on the rhetorical question, whose main appeal is that it allows the self-obsessed orator to pose a journalist a question and then plough on regardless, without having to wait for – or more importantly acknowledge - a response.

For larger companies it has the added benefit of admitting that one isn’t perfect, without opening the debate as to why. Or simply put, it facilitates the consumption of humble pie without the mastication.

“Our aim is to produce the finest [insert application] software in the world. Are we there yet? No. Will we get there?Yes.”

The Orwellian mastery of language is clear for all to see. It sounds so much more comforting than its spin-free equivalent: “What we make isn’t all that really, but hopefully it’ll be better at an unspecified time in the future.”

In its cutting-edge day, it may have been enough to justify wars, but thankfully it’s on a sharp decline towards the patronising “we’re on a journey,” and the woeful “validates our market.” A short twelve months from now it’ll be among the pitiful clichés epitomised by the classic “here’s an opportunity,” that’s so eagerly tripped out by aging account directors as they glance at the clock and grab the nearest account exec....

No graffiti, no comment….

Proving that no one is above cashing in, graffiti artist Banksy has a book out this Christmas. It’s a collection of some of the best work from the notorious “art terrorist,” (The Daily Telegraph’s one line descriptor, not ours).

Producing ‘graffiti art’ on a wide range of public spaces has won Banksy no favours with law enforcement officials, which led to a gorgeous piece of PR-related wit. Eschewing the usual sycophantic book cover quote, Banksy (or his publisher, at least) evidently decided it would be funny to ring the Metropolitan Police and ask for a quote for the cover of the book.

A ham-fisted plod Met press officer, straying from the usual “no comment” realms, underlined how unlikely it was that the Met would play ball with Banksy. And so on the back cover of Banksy’s book is a single endorsement quote:

"There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover" Metropolitan Police spokesperson

Banksy has a lovely, if somewhat small, website. Some of our favourites are here, here and here.

Second place is the first loser...

...which in this case might not be a bad thing.

This week saw the annoucnement of the second annual "Worst EU Lobby Awards" in, appropriately, Brussels (appropriate for Christmas that is!). In first place came ExxonMobil, for "continuing to fund virulent climate-change skeptics wielding non-scientific arguments despite vehement criticism of its behavior in the United States and Europe." Naughty people.

In second place, you'll be delighted to hear, was dear old Weber Shandwick, for "setting up a front group to advance the interests of pharmaceutical giant Roche while pretending to work for better access for cancer care" which, personally, I think should've won hands-down.

Amusingly, Weber's UK homepage carries the following quote from its worldwide Chief Reputation Strategist Leslie Gaines-Ross:

"The last decade has seen many of the world’s most admired companies descend from their once lofty positions. They were in a class by themselves – corporate reputation royalty whose invincibility was universally accepted by business executives around the globe. No one could have predicted that these companies would ever part with their crowns..."

...and then they started working with Weber Shandwick!

Better luck next year, eh?

Anyone need £100 this badly..?

Another Response Source request caught my eye:

PUBLICATION: Daily Express
JOURNALIST: Sadie Nicholas (freelancer)
DEADLINE: 14-December-2006 at 19:00

QUERY:
£100 payment for phone interview and pics - I'm looking for men who either hid their spending or saving habits from their wife or girlfriend (current or ex, doesn't matter) for a long time only for it to cause problems in the relationship when she discovered the extent of the spending or debt.

Now, I know of one particular washed-up tech hack who fits the bill...but I'm not about to put a hundred notes in his back pocket.

TWL pubcast...

So, Steve's done the business with the recordings from last week's TWL Christmas party and mashed them up for the FIR podcast from Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz.

It's hilarious...and a fair reflection of the evening, starting quite well with a considered chat with Justin Hayward of MS&L (who tells us that "Second Life just isn't stable enough...") and gradually deteriorating as the Indigo Red bar tab gets consumed. James Barbour of H&K explains that, "if you can see the bandwagon, it's too late to jump onto it" (though probably trickier, I'd have thought, if you can't see it) and a particularly good bit is when Sarah from PRWeak attempts to disguise a complete lack of knowledge about everything with a journalistic policy of non-disclosure. Wonderful.

You can download it here. It would be ungracious of me to suggest that Nev and Shel's chat should be skipped over, but we start at 51 mins 40 seconds into the recording.

Nev sounds rather bemused during his introduction...but afterwards Shel (bless him) says that he wished they'd played it earlier in the podcast...

Stockings full to bursting...

Have you been down to Edelman's offices recently? They've got a beautiful big Christmas tree...real as well. I think Stuart Smith, CEO had something to do with it...lovely glittering balls, smashing fairy. He's certainly been spending more time on that than he has blogging, that's for sure.

He looks happy though. Could it be this huge pile of Microsoft Xbox consoles hidden underneath..?

Now why would Edelman have all of those..?

The world’s most feared…

Do you receive journo enquiries from Response Source? You do? Then you might have noticed one that came winging in this morning from Peter Crush at PRWeak. This is what is said:

“PRWeek is wanting to do a 'top 5 blogs' clients and agency PROs fear the most - in terms of their potential influence, power to disrupt – or at least monitor the most (which is sort of the same thing), i.e. the ones that are highest on their radar.

“We want as many of you to give us your most feared blogs to your sector as possible. The more we see the same ones mentioned, the higher up our list they will go. It would be great if you could also provide reasons why the ones you've chosen are so important for you to monitor.”

Now far be it from us to encourage our loyal and fantastically attractive readers to email Peter (peter.crush@haymarket.com) suggesting that dear old TWL is the UK’s most feared blog…that would be tantamount to BBC Sports Personality of the Year-like vote rigging (you want to see the next quarter’s phone bill down at Buck House…).

No the point of this post is to highlight the description Peter gives PRWeak at the top of his Response Source enquiry. It’s this:

PUBLICATION: PRWeek
PUBLICATION DESCRIPTION: The PR Bible

Well, it is Christmas, after all.

