Why don't you stick the kettle on love...

...while I get on with some important consulting..?

It's true, I've been guilty recently of misunderstanding the blogged word...or rather a comment or two. It happens, I'm sorry. This is the latest to have me slightly confused:

"It's not a secret that PR isn't what it was. The hard line consultancy gig has been eroded by a twenty year wave of femininity. This is never more clearly reflected that in the gender ratio of PR courses. But PR still retains a hardcore consultant element to it."

This from a post on The PR Place, a blog from 21 year old PR account executive Richard Millington, who works for a company called apt marketing & PR in Cheltenham. Of course we should probably bow to the near-teenager Richard's wealth of PR experience and the post should be read in context, which I urge you to do here.

But: "The hard line consultancy gig has been eroded by a twenty year wave of femininity." What can he possibly mean..? Perhaps he could explain it to apt's managing director, Angie Petkovic.

Still, Richard's blog does have the strapline: "Day to day PR discussion, with a splatter of sarcasm, a whiff of ignorance and a sprinkle of self-promotion"

Whiff? This one stinks...

Up and down...but not out. It's Claire and Mark...

So, as mentioned and by pure coincidence, we've recently been in touch with tech PR's most senior married couple, the pair that runs the country's third best small company to work for...according to the Sunday Times...Firefly Communications. Yep, it's Mark Mellor and Claire Walker...seen here in their going out gear.

Anyone who's been involved in technology PR for more than a decade has to have an interest in the Firefly story. The glory days, the boardroom revolts, the big name client losses...these two have seen the lot, and still kept plugging away.

Of course, we don't get to interview Mark and Claire in person, so our grilling is relatively mild...and will no doubt lead to accusations of TWL being in the pay of Firefly. All we can do is send over some hopefully provocative questions and cross our fingers for some honest responses. Even given the fact that they're two seasoned PR pros, I think they've done that...it's quite long, but it's worth a read...

TWL: Would it be fair to say that the last few years have been something of a roller-coaster for the two of you? How’s your current state of mind?

Claire and Mark: We wouldn't necessarily call it a roller coaster, but it’s certainly been challenging. We've ridden the dotcom boom and bust, stuck at it through an industry recession, and seen client budgets mostly halve and expectations double. At the same time we’ve rebuilt our company into a multi-specialist agency, brought new talent on board and broadened our client base beyond tech to encompass pure b2b and consumer brands.

We’re never complacent and our current state of mind - looking at our client list, people, newbiz pipeline and current business performance - is "pretty confident". We could always do better sure, but suspect many agencies could say that about themselves. Right now we’re actually doing some of the most stimulating variety of client work that we’ve ever been involved with. There’s no shortage of opportunity for those who gather the right people around them and we feel there’s still plenty of room for us and Firefly to flourish.

TWL: You were formed in 1988 and pretty much flew through the 90s and into the new century. I’d have thought that during that time you’d have had more than one offer for Firefly, or were even tempted to float the company, why did you decide to remain private and – looking at some of your peers from the time – do you have any regrets about doing so?

C & M: We've had many offers but we didn't have the appetite and desire for a sale and still don't right now. We never felt that any of the options presented so far could offer us a better future – either personally, or for the company and employees, or for our clients.

We enjoy our independence and feel young enough to continue working, enjoying what we do and steering our own course. We've never seriously considered a public listing, as having numerous external investors disconnected with a people-based business and with conflicting short-term agendas has zero appeal. Nor have we ever packaged ourselves up for sale. Many former agency owners who have sold out have privately commented that they regret doing so. They miss their days of independence, are often bored and demotivated, and aren’t rolling in money like they thought they’d be!

We certainly have no regrets about remaining independent. There’s a lot to be said for having a big say in your own destiny and being a private company – especially in this industry and especially now. So many M&As turn to nothing and result in zero net added value. We want to grow, but we’d hate to be slaves to acquisitions and answerable to an accountant in order just to fuel a gravy train for demanding external investors.

TWL: Some of the tech brands you’ve worked with have been incredible – Oracle, Dell, Motorola, HP (or was it Compaq? I can never remember…), Google to name but a few – and yet none of them remain a client today. Why is that?

C & M: I think you’d find this true of any 10-20 year old mainstream agency. 18 years in business is quite a long time and in that time many other agencies have come and gone. It’s a transient industry with in-house people moving as frequently as agency, plus the usual client M&As to cope with (especially rife in hi-tech). With the exception of Google who we worked with for most of 2005, we handled all of the above brands for over 5 years each, and a couple for nearly 9 years (counting Compaq/HP as one). We’re proud of our track record with all of them. What’s significant is that many of the client contacts who we worked with then are repeat clients today. We currently work with some incredible brands - Adobe, Alfred McAlpine, Casio, DLA Piper, Harvey Nash, Hyundai, Konica Minolta, LG, MTV, TDK and Virgin - which is by no means shabby.

