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….

Big man banter...

Seen this? It's a month or so old now, but has someone got a problem with the jolly Green giant?

I'm blogging...

Judging by the amount of times we've received this, if you haven't sent it in you're just not getting it.

If you haven't seen it, well, chances are you're not reading this blog anyway....

Sick as a parrot…

In the old days tech PR was a simple affair, such as simply demystifying the complexities of uninterrupted power supplies or explaining the benefits of fibre over category 5 copper.

But these days it’s everywhere and covers everything. Even the Luddite world of football has caught on. While over-paid work-shy 20-somethings pack their broadband connections with gambling sites and porn, managers crunch their laptops with specialist analysis software such as ProZone, the high profile programme that England manager Steve McClaren favours.

ProZone has been happily gaining plenty of coverage in the sports pages over the past couple of years. This is presumably attributable to it being a good quality product that has an impressive market share. It certainly isn’t because it has a good website, and tracking down its PR company is harder than a Robbie Savage tackle. If fact it’s even harder than liking Robbie Savage.

So congratulations to Football Manager 2007’s PR folk who used good old smoke and mirrors to convince The Times to use “a computer simulation” to assess Alan Pardew’s best West Ham side for beating Blackburn. Football Manager 2007 is a football simulation game that costs around £35. Which at a guess is rather less than ProZone costs.

More to the point, within the virtual world of Football Manager 2005, I’ve won the triple (the one that includes the Champions League as opposed to the Carling Cup) with Burton Albion in just six seasons. In short, it’s about as accurate as Emile Heskey on a bad day.

With grown-up software like ProZone on the bench, back-bedroom saddo software Football Manager 2007 came up with the most formidable West Ham team it could. In the real world, West Ham beat Blackburn convincingly with a very different line-up including a defender making his debut and a 40 year old striker. Guess Alan Pardew is more of a ProZone man.

To any Americans that are still with us:
a) Well done for sticking it out this far but, let’s face it, it’s not the first time you’ve spent this long on something you don’t understand
b) This is football, the world game, as opposed to something that fat men trussed up in pillows do
c) We don’t think Benny Hill is funny

At least it's in the UK...

Here's an interesting little post on the PR Studies blog of Richard Bailey from Leeds University (though the blog clearly just represents his personal views).

Blogging sweatshops? Really? How long until that's offshore?

Shampagne charlies...

So, as we mentioned, TWL attended the PR Week Awards last night. Turns out that cooking duck for 1,500 braying PR professionals isn't very easy. Who'd have thought it?

You can read through all the winners on the PR Week website (there are photos too...oh dear) but the biggest award of the night - the very last lump of chrome and plastic to be given away - is the Gold Award for Campaign of the Year.

Now, the campaign of the year is picked from the winners of all the separate campaign awards, so we knew the candidates already...and there were some very worthy ones. There was a campaign to improve numeracy skills amongst men, there was one from the Alzheimer's Society, one highlighting the critical need for kidney donations, a campaign to improve the quality of food labelling, one from the team who managed the impact of the London bombings on British tourism and one from Cancer Research UK...amongst others.

And (drum roll please) you'll be delighted to hear that the winner of the 2006 PR Week Award for Campaign of the Year was...umm...Cake Group, for its launch of the Nintendogs game for the Nintendo DS.

Yep, that's right. The great and the good of the UK PR industry (or at least those on the judging panel) decided that the pinnacle of PR execution over the past year was the launch of a video game about dogs.

Opportunity missed? You decide. Didn't make me feel great (but that might've been the duck).

Made me laugh, but then I'm in a childlike state...

TWL's feeling a little worse for wear today...because we went to the PR Week Awards last night (but more of that little luvvie love-in later).

This made me feel better though. Not the content specifically (calls to throw Edelman out of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association...which, umm, wouldn't look good) but rather the picture used to illustrate it.

Wadds of cash...