Christmas party pics...

If I've done it correctly, you should be able to find the photos that Steve very kindly took at our Christmas party last week somewhere around here.

Handy memory jog for those that made it along...

‘tis the season to be lazy…

Last week’s hugely enjoyable TWL Christmas Party was the first thought I’d really put into this year’s festive season. There’s been loads going on…busy, busy, busy…and I haven’t had a moment to think about Christmas preparations. Still, plenty of time to get all that sorted. I’m certainly not thinking about shutting up shop for the festivities just yet. I mean, what sort of lazy sod would you be to finish your year’s work just a week into December?

The sort of lazy sod that works for PRWeak, that’s who you’d be. Last week’s issue was the final one to be published before Christmas…and the next one won’t be on your doormat until the 12th January! So that’s like four whole weeks off. Is anyone else in the industry enjoying such luxury? Not many, I’d wager.

We’ve all got presents to buy, turkeys to stuff, booze to drink, TV to watch, chocolate to eat and tethers to reach the end of, but most of us can do it in the week allowed…10 days at the outside.

The lazy, lazy, probably run out of ad revenue, sods.

Indigo Redeye...

Slightly fragile this morning.

Just to say, a huge vote of thanks to everyone that made the not insubstantial leap of faith last night to turn up at a bar clutching Christmas baubles for a party that, well, none of us were that confident was actually going to happen.

But it did happen! And TWL had a thoroughly good time meeting some new faces and catching up with some old ones. Obviously we're particularly indebted to that absolute gent Steve Mallison-Jones from Indigo Red for dipping his hand in his pocket and buying everyone beer and wine...special thanks also to Jenny Ellis from Spark who volunteered to get to the bar early and bag a table or two.

Steve has sent us the photos from last night...we'll work out what the hell to do with them soon. He's also volunteered to fund the booze at the next party. Top man.

I'm off to find some Nurofen.

Who’s who? How the..?

Media Guardian has just published “Who’s who in the media: the definitive guide to the most powerful movers and shakers in the industry.” It’s a whopping £19.99, but will no doubt be filling the Christmas stockings of the friends and family of a number of those that are in it.

Flicking through its pages as I did before being told that “this is a bookshop, not a library” I glimpsed many of the names you’d expect…Grade, Dyke, Paxman, Dimbleby, Humphries. Each individual was clearly invited to complete an entry form with lots of personal and professional information. What’s interesting is that many of the big name entries simply stick to the basic information…they’re clearly too important to bother about letting us know what they get up to in their spare time.

No, the longest entries come from those people who were obviously thrilled to have been invited…who will, no doubt, be the ones buying multiple copies from Amazon (because it’s only £13.19 there) to pass on to their friends.

One of the longest entries comes from some bloke called Mark Westaby of the Portfolio Group. His name rings a bell with us…can’t think why.

Among the gems of insight into the private world of Westaby is this…

"I'm really a frustrated academic (I was offered various PhDs) but there's not enough money in university research!"

..and this…

"My main interests are academic books on psychology, neuroscience, econometrics, statistics and mathematical modelling (I know, I'm a sad case!)"

…you said it, not us…

Mark lists other interests as watching Midsomer Murders, listening to very loud dance music alone in his car, and "pottering" around his 17th century Yorkshire holiday cottage (thatched, of course). He loves being with his family, "but I'm not sure it counts as relaxing"…funny that, they said the same thing.

Have we underestimated Mr Westaby? Or has Media Guardian overestimated him

The World's Leading Christmas party venue...

Well, we've chosen the venue for our Christmas party this coming Wednesday (you remember, the one that's been sponsored by Indigo Red). Of course, if you've emailed us to let us know that you'll be coming then you'll already know that. If you haven't, you won't. But there's still time - theworldsleading@yahoo.co.uk.

Come and join the mob party fun. There's a bottle of pop in it for you...

And the rising sun means it's morning…

Earned Media Coverage More Effective than Paid Coverage

Not my words, dear friends. But where could such a statement of the bleeding obvious have come from? The nursery school guide to public relations? The idiot bluffer’s guide to all things marketing? The CIPR’s homepage?

Of course not. As you’ll have realised by now, those words were penned by someone – or at least an organisation – that really should have edged just a little way further along the PR learning curve by now. They’re from Edelman…more specifically, they’re from Edelman in Japan.

OK, so I’m no expert on the Japanese PR market, but I’ve a feeling that even in the land of the rising sun they probably already know that “earned media coverage using a PR agency is more effective than paid media coverage using an advertising agency” to quote the press release.

Of course, it’s a press release based on some research - the the 2006 Edelman Japan Stakeholder Study, no less. The survey “polled a total of 140 Japanese opinion-leaders from seven stakeholder groups: senior business executives, institutional investors, government, media, NGOs, up-scale consumers, and employees.” All those groups and only 140 respondents? One from each, was it? "Up-scale consumers"? What, big ones?

Other “striking” (or rather, not) statistics reveal that “engagement” in blogging is on the increase…and by “engagement” Edelman Japan means either writing or reading…and the fact that CSR is regarded as a “sincere business shift” by 49% of respondents. That’s nice…until you realise that another 46% of respondents thought that CSR is just a “way to improve image in the marketplace.”

I’m not sure what upsets me most about this. That Edelman feels the need to explain that earned media coverage is better than paid media coverage, or that it believes that a survey of 140 people is statistically sound. This respondent thinks they’re both a bit suspect…

More Red faces...

So, you've soaked yourself to the skin getting to the Post Office to pay for a piece of crappy post that some idiot has forgotten to put a stamp on and, just when you think it couldn't get any worse, you arrive late at work only to find that some divvies from the very same PR company representing the very same client have camped outside your office to create a bloody awful racket.

Read all about it here.

Is this funny, or is it just me..?