TWL: So, turn of the century and you guys are rocking…PR Week Consultancy of the Year in 2000, £7.2m in fee income declared for 2001 in the ’02 PR Week Top 150, putting you in a heady 19th position and then – bang! – drops in the following years to £5.2m, £4.7m, £3.4m and then a slight recovery to £3.5m for 2005 in last year’s table. Tough times…ever felt like just jacking it all in?

C & M: Tough times indeed, but you have to look at the bigger picture – size isn’t everything. Running a successful business at any size is more important.

2000 was a great year for us and many other agencies too. We were at the peak of a 7 or 8 year market surge and dotcom boom, but on the crest of the crash. We got off pretty lightly considering. Other agencies went bust or were forced into fire sales for a pittance. Although we were one of the top dotcom agencies, it was luckily only 10% of revenue (90% of the effort though, as anyone who worked in the industry in those days will tell you!). The real fee hits came from working with clients like Enron, Andersen and HP (our largest client at the time), and other budgets generally halving. HP moved to a global agency strategy and took out £1.1m of business in one swoop, which hurt. But that was 2003 and is relegated to the archives.

Jacking it in? Never. We’re more resilient than that and have a slightly longer term perspective and vision. Our current mission is about quality and finding the right people in order to diversify and grow to 2000 scale.

TWL: In 2005, Mark, you had a fairly public spat with Check Point Software over its lack of payment (spot on too – name and shame, I say). Did you ever get the money?

M: Mutual professional respect is an important factor in client-agency relationships and we felt that being expected to fund the marketing of a multi-billion dollar listed company making huge profit margins was not a fair win-win business deal. We’re not a free banking service, so after six months when it reached six figures, we pulled the plug on their PR programme. And yes, we did get paid (a few months later!) so it was all settled fair and square back then without write-offs or lawyers. PR agencies need to become better business people if they want to become more professional and treated with respect.

TWL: OK, so last year’s PR Week Top 150 saw your fee income back on an upward trend – but then along came the Motorola loss. What will this year’s table show in terms of fee income? Up or down?

C & M: We're not entering the table this year and most people will see why. Motorola was our largest client, which meant a 20% hit on fee income, not to mention an emotional loss after 8.5 successful years. At least we only had one week ‘on the bench’ so to speak, as we finished Motorola in August and started working with competitor LG in September. Coinciding with a couple of clients being the subject of acquisition and another introducing a global agency strategy, this all put a slight dent in last year’s fee income. There seemed little point in specially re-auditing our accounts for the calendar cycle only to re-confirm publicly what is fairly obvious to anyone who reads PR Week (and TWL of course). All agencies should contingency plan for losing a major client and we did this prudently. Our business will have moved on significantly by the time the PR Week league table appears this Spring and covers events of nine months prior. We’re not hiding that income was down for 2006 over 2005 and if it weren't for Motorola we would have grown. It’s just that we’re focused on 2007 and beyond.

We may jump back in the PR Week league tables one day, but such tables don’t tell you much about the businesses behind the claimed figures and have been devalued somewhat by those hiding behind SarbOx. If TWL followers must know, we’ve had a great winter since Motorola and our current fee income is now only just below year ago levels, and we’re in profit. We’re still a great place to work (Sunday Times Best Small Companies No.3 in the UK this weekend) with the buzz and confidence to be recruiting at AD and AE levels and some great name clients and prospects to work on, so if you’re a happy team unhappy where you are…

TWL: Back in 2002 a bunch of your fellow directors tried to wrestle control of the company away from you. Well done for beating the treacherous bastards off, but when that happened, what was your overriding emotion…disappointment that people you’d employed and trusted would do such a thing or just overwhelming anger and a desire to break their kneecaps?

C & M: Betrayal and kneecaps? It was a difficult time and is ancient history. We’ve all moved on since. After a decade of success we were all hurting in 2002. We weren’t used to a rapid market decline and a shrinking fee base, so needed a new business strategy and a re-sized board. Everyone felt so passionately about Firefly but no-one really wanted to leave.

We learnt a lot about business and different people’s values. We also put our money where our mouths were and invested the cash. It took a long while to recover financially, with no outside help (no thanks to NatWest – we hope their blog monitoring is switched on!) and we personally didn’t draw salaries for three years. Most of all we’ve proved that we can build talented teams from scratch, shoulder risk and run a solid business. More recently we’ve managed to rebuild our senior management team and proved our resilience in rocky markets while maintaining a high profile reputation.

While some people choose to dwell on the past, we’re surprisingly very focused on the next five years.

TWL: What key lessons would you say you’ve learnt over the past few years?