If you see Stephen Waddington - MD of Rainier PR in the UK - at the PR Week Awards tonight, get him to buy you a drink - PR Week reports that the company's been snapped up by Loewy for £5m, so he's rolling in it.

Or maybe not. I remember that when Stephen Schuster, Rainier PR founder, was in the UK in the late 90s looking for the team to set up the agency's UK sub he refused to consider giving away any equity in the venture. I'm sure Wadds put him straight there though. Nothing on his blog yet - he's probably down the pub.

Are there sharks in Second Life..?

Because I think one’s just been jumped.

Some of the “big names” in the social media world (I think) have come together to create a new company called crayon. It’s launching – in Second Life, of course – this Thursday.

Now, for those of you who, like me, grew up chewing on multi-coloured wax pencils, you’re immediate assumption will be that this is where the inspiration for the name came from (or perhaps evidence of what happens to your brain should you scoff too many) but, looking at the logo, I don’t think that’s the case. It looks to me like "cray on" (as in an ‘on’ switch). So, like a couple of decades ago when someone in the office wanted to do some computing they might say, “is the Cray on?”

Anyway, you’ll be desperate to hear what the new company is going to be up to. So this is what one of the founders Neville Hobson, is saying on his blog:

“The teasing is done and it’s time to get specific about the new company I’m now part of…”

Goody gum-drops…crack on Nev!

Crayon will “launch from Crayonville Island, our headquarters in Second Life that’s been under construction during the past few months. So the first thing to tell you is that crayon is a both a real and a virtual company.”

OK, got you. Real and virtual. Virtually real? Really virtual? I’m sure it’ll become clear.

“We’re real, in the sense that all of us involved are physical, real human beings based in real locations, on the US east and west coasts plus me here in Europe. We’re virtual, in the sense that our primary presence as a company is the three-dimensional online digital world of Second Life where we will conduct our business, our presentations, our brainstorms and our pitches. And by the way, when we launch on Thursday, we will be the first company to be launched in Second Life.”

Hurrah! I’d been looking forward to that. So what is it you do?

“We’re not an agency nor a consulting practice as is traditionally defined. What we are is whatever you want or need us to be.”

You don’t know, do you?

“I like to think of us as a true mash-up that combines the best in traditional and new thinking about marketing, advertising and PR.”

You’re really not sure, are you?

“We’re a solution provider. We’re an extension of your team. Consider us a new breed of partner – one that keeps everyone honest and on the right path. Our client is not the consumer: our client is the truth.”

You haven’t got any clients have you?

“Looking forward to helping you get to your future first.”

I’m fairly sure that I’ll be able to get to my future first without your help, Nev.

“If you’d like to blog or podcast about crayon, I’d be thrilled if you would!”

We have, Nev, we have. I hope it helps. But this whole “real and virtual” bit has got us confused (Nicholas Carr too). Maybe one of the other founders can help clear it up for us? Over to Shel Holtz:

“…we’re a company outside of SL in addition to inside. An in-world company launching in-world is one thing, a company that will do business outside of SL — business that has no relationship to SL at all — is quite another! Perhaps we should have said “non-in-world company.”"

Oh! A “non-in-world” company. Is that the same as not-on-this-planet”?

Best of luck.

Old-school journalist hates TWL…so?

Friends, we’re under attack. The following excerpts come from a single comment on a post from a couple of weeks back, sent in by a self-professed “old-school journalist”. Avid readers that you are you might just have missed it, hidden as it was at comment number 41…

“…this is a very poor blog. There's nothing clever about it, you see. Just do a bit of looking around and then criticise anonymously. Very poor.”

Very poor...yes...

"I think you could do worse than mail all of your contacts…pointing out what a cr*p blog this is.”

Cr*p blog...right...

"I don't actually care if this blog stays or not. It would not be missed. But remember that journalists have long memories. Upset a journalist and they tend not to forget...”

Tend not to forget...except the odd interview...

We’re distraught. How could anyone not adore TWL with the whole of their heart? How could they not rejoice in our regular delivery of PR ridicule…of our highlighting the contradictions, the half-truths, the oxys and the morons?