I don't know about you, but I've been seeing headlines like these all day, and every time they've made me laugh:

Pope embarks on controversial Turkey visit
Massive security for Pope's Turkey visit
Thousands Protest Pope's Turkey Visit
Catholic World News - Confirmed: Pope to visit Turkey in November

What's he doing? Apologising for Christmas?

Red faces...

This morning, a journo found a slip on his doormat from the Royal Mail telling him that there was an item waiting for him with unpaid postage on it. What can you do? I mean, it might be something important...secret plans for poisoning people leaked from the FSB...Michael Grade's new contract...a Christmas hamper from Fortnums. So you trudge off down to the sorting office in the pissing rain to pay the postage and pick it up.

And what happens..? You pay £1.23 for a cruddy little invitation to the Nokia party next Wednesday because some numpty at Red forgot to put a stamp on the bloody envelope.

A one off? Not according to the Post Office clerk...he said there'd been loads of them this morning. Uh-oh.

That'll teach them for clashing with our very own Christmas Party...

Is that American Englich..?

So, Text 100 ("leading global PR agency") and some bunch called Squiz (I'm sorry, I've been through the website and I still haven't a clue...) have produced a "co-authored whitepaper" called "Communications 2.0: Beta is Better", all about Web 2.0 and "how it can help you improve your communications strategy."

There are people far better placed than I to comment on the content of the whitepaper. What I do know, however, is that when the sub-heading of the press release tells me that the whitepaper "provides best practise advise on how to exploit new web technologies!" the whole venture is devalued to the point of my not bothering to read it.

Though I can't be bothered with the whitepaper itself, the rest of the press release is an entertaining read, if only for the sublime use of meaningless cliché by a Squiz Director (which sounds vaguely disgusting to me...I can direct my own Squiz, thank you very much). He says, in one memorable sentence, "The good news is that it's not rocket science and it shouldn't cost and arm and a leg."

We're over the moon about that.

Me..? With my reputation..? Tally ho…

“Reputation” is a funny old word, isn’t it? Look it up in the dictionary, and it’ll say something along the lines of: “the estimation in which a person or thing is held by the community or the public generally”…which makes you think that, yes, as public relations professionals, we should be right there in the middle of the reputation game.

So why then, when I visit Harvard PR’s website and read this on its homepage…

“Reputations. Designed, built, managed.”

…does it really get my goat?

I’ll tell you. I don’t think that anyone should be able to claim that they can “design” a reputation. You might be able to design what you’d like your reputation to be, but whether it becomes that or not depends on how you act and, crucially, what people think about your behaviour (and products, and services).

In many ways, your reputation is out of your hands…particularly in today’s world of social media. So, for instance, Sony’s reputation as a creator of high-quality consumer electronics is taking a bit of a battering at the moment…however much “design and build” it might have done around its reputation isn’t worth a great deal now, is it? And you might even take issue with its ability to “manage” that reputation, however quickly it replaces laptop batteries or digital cameras.

No, reputation goes much deeper than public relations. Reputation is about product design, manufacturing, service, ethics…reputation is impacted by every aspect of your business and, right now, PR people don’t influence every aspect of business (and may the Lord help us if ever they do…).

What Harvard is talking about is image. Image is what you want to say about yourself, what you want people to think and believe…whether it’s true or not. In fact, when you get into the “People” section of the Harvard site, it uses the phrase “’perception altering’ outcomes”…which I think is getting closer to the mark. And before anyone says, “ahh, yes, but perception is reality…” that’s bullshit, I’m afraid. Experience is reality.

The problem is, “Images. Designed, built, managed” doesn’t sound nearly as good, does it? It doesn’t sound real enough…it even sounds a little bit underhand…in fact it sounds like what many people believe public relations to be.

Interesting…many think that the public relations industry has a poor reputation. Shall we design a new one? I mean, if we can't, who in the world can?

Sell Sony, buy FedEx...

I'm in something of a quandary, and I thought you might be able to help me out.

Looking around my house this weekend, I noticed how much Sony kit I've got. TV, VCR, DVD player...there's an old stereo, a very old discman and I've even got a Sony MP3 player.

I'm presuming that it will all have to go back at some point, so my question is this:

Do I get one big box now to send everything back together, or lots of smaller boxes and do it bit by bit?

Help..!

Over to our sister agency, Miserable…

Interesting story filed by John Oates over at El Reg this afternoon about goings on at business networking site Ecademy…the one whose “cause is to build the world’s premier Trusted Network.”

Oates tells the story of how “seventeen members of Ecademy…have had their accounts suspended following a row on the company's messageboard. One member was banned for using the word "shit" while others were banned for posting messages in a thread which questioned the original decision. One member was even banned for making rude remarks on a different website.”

There’s some back and forth between Ecademy management and Ecademy members... accusations, denials…the usual.

Now, Ecademy boasts that profiles appear high in Google rankings and members are encouraged to use profiles to advertise their businesses. Consequently several of the banned members - including a number of successful business people - responded with threats of legal action for defamation of character and libel when their accounts were blocked without warning and they were accused of using false identities.

Ecademy issued a series of retractions - claiming that members' accounts were merely 'suspended' and that members had not been 'banned'…although the message "This member has been banned" appeared prominently on the website in place of their profiles for some time.

Ecademy management were recently reported in the Telegraph to be looking to sell their company for up to £20m. Ex-members suspect that in the light of this article, Ecademy management were seeking to remove anybody likely to criticise either their policies or their claims regarding membership numbers. The management unsurprisingly denies this.

According to The Register, management have appointed a "psychosexual therapist" as a mediator, but he's busy until December 1st. Oddly - or not - those banned were less than chuffed that they would have to wait more than three weeks for a resolution. In the meantime, they continue to pay Ecademy for membership.