C & M: Always have self-belief and a longer term vision that means something to everyone in the company

Surround yourselves with great people

Value trust and loyalty - from employees and clients

Appreciate what enormous efforts it takes to really engage and motivate the workforce

Dig deep, have faith and resilience

In this industry, only the future matters

…and lots more!

TWL: The two of you are married, right? I can’t think of a more senior husband/wife professional partnership, so you must be like the PR industry’s Posh & Becks. How the hell to you avoid talking shop every minute of every day, or have you given in and spend the evenings lying in bed running through PowerPoint presentations on your bedroom’s plasma?

C & M: Yes we’re married, but we’re not sure whether Posh & Becks is an improvement or a demotion on the usual Richard & Judy jibes! As for senior, you’re as old as you think you are and the people who surround you. There are other senior PR couples out there – Lansons, for example.

We actually have very different jobs at work and have different personalities, responsibilities, clients and skills. With three busy energetic kids under 10 there's little time for work chat at home and, as any parent will tell you, kids keep your feet on the ground (and also give you an unpaid part time job as a taxi driver). We have a rule of no computer screens above the ground floor and it applies to us as well as the kids. The old adage “if you want something done, give it to a busy person” definitely applies. We’re busy and are very involved in the daily (hourly) running of the business, we make the most of technology, and make the most of precious family holidays to escape the weekday frenzy.

TWL: Firefly’s nearly 20 years old now. You must be knackered. What does the future hold..?

C & M: Firefly will be 19 years old this autumn in fact, but we feel like we’ve recently rebuilt Firefly from the inside to be a much broader, interesting place. Surrounding ourselves with bright, sparky people helps keep our energy levels and motivation up. We’re proud of our client list and still feel we have loads of potential and many years to go. Our careers are important to us. It doesn't get much more exciting than launching a new business for Richard Branson aiming to open the minds of the nation and healthcare profession about the long term potential and benefits of stem cell banking, in the same month as crisis management consulting with a major corporate, devising online PR strategies for various people, launching a new range of dual-standard high def DVD players for LG, and working with MTV on its digital platforms.

Challenging consumer, b2b and corporate issues-based assignments like these are very motivating and where we score highly. We’re not actively packaging Firefly for sale and have set ourselves goals for growth, award-winning work and diversity. The immediate future holds more growth in pure b2b/corporate clients, representing the bigger and better brands in technology, winning more pure consumer brand assignments, stronger international ties, and the growth of our European offices so that we've got a stronger pan-European footing.

2007 is shaping up well from where we’re standing, as it should be for many others in the industry.


So there you have it...optimistic as ever. We're grateful for the time anyone takes in writing to little old TWL, and Claire and Mark invested quite a lot here...not only in the words, but that picture at the top came from them too.


We know that they're keen readers, so if the Q&A has sparked any qustions of your own, stick them in the comments and I'm sure they'll pop along to respond...

Monday morning blues..? Not if you work for this lot, apparently...

Hearty congratulations to those PR companies that made it into yesterday’s Sunday Times “Top 100 Small Companies To Work For” League Table. Not that the agency webmasters dragged out of bed yesterday morning to update websites were very impressed, but hey ho…good news is good news.

PR companies in the table included Trimedia, Lexis, Bite, Lansons and Consolidated. However, holding the torch for tech PR – and with the honour of the highest position for any of the PR companies – was Firefly, sitting proudly at number 3. Well done you lot, particularly Claire Walker, mentioned as someone who “overwhelmingly inspired” Firefly’s employees (and, we presume, continues to do so). Speaking of which, watch this page for an honest and insightful Q&A with Claire and Mark Mellor of Firefly - tech PR's premier husband and wife team - being published very soon.

Surely, as gongs go, this one has to be more useful to agencies than any number of PRWeak or CIPR prizes? We all know what a nightmare it currently is finding and keeping talent, so a national paper telling the world you’re a decent place to work is worth much, much more than an industry rag or association saying you’ve done some nice PR.

It’s a bid odd, therefore, that there aren’t more PR companies in the list. The Sunday Times defines small company as having fewer than 250 employees – so 99% of all PR companies would qualify – and as “people” businesses with an eye for an award, you’d imagine that entrants would be able to drum up a decent amount of votes. Which can only lead us to conclude that most PR companies aren’t regarded by their staff as great places to work. And as one in the eye for Stuart Bruce and all his "life in the regions is so much better" cronies, every one of the PR companies in the table was cited as having its HQ in London.

Of course, as with all leagues tables, once you’re in, the real battle is to stay in, and retain or improve your position. Firefly did so – rising to third place from ninth last year – and Bite is a new entry, but Trimedia, Lexis, Lansons and Consolidated all slipped down the table from their relative positions last year. Though this probably reflects a greater number of entrants in the table this year over last, it’s a bit difficult to crow quite as much about it, isn’t it? Have a lie-in, webmaster...

We don't like to talk about it...

...but we do a lot of work for charity. Well, a bit. And we'll happily blog about it.

