The Pride Of Britain Awards Show How A Good Tabloid Can Still Connect
I went along to the Mirror’s Pride of Britain Awards (airing tonight on ITV at 8) the other night, and in addition to having a bloody great night it got me thinking about how a good tabloid can get things exactly right. The Mirror’s repeated airing of what is a classic piece of event TV […]
Dave Trott: Hot on Advertising, Not on PR?
I respect Dave Trott. He is an Ad man and Guru of considerable stature I read and liked his book Creative Mischief. Usually, Dave provides clear thinking and words of wisdom. I’ve been preoccupied; I missed his recent CampaignLive blog Stuntvertising. I read the post, my heart sank. This got my goat; “Normally I’m not […]
Rory Weal and the Brand Narrative Quandry
(You can also read this post in the Huffington Post, here) The excitable and ubiquitous coverage of ‘labour boy’ Rory Weal following his appearance at the Labour Party Conference on Monday said a lot about the power of narrative. From Melanie Philips’s enraged dismissal of his ‘mantra of hate’ in the mail to the Guardian’s […]
Arch West: The Final Chip off a Very Old Block?
It’s a great story for anyone who’s obsessed by the showmanship of selling: Arch West, the great Frito-Lay marketing exec and inventor of Doritos, has been covered with his beloved chips in his final resting place. West came from a long line of great retail mavericks who had the fire and the guts to tap […]
The Ceri Rees Story: Validating Chinese Government Policy?
The tale about Ceri Rees- an upbeat but apparently mentally challenged woman allegedly repeatedly invited to appear on the X Factor for the sole purpose of ratings-grabbing rejection- has really captured the tabloid imagination yesterday. This has the shape of something that could seriously run and run. The latest Mail piece by Richard Price, which […]
Lib Dem Conference: A Leaky PR Ship With No-one Manning the Hull
In his Today programme interview with Justin Webb yesterday, Nick Clegg’s intended, unflappable nice guy image was showing the kind of serious wear and tear that can only result from a shortage of publicity muscle and back room support. By turns repetitive and needlessly confrontational (over the question of Italy, for instance, he veered back […]
ThaR(WC) She Blows: A PR Iceberg Drifts Onto the Horizon for the England Boys
The Mail’s coverage of a particularly wild night out for England’s Rugby World Cup lads today- in which Chris Ashton wrestled dwarves and Mike Tindall took a ride on a motorboat (if you catch my drift)- should set alarm bells ringing in any media-savvy mind. Other than raising an eyebrow at Tindall’s quasi-infidelity, the paper […]
The Saatchi & Saatchi Fuck Up Shows Why Storytelling is Best Left to PRs
For those who’ve not heard, a Saatchi & Saatchi campaign for client Toyota has led to a $10m suit being filed against the ad firm and the car company, as well as various individuals connected with the campaign. The campaign, which allowed people to sign up their friends to be ‘pranked’ with a serious of […]
Whether it's Roald Dahl's or Mine, Let's Call a Shed a Shed
Sophie Dahl had the commentariat in a flap yesterday following her request on the Today programme for half a million quid to refurbish and move her much beloved Grandad’s near-collapsing old writing shed to a new home. Seems a lot for one old prefab, especially since mine was only valued at about £100. Clearly some […]
Freedom of Information: The Changing Function of the Comms Industry
There was a great post by Kevin Bakhurst on the BBC editors’ blog the other day explaining the changes to the nature of the newsroom in the post-social media age. Bakhurst gives a pretty considered rundown of the challenges posed by social media, not least the fact it almost always has someone else be first […]
Red or Black: a [Bad] Publicity Factory Closed Down Too Soon?
As Simon Cowell’s ‘Red or Black?’ approaches its end, the viewing figures tell an interesting story. The nosedive from its inaugural 6.4m audience to 4.47m on Sunday was splashed gleefully all over the press and the show was proclaimed to be Cowell’s first failure (certainly not true: remember Rock Rivals? Battle of The Stars? Of […]
Absolutely Fatuous: The Ravages of Misdirected Satire
It’s pretty ironic that the proposed return of Absolutely Fabulous this Christmas has been getting so much attention. With the stars splashed all over the culture media and some big news stories, anyone familiar with the industry can spot the tell-tale signs of a hardworking publicist beavering away. Yet this presumably highly professional and efficient […]
New Lego Playset – UK Edition
Don’t you just love a great viral? I wonder if Lego are party to the black humour. Thank you www.thepoke.co.uk for the naughty creativity.
The lessons of 6 degrees of connectivity and brand advocacy marketing
Yahoo’s announcement last week that it plans to test Stanley Milgram’s influential ‘6 degrees of separation’ theory on Facebook shows that it has very little idea about the implications of social media for human interaction over the last few years. The experiment- in which anyone with a Facebook can participate- requires users to transmit targeted […]
Hapless Jacqui Smith, PR Maniac and foot shooting expert
You almost feel like applauding; Jacqui Smith has done it again. Obviously deciding that, since she isn’t quite so busy with politics anymore, she may as well give The Sun something to do. It emerged yesterday that Smith recently borrowed two day-release lags from a charity run by Maureen Smith- a former political ally- to […]
Twitter: Building PR Order From the Chaos
As executives from Twitter, Facebook and Research in Motion (developer of Blackberry) prepare to meet Theresa May for a chat about possibly turning off operations during times of crisis (as if…), the former company has capitalised on the confusion with a publicity coup that places it streets ahead of the other two in terms of […]
Celebrity Big Brother PR coup or Voyeurs Wet Dream
While CBB goings-on may not be great news for John Bercow and his marriage, it looks as though Richard Desmond has scored a PR coup in bringing the franchise to his ailing channel. Thursday’s launch show (peak: 5.6m viewers) has been splashed all over the net as the show’s most watched non sporting programme ever, […]
Husbands of Britain
Husbands of Britain: pity, pity, pity John Bercow. Already under fire from colleagues for somehow being both a bit of an old fart and palpably anti-Conservative in the Commons, his wife took her first steps into a full-blown publicity maelstrom when she entered the Big Brother house last night. Anyone who’s so much as walked […]
Five Hollywood Bad Boys who raised hell for their publicists
Gerard Depardieu’s recent aeronautical mishap may on one level have been an act of obstinate vandalism by a cantankerous old Frenchman, but on another it is a welcome example of an increasingly rare phenomenon. Time was, every overblown vagabond actor was creating merry hell for their publicists with acts of wholly gratuitous depravity. I was […]
The appeal of danger
The appeal of danger to the public (particularly the younger sections of it) is among the oldest weapons in the marketing and publicity arsenal. From James Dean’s motorbike to the guns-n-weed lifestyle of the 90’s gangster rapper, the outsider figure living life on the edge has always sparked media furore, and consumer brands have long […]