Interestingly, Ecademy does have a PR representative in Jenny Rose…who is no doubt dusting off her bluffer’s guide to crisis management. Still, she seems an optimistic sort...her company’s called Happy PR.

Time for a rebrand?

A rose amongst thorns…

Now, normally, we don’t have a great deal of time for recruitment consultants. They just seem to pass people from job to job, agency to agency…taking a nice fee each time until they’ve run out of options. But we’ve recently come across one company that seems to be the exception.

Ever heard of Indigo Red? Of course you have. It’s such a brilliantly distinctive name. They’ve got a top bunch of people down there helping great candidates find the most rewarding roles and helping inspirational companies fill wonderfully fulfilling positions. We really think you should check them out.

There are also a number of blogs linked to Indigo Red. There’s one from the boss Steve Mallison-Jones, one from his lovely wife (and Indigo Red co-founder) Lydia and one from consultant Sarah Hayman. All well worth a read.

It is probably at this point that I should disclose that it is Steve - and the wonderful, best recruitment team in the PR industry at Indigo Red - who has agreed to be the headline sponsor for the forthcoming TWL Christmas Party! Yep, he’s dipped his hand into the corporate coffers and come up with a few hundred quid to go behind the bar at the soon-to-be-confirmed-for-those-that-have-emailed-us-(theworldsleading@yahoo.co.uk) venue. Though this fact clearly had no influence over our hearty endorsement of Indigo Red above.

It’s all coming together party people…if you’re a little concerned about appropriate behaviour, the lovely Amanda Chapel has some top tips.

Tripe for brekkie...

This morning, Lewis held its Industry Forum 2006, where big hitters came together over breakfast to thrash out the issues of the day. Jon Silk of Lewis is blogging away, offering up gems like this:

"This is no longer a 24/7 world - the world we're living in is 25/8. In other words, constant."

For more, ummm, "insight", visit the Lewis 360 blog...

Hand wash only (don't spin)...

It's funny, if you stick "Firefly public relations t-shirt" into Google (well, I don't know, you might) you get this:



Of course, this has nothing to do with the Firefly public relations we know and...well, we know.

Firefly's t-shirts look like this:

Don’t worry, everything happens for a reason…

…like, you weren’t right for PR in any case.

Andrew B. Smith over at Object Towers alights like a butterfly to a rose on a subject we too have touched on before; whether we will see PR grunt work outsourced to India or, indeed, any other country where labour costs are a fraction of the UK.

I think we will…but which bits? The immediate reaction is, “oh, no, no, no…you need to be able to develop relationships to do my job…with the client, with the media…you can’t outsource that.” But there are parts of the job that don’t require the relationship, just a bit of knowledge and ability.

Here’s an example from another profession (nicked, if I remember it rightly, from Thomas L. Friedman’s “The World is Flat”). It is now common practice for doctors in the US to email to doctors in India scans of their patients’ x-rays for overnight analysis and diagnosis. Now there’s a profession if ever there was one that demands a relationship between client and professional, but obviously some aspects of it don’t. The client is none the wiser, and the service is better (i.e. faster results).

There are aspects of the PR job that could be outsourced. Reporting, for one (do I hear anyone complaining about that?). I could also see some aspects of financial PR being outsourced…the process-driven, regulatory announcement-type activity. Indeed, couldn’t the whole top-and-tailing of US press releases for international distribution be very easily undertaken at a central location, rather than in each country?

It’s definitely on its way. And you know what? I’m kinda looking forward to it.

Chrimbo party...the date is set...

Meetings have been held, diaries consulted, negotiations commenced, research undertaken. We've brainstormed strategised and planned.

We have an objective:

"Have a Christmas Party"

We have a strategy:

"Generate interest and secure funding through the awesome power of social media"

We have tactics:

"Get on with it"

We also have a date:

Wednesday, 6th December 2006

So stick that it your diaries and remember it.

If you've been keeping up with the comments on the original post, you'll notice that Stephen "Wad" Waddington has pledged some cash for drinkies and, between you and I, we've also received a formal offer of sponsorship from a proper company! So it's all systems go.

If you want to come, make sure that you drop us an email (theworldsleading@yahoo.co.uk) because it's the only way you'll find out where it's all taking place (that's the next thing on the TWL To Do list, by the way).

Thanks to those who have been in touch already. We're excited.

Boys and their analogies....

If you’ve tired of counting the amount of breast glances a marketing manager steals during a meeting and you never found bullshit bingo very interesting in the first place, why not try analogy analysis?

It’s a simple game based around the only analogy that’s ever used in the wonderful world of tech. Cars. And also, at a push, roads.

The greatest Hackneyed Carriage of them all, of course, is the information super highway. Like Ford Fiestas, examples are cheap and plenty. Speaking slowly and loudly to its old and disabled customers, BT splutters a laboured analogy with the reckless abandon of a pensioner on a Sunday afternoon drive..."You can think of broadband as a massive motorway which brings all kinds of information very quickly straight to your home. The motorway is never closed. "

But can you get a dodgy coffee and a Ginsters every 40 miles?

Cheap Broadband Providers, meantime, gives a souped-up chavesque opening line for its description. New Zealand’s TVNZ recently trotted out this horrific pile-up of a quote from Ernie Newman of The Telecommunications Users Association:

"If you expand the access ramps onto a motorway, you can get a lot more traffic onto the motorway. But that doesn't mean that when you get on there you're not going to slow to a crawl."

Operating Systems is another favourite area where the dear old car is used in place of any truly rational explanaion, especially in comments and forums where it’s used in wonderful pub-logic arguments:

On Microsoft and Novell patent cross licensing deal

On upgrades

And on services packs

When tired of using home security analogies, IT security people find their next inspiration in the garage with trite rhetorical questions such as:

“I have always enjoyed the analogy of the guy who owns an expensive car like a Porsche, yet keeps it secure in a garage with a door lock that's barely worth $100. If the threat of the lock being broken so the car gets towed away in the middle of the night is high enough, how much should he spend on a lock? A thousand dollars? Ten thousand?”