You might have missed it, but for the past couple of month's the hugely influential US PR business blog Strumpette has been running a photo caption competition. Dream up a wildly funny line to accompany the chosen photo and you're in with a chance of picking up a cool $500.

It's a good chance for us Brits too as everyone knows Americans generally undergo a sense of humour lobotomy at birth, or shortly after, so the odds are stacked in our favour...as dear old TWL has demonstrated this month by winning! You can read all about our wittiness here.

Philanthropic souls that we are we suggested that the delicious Amanda Chapel of Strumpette donated the green stuff to a charity of her choice, so the deeply worthy Susan G. Komen for the Cure charity gets the cash.

And people say we never do anything of any value...

A face for podcasting….

With its sparkly new studio, VNU has gone podcasting crazy and it’s a tremendous amount of fun.

One can only imagine what Denis Norden might be able to dig up from the VNU vaults, but we’ve already noticed some of the funniest (toe-curling) podcasts have been removed from the site.

Robert Jaques and Madeline Bennett give some fine examples of why print journos shouldn’t do broadcast, while Iain Thomson proves himself to be a beautiful mix of John Craven, a Radio 4 shipping forecast announcer and Ronnie Barker.

Just take yesterday’s example, where Iain’s headlines include:

“Quality of UK broadband standards are falling: customers are revolting.”

“Nintendo Wii dominates console wars: A third of US and Japanese homes will have a wee by 2011.”

Informs, educates and entertains that Thomson - give him his own show….

The minty fresh breath of IT management….

The bright and very shiny ComputerworldUK launched today, only a day behind schedule.

In a non-naïve, non-eco way, it’s green. Very green. And red. Which will confuse colour-blind techies (who surely electrocute themselves on a regular basis), but please gypsy queens (who, presumably, are pretty happy anyway having never paid any tax).

Perhaps best of all, the ComputerworldUK logo is nice and easy to copy, which is great for coverage round ups. The editorial copies and pastes cleanly as well, which saves valuable ‘re-formatting in Word’ time. Thanks Mike, a God send. The search engine seems pretty snappy, which is one in the eye for the FT and Silicon among others.

Least good is the irritating-beyond-belief pop-up adverts that blast the second paragraph out of the way just as you’re half a line into it.

Clearswift and HP have clearly decided that there’s advertising ROI to be proved by getting in early, while Samsung’s early spend is hard to detect. It’s suitably 2.0, with RSS, Digg, Slashdot, Del.ic.io.us and Reddit (if you’re confused with this cutting jargon, surf like billy-o to the CIPR’s website for explanations).

Although it currently carries a fair bit of generic IDG content (a bonus as interviews with Jeremy Kirk will now appear in the UK too), it has a strong editorial team, headed by Mike Simons of CW fame, where Helen Beckett made her name too. For those old enough to remember Information Week, Stuart Lauchlan and Sarah Aryanpur return after respective spells freelancing and copywriting at (the no-longer)-August-One. Chris Mellor of the risibly-titled StorAge is also on board, along with IDG stalwart Peter Judge and card-carrying leftie Tash Shifrin (OK, just guessing about Tash but, Christ, she used to write for The Guardian).

As for editorial tone, tone towards PRs (thus far cordial) and general standing in the marketplace, we’ll have to see. But, given the majority of the technology world is US-based, and Computerworld is a lead title there, it should do fairly well.

Personality PR...where to stop...

It's always a quandary. Your company has an enigmatic CEO...charismatic, great personality, brushes up nicely...so the obvious thing is to indulge in some personality PR. Profiles in the trades - maybe even a national - put a human face on the company. But what happens when a better offer comes along and she clears off? You're a bit stuck then. It's a tough one.

The other question, of course, is where do you draw the line? The CEO's an obvious choice...head tech guy too possibly...CFO? Perhaps. UK Press Advisor..? Umm, probably not. Unless you're BitDefender, that is.

A UK tech hack's been in touch. He received an email today with the title: "News from BitDefender - appointment of UK press advisor" and he's less than impressed. Not least because this was the first line of the email:

"BitDefender, an award winning provider of antivirurs software and data security solutions, has set up a UK press centre"

Spot the deliberate mistake...

The new UK press advisor is called Mike Ottewell, an "experienced PR consultant, specialising in IT and business management technologies."

We have to say that we have some sympathy with BitDefender. We've been there...you've got a new PR person on board, a new contact for the press, and you're keen to let them know he's around. But our hack isn't sure it's the best approach. Over to him:

"This email was sent out by none other than experienced PR consultant Mike Ottewell himself, who is clearly so good at his job he thinks such self-publicity will be well received on newsdesks the length and breadth of the country.