Have they lost their sense of humour?

Boo bloody hoo.

Shiny new site...

I've just noticed that Weber Shandwick has got a new UK website.

Looks alright actually. No blog though...guess they're relying on James Warren's personal effort. He's entertaining, but infrequent. Nice to put a face to a name though.

Speaking of which, don't spend to long staring at the picture of Brendan May, Weber Shandwick's Head of CSR. I swear he's trying to hypnotise me.

Pathetic...prophetic...

Lots of stuff is being written about the fake Wal-Mart blog devised (it is said) by its PR company Edelman. Fingers pointing all over the place - with Edelman being seen as one of the thought-leaders in all things related to blogging and PR - and not least at Steve Rubel, long-time blogging guru and now Edelman employee.

Someone like him should know better, shouldn't he?

Perhaps he does. Check out this post from February 2005, in which Rubel wonders who might be the first to fake a fake blog.

Perhaps this is a way out for Edelman? It could claim that someone else faked the fake blog in an effort to besmirch the good names of Edelman and Wal-Mart. There's been no response to the Wal-Mart debacle as yet from the mighty Edelman bloggers...I'm sure they're thinking hard.

Minivan out of control..?

Crikey, we're getting a hard time for giving people some stick...it's nothing to what Minivan News - the independent news site for the Maldives - is dishing out to H&K.

Check out its latest salvo...might just be a dig too far, we reckon.

Shrinking portfolio…

The name Mark Westaby has been bandied around here on TWL of late. Avid comment readers will remember Mark as the fella who told us that we should stop mucking around, read his mate’s book and learn something about PR, or words to that effect.

Thing is, I didn’t really know who Mark was, or what he did. I do now though. He’s a board director of Portfolio, part of the group that also owns Metrica, the media evaluation people.

Highlighted on Portfolio’s homepage is the press release regarding Portfolio’s leap up the 2005 PR Week 150 league tables to number 14…fee income up 18% year on year to a shade under £4.5m, all the usual guff.

Odd though, I thought, to just have the 2005 league tables highlighted, as I’m sure the 2006 leagues tables were published back in April, and surely Portfolio would want to once again highlight its meteoric rise up the rankings?

Umm, probably not, seeing as it dropped down to number 44 and, to use PR Week’s own words, “was the only agency in the Top 50 to post a double digit decline”. Not even a press release written by the great Peter Bartram could spin that one.

I’m not sure whether this means Mark should spend less time reading books about PR, or more?

Hot & Knot...

Remember the website Hot or Not?

Does this remind you of anything?

Business angel needed...

The latest news from Lewis PR about its big name global client win (we'll spare you the details...no doubt you'll be reading about it in PR Week soon) has sparked an idea for a new online business.

Basically, it's a virtual world where you're young, fit, slim and good looking and your life is filled with sports cars, homes in exotic locations, nights on the town and, best of all, you're accompanied by a foxy girl 20 years your junior. I'm calling it Second Wife (TM).

What do you think? It's a winner, right?

The Maldivians are mad...

A couple of days ago we posted about Hill & Knowlton's efforts to address some of the, umm, "image" challenges faced by President Gayoom of the Maldives (some say "brutal dictator", others say "just a bit grumpy").

Much attention has centred on Tim Fallon, H&K London's man in the Maldives. Well, last Friday Fallon decided to respond with a post on hig blog...and the Maldivians have come out fighting...check the comments...these just from the first few:

"No, Mr.Fallon! Your first and only priority in supporting a brutal and dictatorial regime is profit making. Period. When your company is getting paid thousands of pounds when there are several Maldivian people who do not have 3 square meals a day, you are definitely hiding something!"

"You are basically supporting a regime that has perpertrated inexcusable and horrendous human rights abuses against its own people."

"Mr Fallon. You are not helping my country to democratize. On the contrary you are doing nothing but drain our resources."