"Enjoyed the analogy"? I've always taken pleasure in the odd analogy, but to be honest it's metaphors that really give me a hard-on.

However, in pole position with car analogies must be AMD which is about to launch its 4x4 chip architecture and, separately inspired just about the most tortured car analogy ever.

So let's ditch the car anlogies once and for all; send them to the scrapheap. If you hear one in a meeting, put the brakes on...flash red lights everywhere.

We know you can do it. We are, after all, the industry that brought you SMART objectives.

What do you want for Christmas...

...apart, that is, from an invitation the The World's Leading Christmas Party?

Maybe a Microsoft Xbox? Maybe...but if you're MS&L, Edelman/JCPR or Weber Shandwick, you're more interested in the Xbox PR account...and they're all pitching for it in the next week or two. To be honest, though, one of the three is probably feeling a tad more confident that the other two.

MS&L is the incumbent agency, having run the Xbox account for the past six years - a decent stretch in anyone's book. You'll remember, however, that only a few weeks ago PRWeek reported that Dave Bennett, MS&L's "Xbox supremo" had left the agency for Edelman, leading to speculation that Microsoft might take the opportunity to review the account.

You'll also remember that about a month ago, PRWeek also reported that JCPR had split with Sony Computer Entertainment, just a few months before the launch of PlayStation 3. So that left a neat games console-sized hole at Edelman/JCPR, and presumably a highly-skilled team twiddling its thumbs (waiting for Bennett to appear, no doubt). Oh, and since August, Edelman has also handled Xbox PR across Europe.

Let's just say that if Edelman doesn't pick up the business, there'll be a load of head-scratching going on down Haymarket way...

And what about poor old Weber? It really looks like it's making up the numbers, doesn't it? But it'll still be ploughing loads of time, resources, expense and creative energy into the pitch, I'm sure (as will MS&L, which can't be overly confident of its chances either).

Let's see what happens. But I'm not expecting a surprise in my Christmas stocking.

Borkowski...bullshit...

Big up to Stephen Davies...it would seem that Borkowski has been stupid, again...

Shiny balls and a huge sack...

It cannot have escaped your notice that Christmas is fast approaching. It certainly hasn't escaped the attention of one loyal TWL viewer, as a simply genius idea dropped down the chimney of our inbox this afternoon:

"Dear TWL. Why don't you have a Christmas party?"

Of course we should! So we're going to.

In true cloak-and-dagger, secret-squirrel, Daniel Craig-inspired covertness, joining us in the festivities will be no simple matter. If you'd like to come (and to give us some idea of whether we'll need a small booth at the Crown and Two or start negotiations with the London Arena) you need to drop us an email: theworldsleading@yahoo.co.uk. As and when we firm up any of the details, we'll let you know. We've already created a new folder called "Christmas Party People."

Oh, and due to the fact that we're not Stephen Waddington, we'd welcome any proposals for, um, "refreshment sponsorship" or you'll be buying your own drinks. Suitable subsequent endorsement will ensue.

Party on!

Where’s Aedhmar..?

Anyone seen Text 100 CEO Aedhmar Hynes? At least, has anyone seen her near a computer keyboard?

As far as I can tell, one of the golden rules of effective blogging is to do it regularly. I think that helps people come back time after time to see what you’ve got to say. Or something.

When Aedhmar Hynes set up her blog back in February, I thought she did quite a smart thing. She called it Monday Morning (not that smart in itself, I admit) but in her first post she explained that its name stemmed from the fact that she was going to blog just once a week, on Monday morning. This is what she said:

“As an avid reader of both 'traditional' and 'new' media, my blog will be a weekly reflection on how these diaglogues affect the public relations industry and the companies we support. The weekend is a great time to catch up on my reading, so Monday Morning will be a reflection of the writing that intrigued me the most.”

And before anyone corrects me, she really did write “diaglogues.”

Maybe she’s stopped reading? Or perhaps her Monday morning musings weren't as interesting as she thought, "Mowed the lawn, cleaned the car...husband fell asleep in front of the TV after roast beef and yorkies, kids ran riot. Didn't want to come to work."

Whatever, she’s been very quiet for a good while now. Her most recent post was on September 8th. In fact, by my reckoning, there have been 39 Monday mornings since Aedhmar’s first foray into the blogosphere, but only 20 posts on her blog. As some of her American colleagues would surely say (before being slapped by a Brit), “you do the math.”

She set the expectations and has failed to deliver. Presumably not a reflection of Text 100’s work as a whole?

Pull your socks up, hack…

One of the wonderful things about the new, all pervasive “I’ll never read a magazine again” world of social media that we haven’t really talked too much about is the ability to comment directly on the quality of a journalist’s writing…or lack of it. In the dark and gloomy bad old word of ink on paper, if a hack wrote a shoddy article we’d merely grumble into our pints and possibly consider a letter to the editor. But now – praise be – with more and more editorial appearing online in the form of blogs, we can comment with abandon.

A case in point has arrived in our inbox from our old buddy Mr BadHack. As some of you will know, BadHack was a blog set up to highlight less than exemplary behaviour of the journalistic community. Surprising to us all, however, a lack of content seems to have done for Mr BH and he’s been quiet for a long, long while. So it was nice to hear from him.

He points us to this extremely superficial review of Microsoft’s new Media Player on eWeek’s Microsoft Watch site. Previously, such a shoddy piece of journalism would’ve passed and been forgotten, but not in the new age. Now people can comment…and boy, have they?! Stuff like this:

“I could write a more extensive (and USEFUL) from the time my cheeks hit the porcelain to the time my hand hits the two-ply.”

“Get some info, not vapid spin.”

“Seriously, they call this journalism?”

“You call this a "review"! .... pure drivel....”