"In fact he was clearly so busy blowing his own trumpet he didn't stop to proof read his own email - spot the glaring typo in the very first sentence he ever wrote for his new client. Still, "antivirus" is a tricky word and it's not like he's going to have to write it much... working for an antivirus company and all.

"For somebody who is such an "experienced PR consultant" it seems incredible it didn't dawn on Ottewell that journalists really don't give a rat's ass when a company announces a new press spokesperson (with the utmost respect). It certainly isn't news, which is how this non-story was billed. If he was just updating our contact lists fair enough, but he billed this as "news" - thus setting himself a very low bar in terms of what passes as news for BitDefender (there's nothing like managing your client's expectations).

"But the truth is, as long as a press contact is good at their job (and the above already puts a question mark over Ottewell) and are able to communicate with the press well, that's all that matters to us simple journalists. For the same reason nobody was writing stories about the valets at the Oscars or the woman who buys the tit-tape at London fashion week, good PR people are not the story."

Right then. We'll bear that in mind.

Welcome to the world of social moaning...

Tom Murphy points this morning to a new venture from his "former colleague" Andy West. As Murphy used to wander the halls of Text 100, we can only presume that this is the same diminutive Andy West who, as we reported last May, left Text 100 under a small cloud and on the end of some acerbic comments from CEO Aedhmar Hynes, like this one:

"...his ability to charm is not just down to his ability to make friends quickly but also his reputation for going the extra mile. For a man with such short legs that extra mile was all the longer and therefore all the more appreciated."

At the time, we thougth Hynes was being a bit harsh. As it happens, since then, we've heard some stories about Mr West that make us think Hynes was well within her rights to have a little dig. But that's for another time. For now, West seems to have got up, dusted himself down and jumped on the nearest bandwagon. Welcome to Friction.TV.

I'll sum it up for you. It's a website where you can upload videos of yourself (I know, I know) moaning about things that annoy you. And then people can rate the videos, using a one to five star rating system. The website says, "All the best ideas are simple"...we say, "All the simplest ideas are someone else's..."

Actually, we might be being unfair. The idea isn't just to moan, it's about sparking a debate about something that you're passionate about. It's just that many of the video's currently featured (which seem to involve West, his family and his friends) start with phrases such as: "What really gets my goat is when..." and "I really hate it when..." and "Isn't it annoying when..."

Lots of them also seem to mention "Mr Blair" in the first couple of sentences. Hell, even Boris Johnson's on the site, posing the crushingly predictable question: "What on earth is Tony Blair still doing in Downing Street?" Here's West himself in action, spouting off about defence spending.

In fact, we think that West and his fellow entrepreneurs have missed a trick. Rather than spend their own time and money creating the site, they should have simply approached the Daily Mail directly and offered to "social media" its letters' page...

We do, however, see an opportunity for the PR industry. The website tells us that: "Our promise is that your content will not be edited in any way; nor will it be subjected to any censorship (so long as it is within the law!)" So, what you need to do is knock together a little video to which your clients can respond. Here are some ideas:

"What really gets my goat is when my power supply gets interrupted. If only there was a cost-effective solution to the problem..."

"I've been using the same Windows operating system for about five years now and it annoys me that there isn't a new version..."

"It really annoys me that I keep exponentially expanding the amount of electronic information I produce and yet I have nowhere to put the bloody stuff! Wouldn't it be great if there was an easy solution for storing it..."

"I'm a businessman with customers. I have relationships with them. I'd like to manage them, but..."

"I get so angry when little men try and make a quick buck out of social media by rehashing what's already out there..."

It's oddly compelling viewing though.

CIPR...down with the kids...

The Chartered Insitute of Public Relations (CIPR), as its most modern of monikers suggests, is an organisation at the very cutting edge of PR practice. Not much newfangled stuff gets past the CIPR without it knowing. Which is why - only years after we've all been doing it - has it today published its social media guidelines.

The guidelines have been described to TWL by various PR blogging heavyweights as "crap" and "all a bit rubbish". TWL isn't a member of the CIPR, so we don't have to adhere to them, but you might be so you'd better read them. And then forget them.

Probably the best summation I can find of the CIPR's credibility in advising on social media issues comes straight from the fingertips of its President, Lionel Zetter who today, in his blog post announcing the guidelines, says:

"So blog away like billy-o, and work those wickis. But keep it real, and keep it honest!"

Oh dear Lord.

That's a relief...

You'll all be delighted to hear that, in PRWeak's debate a couple of evenings ago - you know, the one it's been trying to shift tickets to for weeks - the motion "PR has a duty to tell the truth" was well and truly defeated. I say well and truly. What I mean is by 138 votes to 124. So quite close.

Nevermind the boring details, it's a glorious win for half-truths, deceptions and good old smoke and mirrors.

As you were, PR industry, as you were...

Can you help..?