"Mr. Fallon, simply put, you are an opportunist."

"You have helped prolong civil unrest, political repression and torture in the Maldives."

"Mr. Fallon, Do you realise that you too have smeared yourself with the blood of the victims of the cruel dictator."

"Mr Fallon, shame on people like you who try to sanitize President Gayoom's regime which has been responsible for the torture of thousands of Maldivians and several foreign."

Blimey...and there are literally hundreds of comments. But then, four days after Fallon's original post and all the negative comments, they start to change (funny that). Stuff like this pops up:

"The PR work you have undertaken for our democratically elected government is very important and requires due credit."

"Your work is fantastic Mr Fallon and I wish there were more persons that would tell the world the truth about Maldivians."

"Mr. Fallon, you're an educated good person. and i appresiate what u are doing for the poor people of Maldives. thank you very much, sir."

"Tim, keep up the good work! You've done well, despite the 'barking dogs' barking day and night. As you've said yourself above, most of those comments are "the protestation of a small and fragmented group of opponents"...you've put it nicely, too kindly. personally i think these are ravings of mad dogs. "

"Excellent work, Tim and keep the fight up - it is only when people like you speak the truth and spread it to the international community that the message will eventually sink in - that Maldives has developed in leaps and bounds under our beloved President Gayoom's leadership, guidance and courage over the past 3 decades."

As yet, Tim has declined to respond to the comments. He's probably tucked up in bed in a very dark room.

Bullshit level alert: maintained...

We're dizzy with the power we wield. Today - a mere 24 hours from out original post - the jargon-ridden recruitment ad from WaggEd has disappeared. Position filled? Doubt it.

Worry not, however, as we have been alerted to another PR company's efforts to define yet more audience sectors to target. Burson-Marstellar has come up with e-fluentials, tech-fluentials and - get this - mom-fluentials (they're "powerful information brokers" don't you know). There are even nice little avatars to explain more.

Tomorrow...bird-flu-entials.

Highest level of bullshit alert...

This morning, dear viewers, the TWL security forces have taken the unprecedented step of raising the tech PR industry's bullshit alert setting to "double red with bells on". The reason? This recruitment ad from Waggener Edstrom.

Now we know the PR industry is prone to the odd bit of, umm, creative language in its recruitment advertising...we've posted about it before. But this...well, words almost fail us.

But not quite. For a start, the ad's over 1,000 words long which, given it's for an account executive position, is probably more than the successful candidate is going to know. Crikey, we're not even sure we understand some of it ourselves. Check this bit out, which comes under "Preferred Experience":

Managed a complex, information-rich “relationship of persuasion” over time towards an overarching, non-transaction-oriented business goal

Eh?

And in true tech industry fashion, they've come up with a couple of new acronyms. The position advertised is within a newly-formed account team in WaggEd's London office called MEG...this stands for Market Expansion Group, which has "the goal to define a strategy for expanding new and existing markets with technology". Which I think means winning some business.

The next acronym is my favourite though...it defines the key target audience for the position. They're called ITANTIs.

Read that and tell me what you think it might be. Perhaps it means the group within society that is not in favour of information technology. Interesting...turn all those "antis" into "pros" and the market's much, much bigger...in fact the Market has Expanded! It all makes sense...very smart.

Oh, no...it's not. ITANTI in fact stands for (you'll like this) IT industry Analysts and Non-Traditional Influentials. As if "Influentials" wasn't bad enough on its own, they've gone and stuck it in an acronym.

Utter tripe. If you were an AE looking for a new job you'd run a mile from this one.

Mutton dressed as lamb...

If you wanted to find out something about what we like to call "social media", where would you go? You might read Antony Mayfield's "What is Social Media?" e-book...but of course you'd need to know about it to find it. If you type "what is social media?" into Google, there's no mention of Mayfield's book, but a few search returns down you'll find trusty old Wikipedia's entry on social media, so that would probably be a good place to start.