“I used to get F's for this type of thing in high school”

Nothing like a bit of feedback, eh? No response, as yet, from the journalist Jim Rapoza.

It’s great though, isn’t it, to think that hacks across the industry are sitting at their desks, fingers trembling over the keyboard, nervously considering whether to his the “publish post” button, wondering whether their piece really is good enough to stand up to critical scrutiny and the response that might be delivered instantly?

Aren’t they?

Iain’T staying….

A not particularly well kept secret is now officially out in the open. Iain Thomson, who recently left IT Pro, is headed back to Broadwick Street, this time as managing editor of VNUnet.

Boomerang Thomson, as he’ll be known forthwith, is not the first to yo-yo back to VNU and probably won’t be the last. “I liked working with Chris [Green] and the rest of the Dennis crew but decided I could do more of the stuff I really enjoy in this job,” said Boomerang.

Though not a direct replacement for Thomson, Rene Millman has joined IT Pro which has perked up the IT Pro offices no end.

When Rene walks through the door he’s met with a cheery ‘Allo from Chris, and an ‘Allo from Maggie ‘Yvette’ Holland. “Bonjour,” replies Rene, and pointing at Chris says: “It’s ze fallen Madonna with zee big boobies.”

The ensuing merriment is broken by a Dennis accountant: “It is you, a Clerk,” chuckles Chris Vert. “Leesen verrry carefully, I weel zay zis only once,” says Michelle from accounts. “Vee need more readeeers and more advertisiiing, ozerwise ve weel go ze vaay of all 1980s BBC zeetcoms.”

A slippery slope for the guru...

We notice this morning that Stuart Bruce has changed the header on his blog. He's followed a growing number (including fellow "big name" UK social media in PR specialist...now there's a niche...James Warren) down the landscape route. But whereas Warren's shows the bright sun heralding a new day over lush and grassy parkland, Bruce's is a dark picture of some dangerous-looking and rather misty mountains.

What does this tell us? That Warren's an optimist and Bruce has darker thoughts about the future? Or that Bruce can help you navigate your way through this strange and murky environment? Not sure...get us an amateur psychologist, somebody.

Of more significance in Bruce's new look header, however, are the words. Not only have they shrunk, they've changed. That's right...gone is the PR Guru! Bruce now says he is merely a "PR guy" (though a little too late for November 5th). Guru to guy can only be regarded as some sort of serious demotion, can't it? What's next...genome?

Luckily, Bruce still tells us that he's been blogging since 2003 which is a bit like me saying that I've been walking since 11 months. At the time it seemed important, but now it's a bit irrelevant...everyone's at it (and some are even better than I am...).

Bite bum biting…

We’ve only been floating around the blogosphere for a short while – like tourist astronauts taking their first spacewalk - but one thing we have noticed is that it seems de rigeur to disclose any commercial interests you might have in relation to something that you’re posting about (obviously, as an annoying anonymous blog, it doesn’t really apply to TWL…).

So, when you read this on the blog of Bite Communications…

“David Pogue from the NYT reviews Microsoft's Zune set to be released next week and from the looks of it, it doesn't seem like Apple should be too worried about the newest iPod challenger.”

…you might expect the next line to be “But of course Bite does Apple’s PR so we’re not about to say anything too nice about its competitors, are we?”

But it doesn’t! There’s nothing…it’s just left hanging there. Bite might say that its poster (one Kristin Maverick…maverick by name, etc etc…) is simply highlighting an interesting piece of national press coverage, but it’s funny the ones that get chosen, isn’t it?

It’s only a little thing, of course, but I don’t want to have to keep running off and checking an agency’s client list each time I read a post about this company or that product.

Having said that, I am looking forward to next week’s feature on how Sun Microsystems’ servers have helped improve Bite CEO Clive Armitage’s sex life…should be a cracker.

Lovely weather we’re having…

It’s November 9th today and I had my lunch sitting on a park bench in gloriously warm sunshine. Global warming, eh? And everyone’s going on about how they want us to stop it; about how we all should be aiming for carbon neutrality to save the planet.

This week’s PRWeek highlights the story…and some of the inherent contradictions. Danny Rogers, in his opinion piece, points out how the PR industry is jumping on the green bandwagon faster than it has jumped on any previously passing one – and it’s never been shy to adopt a fad. Agencies going carbon neutral, others establishing ‘green’ practice groups (I’m sure that forcing employees to wear sandals and grow beards isn’t allowed)…even if some think as an industry that we talk more than we walk.

Before the industry settled on the hype of green, the forerunning fashion was, of course, Corporate Social Responsibility, whereby normally pathological organisations did nice things so that everyone liked them (or at the very least, ignored the nasty stuff they were doing somewhere else). “Yes, I realise that they’re driving indigenous populations from their traditional homelands in the Amazonian basin, but at least they’ve planted some new trees down the rec…”

But, as PRWeek also points out, while in principle we’d like organisations to be doing more CSR-type goody goodiness, we don’t really care one way or the other (only 10% of respondents to a Vodafone survey said they were “very interested” in hearing about a firms CSR efforts).

Think about the last expensive item you bought…iPod, TV, handbag, tube ticket. You saw it, you wanted it, you bought it. At which stage did you check out the producer’s environmental credentials? Were they carbon neutral? What were working conditions in the factory like? Did you check it? Did you bollocks.

I think it was Lord Browne of BP that once said something along the lines of: “I’m more than happy for us to undertake CSR activities, along as it makes people buy more petrol from us.” Well, it looks like it doesn’t, so how long before CSR and related green initiatives are sunk like a disused oil rig?

If you’re not in dictators and drugs, you’re not in…

Get with the times, will you? If you’re new business efforts are focused on finding reputable commercial organisations from which to extract a humble retainer on a monthly basis for some positive coverage and a bunch of reports, then you’re living in the past, man. The place to be now, it seems, is helping wayward regimes, disobedient dictators and naughty nations.