OK, so it's not "I'm having sex with my husband's best mate...and his wife" but a reader has sent Auntie TWL a missive with a desperate plea for help:

Dear TWL,

I've been working as an in-house PR manager for 3 years now and our clippings supplier is Press Index. Last year, I noticed that the cost of our clippings had doubled over a period of about 4 months. While I would love to be able to say that this was due to the efforts of our PR agency, sadly this was not the case - it was instead due to Press Index adding vast quantities of irrelevant online titles (especially those that just run press releases verbatim) and failing to apply our account filters properly. I estimate this is costing us several thousand pounds a year, even after I have tried to take steps to fix this. I would be interested to hear whether your other readers report similar frustrations?

I would like to change supplier but having looked at Romeike, Durrants etc, sadly I think PI are the best of a bad bunch. What do readers think about getting the PR agency to manage monitoring themselves, or using facilities like Factiva and RSS as a replacement? We do have both these services, however I am nervous they will miss important pieces.

I'm sure you have some views dear viewers! Please feel free to use our comment facility to get them off your lovely chests.

Personally, I think that Press Index should adopt "Best of a Bad Bunch" as its new corporate strapline...

You ain't nobody until you've been picketed...


Surely a laudable aim for any self-respecting PR agency...human rights activists on the doorstep. Full story here.

You haven't? You're not working hard enough.

Company name dyslexia...

Flicking through the pages of last week's PRWeak, I got well confused. I got to that bit where people send in case studies of the work they've been doing - you know, budget knocked down, results knocked up - and there was one about this funny little battery called USBCELL. The client was called Moixa Energy and the agency, get this, was called Ranieri PR!

"Ranieri PR!" I gasp. "Look, look...PRWeak has managed to spell Rainier wrong! What a bunch of numpties."

But there it was again in the editorial...Ranieri PR. So I checked it out and it's true! There's a tech PR company called Ranieri PR and it's a completely different company from dear old Rainier PR. Different offices, the lot. Different towns even. How extraordinary.

And then you know how it is when you first hear about something and suddenly it's all over the place. Well, Ive just received an email from a journalist about Ranieri's work for Moixa and its USBCELL. The journo in question is feeling very special indeed, because when Ross from Ranieri PR wanted to send out a media alert to his very closest media contacts, he put all 256 of them (yes, 256) in the Cc: line of his email! And now they've started replying to all.

Still, handy for me...I've now got a bang up to date list of UK journo emails.

When their crisis becomes your crisis...

Client companies must be laughing these days, mustn't they? Back in the day, when the shit hit the fan because they's cocked up, they used to take the fallout. But not anymore. In today's PR-savvy world, when a business gets in trouble it's no problem...attention immediately falls onto the bunch of PR flacks hired to deal with the issue rather than on the issue itself.

Witness the City Diary in today's Times...more interested in the PR puffery spewed by Hill and Knowlton's MD of Issues & Crisis (Crises, surely?) Tim Luckett than in the potential epidemic of bird flu released from Bernard Matthews' farm.

Mind you, with Luckett stating that there's a "brand recovery strategy to be implemented" perhaps the Times is well within its rights to take the piss...and now he's not returning calls.

That'll get worse before it gets better...

3GSM themes…

There is a general consensus that the two big themes of 3GSM this year are mobile broadband and the mobile internet. The FT’s mobile broadband/internet focus is all stolidly businesslike with talk of mobile enterprise applications, management and security. The Guardian is typically more fey with whimsical notions of social networking, search, music and TV. Both the BBC and The Guardian are interested in embryonic telco worthiness in the developing world.

But precious few have picked up on the over-riding themes at 3GSM; fear, loathing and blame.

The fear of middle managers careering away from the M4 corridor as they fail to deliver the level of coverage from last year.

The loathing from senior executives, who expected the FT but find themselves with a 24 year old reporter on a third rate telco mag.

The blame redirected on a hapless AE, abandoned by account managers that were too scared to attend. Cast adrift from agency/practice leads ‘chasing new business’ in Barcelona bars at the expense of those that they could actually impress.

Ruthless senior execs, pallid in-house wannabes, freeloading senior agency staff and horribly exposed agency juniors. The broken promises, the shattered hopes, the drunken advances, the naivety preyed upon. The over-bearing stench of self-interest.

God it’s good to be here…

They say AO, do we say goodbye..?

If you read the Q&A with Tim Dyson, Next Fifteen CEO, that we posted not so long ago you’d be well within your rights to assume that the group of PR companies Dyson runs is doing pretty well. Growing revenues, increasing profits, new offices and the odd seemingly successful acquisition. And you’d be right…even the share price seems to have picked, jumping around 50% over the last six months.

Here at TWL, however, there’s always been one little piece of the group’s jigsaw that sticks out like a sore thumb (if we’re not mixing our metaphors too much…): August One (AO to its acquaintances).