It's not a huge entry at the moment, but there's a broad description, some of the key terms and some examples of campaigns that have used social media. Then there's a list of three social media strategy/consulting firms...there's Big in Japan (yep, social media plastered all over its home page), Spannerworks (of course!) and, umm, this other bunch called Lewis PR.

You might be tempted to have a butcher's at the Lewis website for some more information on its social media strategy/consulting work...though you'll be hard pressed to find any. No mention of social media in "About us"...nor in "Services"...maybe it's under "Media relations"? Nope, nothing there either...there isn't even a Social Media division.

That's odd, isn't it? As Lewis is listed in Wikipedia as a social media/strategy firm, you'd have expected there to me some reference to social media on its website, wouldn't you? I know I would.

I wonder who included them in the entry? Well, given one of the items listed in the Wikipedia entry's "References" section is Drew B's Social Media Report, I have my suspicions...

H&K...poor value for dictators..?

There's an online publication called Minivan News. You might be surprised to hear, however, that it's not where you'd go to pick up all the latest on the smaller end of the four-wheeled load carrier market, but where you'd go to get independent news on the Maldives. Odd that.

Anyway, it comes to my attention for its rather critical look at the work Hill & Knowlton's London office has been doing for President Gayoom, leader (some say brutal dictator) of the island paradise and honeymoon destination of millions.

Apparently, "after two years of service to the government, they [H&K] are yet to garner any positive press coverage for Gayoom, who is still derided in the British media as a tin-pot autocrat." Maybe, sometimes, you just can't polish a turd.

What's funny though is not that the article questions whether H&K, ethically, should be involved with such a regime, but "whether President Gayoom is getting good value for money from his PR firm" (H&K are taking, the article claims, a "whopping" £13,000 a month of Maldavian taxpayers' money).

Strikes me that when you're dealing with a brutal dictator like Gayoom, a less than positive campaign review might have slightly more serious consequences than you're used to. Tim Fallon Practice Head for Corporate Affairs at H&K London (and specialist in "working with commercial and international organisations on national and global reputation issues") is pictured looking suitably nervous...

Like advertising but free, right..?

And they say Americans don't do irony. This from PRWeek's US edition:

NEW YORK: The American Association of Advertising Agencies (4As) has hired GolinHarris to provide PR support for the advertising industry.

Kipp Cheng, VP and director of public affairs for the 4As, said Golin was brought on not to promote the organization specifically, but the advertising industry and its members at large.

"There are great agencies out there, trends, an undiscovered guru everybody within the industry knows about," but the general public might not, Cheng explained.

I can only presume that Golin is planning on doing a really, really bad job.

From the ridiculous to the sublime...

Hot on the heels of Peter Bartram's epic three volume tome on organising a press lunch - sorry, 168-page book on writing a press release - comes news of another new publication. The excellent Fullrun (you'll need a subscription - so get one!) tells us that UK tech blog Godfather Antony Mayfield (you know, the one that worked at Harvard and then "did a Scoble") has published a book called "What is Social Media?"

"Crikey me", I hear you cry, "if Bartram needs that much paper to cover press releases - and even then having forgotten more than anyone else knows about the subject, according to Mark Westaby - old Mayfield must be clearing a couple of rain forests to get through social media..."

Umm, no, not really. He's done the lot in just 33 pages.

That's the spirit. Or is it just a really small font? See for yourself - download it here.

PR Week welches…

Anyone remember this little exchange from our comments a few weeks back?

PRWeek said...
Never a magazine to let its most avid and committed readers down we’d love to invite the mysterious World’s Leading… blogger to the world’s leading PR awards in the UK. A couple of questions – to whom do we address the invitation? And how will we recognise you when you turn up?
Also, do you have any allergies?

2:55 PM

....the world's leading.... said...
How very kind of you...don't worry about posting it - just leave it marked to The World's Leading behind reception down there at Haymarket Publishing and we'll have someone pick it up...let us know when is convenient.

We'll be wearing a dinner suit...or pehaps a frock. It's so difficult to decide.