Soon after the furore around H&K’s highly-paid assistance for President Gayoom of the Maldives, the Independent points the finger at another big name PR agency helping out a less-than-reputable cause.

The story focuses on remarks made by comedian Mark Thomas who has written a book on toture and the arms trade (which doesn’t sound very funny to us) and “fumes” that Weber Shandwick has agreed to help the Colombian government – which has been condemned for tacit collaboration in paramilitary massacres – improve its PR. Thomas is quoted as saying:

"Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist. The government is found wanting. So for someone to come along and say, 'We'll show you how to do good PR' is disgraceful. Where will people draw the line? Would Weber Shandwick want to see the swastikas before deciding not to work with someone?"

Weber Shandwick replies that it has "been hired by the democratically elected Colombian government to advise on a range of issues" - "mainly... [seeking] to promote dialogue, ideas and experience of how best to combat cocaine production, trafficking and abuse.”

The guys at Getting Ink recently asked “Gosh, who can we trust these days?” If Weber Shandwick hadn’t already been mentioned in relation to some other allegedly dodgy dealings, we’d suggest perhaps adding it to the list.

Our survey said…

The results of the sixth annual 2006 PRWeek/Burson-Marsteller CEO Survey are in (funny…I can’t recall the previous five, but no matter) and you can probably hear the distant groaning of statistics being stretched to their limit. In fact, when the sub-heading of the press release is “New Survey Notes CEOs Frequently Revise Strategies In Light of Emerging Issues” you wonder why they don’t just call it the sixth annual “Go Figure” CEO Survey.

However, in light of our recent debate about the amount of time PR professionals spend meeting their clients’ ever more demanding reporting requirements, the headline finding is interesting; that the majority (62%) of CEOs “indicate that gut feelings are highly influential in guiding their business strategies, while only four in 10 cite internal metrics and financial information.”

So, the CEO is much more likely to read the paper, watch TV, browse the odd glossy, maybe do a bit of online and listen to customers to work out whether PR is delivering value for money. The impetus for reports and measurement doesn’t come from the top (but we knew that already, didn’t we?).

The survey also tells us that the top priorities for CEOs in terms of the outcomes of their actions (and presumably the actions of their employees and any companies they might employ to work on their behalf) are customer reactions, long-term financial performance and corporate reputation.

So it’s fairly safe to assume that CEOs would prefer their company’s money was spent doing things that had a positive impact on those priorities, rather than producing increasingly detailed reports to cover the arse and justify the job of some middle-ranking in-house PR manager.

We’re often told that the demand for more reporting comes from above; that “we need these reports to feed into management reports higher up the food chain.” Bollocks. Listen up: “THE CEO DOESN’T CARE ABOUT YOUR CRAPPY LITTLE REPORTS!”

OK, so you might say that in helping secure the job of the in-house PR manager an agency is also helping secure its own role, but given the choice I reckon that most agency heads would rather take their chances in spending their time generating great results and being smart about making sure their work gets noticed in the boardroom (or on the golf course, at the rugby, in their club).

I remember a few years back PR Week ran an on-going campaign called Proof (I think) which aimed to ensure that every campaign had 10% of its budget devoted to measurement and evaluation of results. Surely we can lump reporting into campaign measurement and evaluation these days and, if so, wouldn’t it be a dream if you could ensure that only 10% of the fee was spent on those activities? It’d be far less than most spend on it at the moment. I suspect, however, that the PR Week campaign was focused on diverting 10% of your fee into third-party coverage evaluation services like Metrica…which only makes the time spent reporting even more of a squeeze on your margins.

Reporting demands are sucking the lifeblood from creative PR execs…I see it all the time. All those shiny new grads from last week’s PR Week walking into top agencies, dreaming of days filled with brainstorms, creative juices spilling over the desks, clients simply gagging for the next great idea…how long before the daily grind of admin drives them into other careers? Crikey, you might as well be making more money being as bored somewhere else, right?

Penny for the Guy..?

Guy Kewney's posted a comment over on Tim Dyson's blog. He's actually telling Dyson off for a schoolboy spelling mistake. Quite right too...Dyson's used "there" instead of "their" - and in actual fact shouldn't have been trying to use "their" in any case, he should've been using "its" (companies always being singular).

Anyway, Kewney then launches into a completely unrelated moan about The "blasted" Red Consultancy's new (I think) Flash website, ending his comment by imploring Dyson to "teach them something about PR."

Brilliant stuff. I'm really interested to see Dyson's reply.

Great names of our time...

I guess that any questions raised in the post below will be answered this coming Thursday, as Hotwire PR is holding a seminar called "Harnessing the Power of Blogs". It will feature someone from Hotwire (obviously), someone from Ipsos MORI (who did a survey, of course) and the ubiquitous Charles Arthur (I'm sure that there's more than one of him).

I say that the seminar will no doubt answer all the questions...Hotwire says that it'll answer these ones:

What is the impact of user generated content on blogs on my business now and in the future?
How can blogs be influenced positively?
How can I manage my brand image and reputation in this new world with limited controls?
How can I measure the results and impact of blogs in a PR campaign?

Which is all you really need to know, isn't it?

The main point of this post, however, is not the event itself but the rather lovely name of one of the Hotwire people involved. The seminar, you see, will also be held in Frankfurt, Munich, Düsseldorf, Paris, Milan and Madrid. If you'd like information on any of those, you'll need to contact one Celine Puff.

The perfect PR name, surely? Unless she's a magic dragon. Or grows her own.

Come the revolution…

Strumpette’s guest columnist is worth a read for all you PR execs wondering where your job fits into the world of Web 2.0 and social media…if indeed it does. It’s from Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations, and concerns the ‘the adoption of corporate blogging and intersection of the enterprise and individual personalities’.