August One. A company named after the date it started operating in 1999…something that in itself shows such a dearth of creative thinking that it perhaps should’ve been a clearer portent for the performance of the company over the following years. A business which has steadily appeared to lose quality people and clients; shrinking until…well…until we think that there’s a very good chance that it won’t make its next namesake.

It’s difficult to understand how the various CEO’s of August One have managed to drive the company into the ground. After all, for a “start-up” the company had a pretty healthy birth. Formed when Text 100’s UK operation was split in two, AO took with it the Microsoft UK PR account…at the time one of the biggest PR accounts in the country. In any sector. And when the performance of AO’s consumer sister agency Joe Public Relations stumbled, it was quickly decided that JPR should be absorbed into AO. You don’t have to speak to many ex-JPR employees to hear how poorly that process was managed… Very quickly pretty much all the JPR crew had jumped ship, along with the majority of the ex-JPR client base. Exit stage left one decent consumer PR brand.

Of course, we’re not privy to details of the company’s finances. Not in any detail at least. However, what we can do is review the fee income declared by AO’s in the PRWeak Top 150 league tables since the company started. They paint a clear picture of a business that has never managed year-on-year growth; a business that started with a declared fee income of £6.2m in the PRWeak Top 150 league table of 2001; a figure which has been eroded year after year.

Here’s the sequence:

2001 table - £6.2m fee income, 85 staff
2002 - £4.9m, 67 staff
2003 - £4.6m, 60 staff
2004 - £4.6m, 67 staff
2005 - £3.9m, 49 staff
2006 - £2.3m, 23 staff.

To paraphrase a Formula One team owner’s onetime gag (and perhaps one for Dyson at the next AGM): “How do you make a small fortune in PR? Start with a large one and give it to August One…”

OK, so that last figure takes into account the moving of the Microsoft business into sister agency Inferno but equally, the 2004 numbers reflect the absorption of Joe Public’s clients and people into AO (and it still only managed flat fee income). Over those years AO had opened (and closed) offices in Sydney, Auckland, Hong Kong, Paris and Edinburgh. Its current staff (estimated at about 15) are housed, ironically, in the old JPR offices in Hammersmith. OK, so the turn of the century was a tough time for many agencies, but August One has never got over it, unlike its stablemates in the Next Fifteen group.

Speaking to those that have worked at AO – and indeed some that still do – common themes seem to appear. The company was top heavy, loaded up with expensive, senior staff and in an effort to justify that structure, over-complicated its proposition. Its pitches were full of strategic (and pricey) services which scared the crap out of prospects; for a long time AO had a risible record of winning new business. Then, in a reaction, the company apparently started over-promising; selling itself cheaply just to win clients and, inevitably, seeing its margins squeezed to vanishing point.

Clearly, responsibility for a company’s performance ultimately falls on the management team’s shoulders. AO has had a number of CEOs –all of them long-term Next Fifteen group employees. Tariq Khwaja, Stuart Handley, Sophie Brooks…all have had their moment in the big chair and moved on. Sarah Howe’s now at the helm, with Sally Hetherington a deputy MD. Few people that have been involved with AO feel that the company has ever had any truly inspirational leadership.

The only surprising thing is that Dyson and the Next Fifteen board have allowed AO to lurch on for so long. Indeed, when the Microsoft business was shipped over to sister agency Inferno, that might’ve been the sensible time to call it a day. Though, of course, the Microsoft income staying within the group probably supported a stay of execution and AO was allowed to try and re-positioning itself as a generalist agency. It hasn’t been a success. More than that, now that Next Fifteen owns the majority of Lexis PR – surely the agency that AO would have aspired to replicate – there seems little point in stringing it out any further. Surely absorbing any clients of worth (and willingness) and people of value into Lexis would now be the most viable option?

We do hear that there are changes afoot. Watch this space. Could it be the end of the rAOd..?

Busting Blockbuster's balls...

IT hack monolith Chris Green is not happy with Blockbuster, the low-end video rental people. He's not happy at all. So he's written a letter to the company's MD. You can read it here...and please do, it's great.

You can't argue with any of Green's points. He does offer some fairly forthright opinions on the quality of staff in Blockbuster..."your consistently rude and brain-dead staff"...which, again, is probably fair enough.

However, I do foresee a potential issue. Having been less than glowing in his comments about the employees of his local Ruislip High Street branch, he than confirms that he will be visiting this weekend to settle his outstanding fines. Given the fact that pictures of Green's chubby little face are freely available on t'internet, do you think they might be waiting for him..?

VNU...going, going...

...gone.

Word on the chilly streets of Soho last night was that Incisive Media has bought VNU's entire UK operation, lock, stock and smoking servers. 3i are looking to hang onto the Dutch stuff and sell off all of VNU's other properties. Much dusting down of CVs in France and Germany this morning, no doubt...