No special dietary requirements.

3:33 PM

Well, it’s taken us a few weeks, but this morning we sent our trusty messenger down to 174 Hammersmith Road…into the reception of Haymarket Publishing…and guess what? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Absolutely bugger all in the way of small packages for The World’s Leading.

How very disappointing.

Anything to say, PR Week?

Old tricks for news dogs…

I always thought that one of the golden rules of press release writing was brevity. How then can a book called “How to write the perfect press release” run to 168 pages?

But it does. It’s written by Peter Bartram and is yours for the measly sum of £12.95. Something of a bargain, I’m sure you’ll agree, for discovering the secrets of this (increasingly irrelevant) art form. Rather like paying a tenner to find out how to make a telephone out of two old baked bean cans and a piece of string.

As Peter tells us in his email pitching the book, he’s surveyed a whole 89 journalists about their attitude to press releases. He says “You’d be staggered to learn how many press releases the 89 receive each week – 1,000? 5,000? 10,000? The answer’s in the book…”

The answer’s in the first chapter which you can read free on the website.

And what is the staggering number? Umm…215, on average.

Have a gander...

As regular listeners will know, we’re not in the habit of plugging PR companies…but so outraged were we at the underhand behaviour of that nasty piece of work from Borkowski that when we receive yet more endorsements of the great work of the team at Golden Goose PR, we feel the need to pass them on (plus, it sounds like like they organise some great parties, and we might get invited if we’re nice…).

This came from Louise Hannah at the Mail on Sunday:

Emily Maddick (the showbiz reporter for the Mail on Sunday) and I both went along together last night and spoke this morning about what a great time we had. In fact we bumped into Esther from the Standard and Andy from GQ for the first time in ages in the foyer where we had a drink and a catch up.

I think there are a few of us in this email who wouldn't have come along to the Supperclub last night had it not been organised by the Geese. It can sometimes be hard to persuade diary/showbiz journos to attend a late event on a Thursday night at the end of the week, but loyalty to Miki, Laura, Laura Lou and Cleo probably persuaded us otherwise. Tamsin, I had a fabulous time last night and look forward to a long term relationship with you and securing you some great coverage in the column.

Crumbs, that’s nice. And then her colleague Emily Maddick, Showbusiness Reporter at The Mail On Sunday:

I am glad my lovely colleague Louise mentioned me in her email to everybody. As she said, I too was at the Supper Club at Cafe De Paris last night. As my message in the visitor book from last night says, I was bowled over by the fantastic job the Golden Geese did for the evening. As ever their extraordinary combination of limitless energy, fantastic contacts and shrewd PR sense provided a not only enjoyable, but successful evening in my opinion.

As the Showbusiness News Reporter for The Mail on Sunday, it is very rare that PR companies like me to come along to their events(!) as I am limited in returning favours with plugs. However I can honestly say that Golden Goose PR never fail to help me out and continue to invite me to all their impeccably organised parties. They even once organised for the entire News Room at The Mail On Sunday to come to an event, so I think their contacts are pretty good...

It saddens me to think that people could be so ungenerous in their opinions when it is clear to everybody I meet that Laura, Miki, Laura Lou and Cleo do a fantastic job and work tirelessly to achieve fantastic results – why else would they be nominated as PR company of the year?

I am glad that all my other peers in the Press share my opinion....

Goodness me…and Esther Walker who write the Londoner’s Diary for the Evening Standard…

I agree with every word said here in Golden Goose's favour - they are truly a wonderful company and lovely girls individually.

It only remains for me to say that if only more PR companies operated the way that the Geese do, my life would be much easier.

It certainly sounds to us like the Golden Goose team has got more than half a decent chance of picking up the PR Week gong for best new consultancy…even if self-proclaimed PR Guru Stuart Bruce doesn’t seem to know who they are…or appreciate what they do.

Perhaps he’s got a clue now…but I wouldn’t guarantee it.

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.