Essentially, the argument goes that corporate blogs are attaching individual personalities to large - and previously faceless – organisations. Consumers engage more readily with individuals, particularly when they share interests and passions, and a good corporate blog can foster brand empathy and loyalty. As Rohit so rightly points out, “The power of the individual voice within enterprises is finding its place.”

Of course, when all the excitement about the potential of blogging first kicked off, many in the PR industry saw it as a huge opportunity: if all these big businesses were going to be blogging, then surely they’d need legions of PR execs to help them create the content, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong.

As everyone is now coming to realise, what matters in blogging is total transparency, absolute honesty and complete authenticity. Not exactly three concepts that sit right at the centre of PR practice (come on, be completely honest with yourselves. For once). And, as we’ve seen over recent weeks, even those PR agencies that seemed to all of us to “get it” more than most can’t seem to do it right, so what hope the rest of us?

I heard a story recently in which a social media guru advised a large corporate to fire all its marketing and PR people and invest the money in its products. “Get your products right,” he said, “and the internet will do the rest for you.” That might sound like pie in the sky to you, but how far away do you really think it is? Organisations don’t own their own brands anymore…they’re deconstructed on the internet and re-presented to the world as they truly are.

So what role does PR play in this new world if we’re not the ones controlling the blogs (event the corporate ones, let alone the rest)? Rohit again:

“…the filter that a PR team may have applied to enterprise communications is starting to dissolve. As individuals (most outside the PR department) start to develop relationships with customers - it is their voice that has a dialogue. Doing a press release is often not as effective as having a company's most prolific blogger "announce" something on his/her blog - and then point people to it. People trust others more than they trust institutions.”

The worrying part being that most in PR represent institutions, not individuals.

Here’s an idea for you. Pick up a press release you’ve written recently…or maybe an opinion article. Read it. Does that sound authentic to you? If you read that one a blog, verbatim, would you believe it? Maybe you’re the exception…but read through a few of the releases on Sourcewire today and you’ll see what I mean. Is the PR industry good enough to write believable content? Really?

Another idea. The next time you’re asked to write a press release for your client, write it as if you were blogging it, as if you were an employee blogger. Be as honest as you need to be for it to work online; for it not to be pilloried as spam or propaganda. Give it some personality. Believe me, you’ll find it refreshing. It’ll take some guts to ping it over to the client, but explain to them why you’ve written it like that. Explain why press releases don’t work anymore.

Should we be worried? You bet we should. When we see stories about the threat of social media to traditional media we need to recognise the implicit and related threat to PR.

Many of the best blogs are written by professional journalists, so they’ve still got a role to play. Have we?

Bono of contention...

While on the subject of U2, Martin Veitch got a tetchy email from a U2 employee asking him to refrain from criticising the band in his Inquirer pieces (examples of the light-hearted frippery are here, here and here).

U2 may well have a wide fan-base within IT departments, but just how petty can people be?

We're here all week...

We've heard that U2's PR agency never gets paid.

Its work is always pro Bono.



Sorry 'bout that.

4.6% of time spent analysing time breakdowns….

We’ve been alerted to a surprisingly interesting feature in PR Week (not that you can see it without a subscription) by The New View From Object Towers from the very lovely Andrew B Smith of Object Marketing.

Robert Gray’s colourful article (see what we did there?) looks at how a ‘typical’ 50 person PR agency spends its time. The great and the good happily gave their view of the findings.

As usual some comments were a tad self-serving (Kate Pooley of Lewis blathering about a pilot scheme that uses podcasts to report results in order to save time) and some were a little more honest, such as Mark ‘Firefly’ Mellor and his classic “existing clients come first in theory, but this can be tested to the limits if a couple of interviews clash with a new business pitch worth £100,000.”

The big news, of course, was the shocking revelation that a projected 45% of time went on account management with a further 18% on reporting. Almost two-thirds of time on managing expectations and egos. Media relations rolled in at 12% followed by a bunch of other stuff leaving only 1% of time dedicated to features tracking (that’ll be the AE then).

Is it all really that shocking? To the hand-wringers that get all academic about it, probably. Yet it is the hand-wringers that caused all this in the first place. Back in the day, it was “come up with a good story, sell the idea into your journo mates and we’ll all get to the pub on time.”

Then the shiny suit brigade decides that PR should be a chartered profession, and we must plan, measure, evaluate, plan, measure, evaluate our way into a sterile accountancy environment.

Account management – the endless status calls, the booking of taxis for a senior executive that can’t hail his or her own cab, the whimsical ‘strategic’ chat that wonders off into the PR manager bemoaning the attitude of their employer – and reporting go hand-in-hand.

The weekly, monthly, quarterly, bi-annual and annual reports and reviews add up. The strategic bigwigs that dreamt this crap up don’t, of course, actually do the reporting so the AMs and AEs have to do it leaving precious little time to do ‘traditional’ PR.

Clients start to go crazy when reports are late, or if a cutting isn’t straight. Due at a fixed point, these things are above the parapet waiting to be shot at. An unscheduled piece of coverage that, as it turns out, never did appear, doesn’t get missed. So what do you focus on?

Reporting is a drug. They like the report. But they want a bigger hit. Can you do a coverage board…Can you create a montage of coverage in PowerPoint….Just the best quotes, and make sure it looks pretty….With each piece coming in on a separate click…. Yes do scan the coverage in because we still don’t get our cuttings electronically….

The professionalisation of PR means the product is now the presentation of results rather than the results themselves. How often has a client lamented that “we didn’t sell that coverage back into the organisation (his/her boss) sufficiently.”

And besides, how long does it take to ring a couple of journalists and create some sort of a story with them? That’s the easy bit. Trouble is, it's too easy. Competing on that basis means ever-declining margin. That’s why agencies these days win and lose according to how they manage clients and package the ever-declining results they get.

On a positive note, cracking piece of coverage for TimeAct Solutions. Bet its agency spends less than 45% of its time on account management….