No news as yet on whether it'll lead to any redundancies on the ground in Blighty, but it's got to be particularly sweet for Incisive's CEO Tim Weller...back in 1982 he started his career at VNU, working with John Barnes.

So Weller gets to live the dream of owning the company he used to work for. "Now I'm the boss, things are going to be a bit different round here..." he was probably heard to be muttering in his sleep last night...

72 (what's the) Point..?

There's a PR agency called 72 Point that I'd never heard of. It calls itself a "national news and PR specialist" and has a huge headline on its homepage which says "GUARANTEED COVERAGE OR YOUR MONEY BACK!" (yes, it's red and in capital letters on the website too).

It also has a blog and, presumably using the very same skills that will "GUARANTEE YOU COVERAGE OR YOUR MONEY BACK!" has decided to use one of oldest PR industry stories in the book to drive some traffic (and before you say it, yes, we're obviously happy to oblige...). It's the old hacks vs. flacks battle. As Point 72 itself says:

"PR people! Fighting back! All guns blazing! No more Mr or Mrs Nice Guy! Yes, the return leg of the epic PR-versus-journalists battle starts right here!"

Basically, Point 72 posted a bunch of verbatim comments from hacks a little while ago under the titel of "Top tips for PR people from the mouths of journalists" which were, unsurprisingly, the usual moans and gripes interspersed with a handful of ridiculous ones. Of course, the flacks were up in arms and fired back with their own salvo. Point 72 has posted these under the title of "Top tips for journalists from the mouths of PR people" and which are, unsurprisingly, the usual moans and gripes interspersed with a handful of ridiculous ones.

Actually, the flack comments are a far more interesting read. Interesting in the sense that they sound like a bunch of bleating cry babies who should maybe think about doing something else for a living. Like caring for the elderly. Or being librarians.

Get this: “Don’t be rude - if we call/email you and you’re not interested please be polite. Calling grumpy journalists can be very scary and can really knock the confidence of the juniors.”

And this: “If you’re rude, unreasonable and insensitive, expect not to be given the story that you really do want, we do have them sometimes.”

And stuff like this: “I would love it if PRs went ‘on strike’ for a week, to see how many of the rude, lazy so-and-so’s are actually capable of thinking up, researching and writing THEIR OWN stories, without the help of so many brilliant PRs who usually just end up doing their jobs for them while they pontificate on high about how useless we all are.”

It's worth checking out...though it's a depressing read. I have no idea what purpose it serves. It's not even funny.

Late payment...it's a, it's a...sin...

Late payment, eh? Crucifies your cash-flow. Those big, successful wealthy companies thinking they can hang on for a few days...weeks...months even before paying their suppliers. Don't they realise that you've got financial commitments too? They just don't seem to care...always happy to squeeze the little guy...after all, what's he gonna do? He needs the business.

I can see all you agency folk sitting there enthusiastically nodding your heads (I can you know...it's a new widget). But wait up. It's YOU I'm talking about, not your clients.

Oh yes, it seems that the kings of the late payment are fast becoming agencies themselves. They don't like taking it, but they can dish it out. First to whine to the client about overdue invoices, they're happy to do the very same thing to their own suppliers...particularly the freelancers upon which they are becoming increasingly dependent (if the PRCA and PRWeak is to be believed).

Too often these days freelancers are wasting time dealing with agency bean counters over late payment. Don't believe me? Check out this little email exchange between a senior freelancer who'd been chasing payment for a while and a number-cruncher at a top London consultancy (we've cut the headers and reversed it to make it more readable):

Bean counter: Sorry you have not received a response to your emails.

I would point out that our payment terms are 60 days from the date of invoice, however I will arrange for this to be paid on next week's payment run which is on Wednesday.

Freelancer: Thanks.

Your payment terms may be 60 days, but that's never been made clear to me, my invoice clearly states 30 days and my previous work with you has been paid within, or very close to, 30 days.

I would have thought, therefore, that when you spot a difference between a supplier's payment terms and your own it would be good business practice (and common courtesy at the very least) to contact the supplier and discuss the difference. Would you agree?

Anyway, I look forward to receiving payment next week.

Bean counter: We have hundreds of invoices passing through the department every week, your suggestion is simply not practical.

Freelancer: Really? And your company being one of the world's largest communications companies. Remarkable.

Bean counter: Sarcasm rarely gets suppliers very far!

Freelancer: I wasn't being sarcastic; I am honestly amazed that an organisation which has the primary role of communicating clearly with millions of people can't put a process in place to communicate with a relatively small group of suppliers. But I guess it's different when you're being paid, rather than doing the paying?

There's little point in continuing this conversation.


Are you a freelancer who's been on the end of an agency's late-payment policy? If so, we want to know about it: theworldsleading@yahoo.co.uk (anonymously, obviously). And if any one agency gets mentioned more than, say, three times, we'll happily name and shame them.