No Sport Please, We're British
What a depressing week for lovers of football. What a sorry, sad, insane mess played out by fools and halfwits. Ordinarily, the focus would have been on the big game, Arsenal v. Chelsea. Instead, this weekend, our interest in the game will be for all the wrong reasons. So, instead, I have decided to focus […]
John Terry and the Future of Football
The question of whether or not John Terry should be stripped of the England captaincy after recent revelations is irrelevant. There are bigger issues at stake in the world of football. If we’re to learn one thing from the wretched saga surrounding Terry it’s that it is not his career and reputation that faces a […]
Who Will Decide the Future of PR?
Given the current debate surrounding PR, PR spam and how to further the better practices of PR in the 21st Century, the news that 3am has fallen out with Peter Andre’s management, CAN Associates because CAN wanted to control every aspect of a minor story about Andre teaming up with a coffee emporium can’t have […]
Brangelina, branding and adoption
The more we hear from the endless Brangelina rumour mill and the less we hear from anyone officially representing the couple, the more likely it seems that there is some truth in the suggestion that their long romance with the tabloids and each other is over. But in amongst the suggestions that they’re losing it […]
Looking For the Real Mad Men
I hope you’ll forgive me a brief bask in the news that The Fame Formula has crept back up the Amazon charts and is currently at number 4 in the Film and Performing Arts Bestseller list, as well as moving slowly back into the running in the overall chart. It certainly seems like the Fame […]
The Cadburys Takeover: Dairy Milking?
Over the years, my company has worked with a great many heritage brands – from Horlicks to Gordon’s Gin, Hovis, Selfridges, R White’s Lemonade and of course Wispa. I understand, as a consequence, that these sorts of brands – usually on the back of iconic advertising campaigns and careful PR that pushes all the least […]
Russkat: The New Brangelina?
The Independent requested my opinion on the hotting up of the Russell Brand and Katy Perry romance – and more particularly the way they are being aggressively pushed into a Brangelina-shaped hole. Or should that be RussKat, as the Independent puts it. To read more, click here…
PR Spam: The New Chlamydia?
Is PR spam the new chlamydia? Certainly it’s being fulminated about an awful lot as the latest social disease that may have infected us all, although we’re too often too ashamed to check out the symptoms.
The Ross Ultimatum
Speculation surrounds the departure of Jonathan Ross from the BBC after 13 years – did he jump or was he pushed?
The Fame Formula On the Record
I’ve had a dose of New Year cheer after yesterday’s blog – I’ve just learned that the episode of Eric Schwartzman’s wonderful weekly podcast On the Record, covering all the latest issues in the world of PR, in which I discussed The Fame Formula, is the second most popular download of last year. Most cheering […]
Same Old New Old Year
I spent a little of last night, as the festive season faded and a whole new year and the return to work hove into view, watching the latest iteration of Celebrity Big Brother wipe it’s arse across my TV screen. As the usual array of desperate people, half-arsed film heroes and one hit blips on […]
Raging and plotting against the machine
It’s been interesting to be following pre-Christmas sales on the internet for the last three or four days, for two reasons. One reason is personal – my book, The Fame Formula, has leapt up the Amazon sales chart by several thousand places in the last three days. The other reason is that I’ve been watching […]
Clinton, Copenhagen, Afghanistan, Suppression and the X Factor
The suppression of information takes many guises, I’m beginning to realise. Many guises, but at the heart, the old ways of doing things still rule. Someone pulls strings and the neck of the bag tightens. Take, for a start, Hillary’s Secret War, a book detailing the ways in which a rightwing think-tank’s output on the […]
Why Tiger Woods PR disaster could scare brands off sports stars for good
Another piece, by me, on the Tiger Woods brand disintegration has appeared in Guardian Online’s Media section. It looks at the way that sports endorsement has been shifting away from volatile and risky sports stars, and at where the big money is settling in the aftermath of the Tiger Woods PR meltdown. “Let’s get one […]
The Sleb's Prayer and The Exterminating Factor
Have you overdosed on the X Factor? Are the opinions of the judges getting you down? Have you felt like venting your feelings about the loss of your favourite contestant? Did Danyl’s departure in the semi-finals really get your goat? Did Lucie losing out to Jedward rile you to the point of despair? Or are […]
Risking the Tiger Woods Economy
I was asked to comment on the fallout from Tiger Woods’s bad week in the press by the Guardian last week – the resulting article appears in today’s Media section and online under the headline In Need of a Tigerish Attorney. I took a critical look at the way he and his lawyer, Mark NeJame, […]
Tiger Not Yet Out of the Woods
I was asked by the Times what could save Tiger Woods’ reputation in the wake of the revelations that he has, as he put it in his guarded press release the other day, “transgressed”. I told them that the next step for Woods could be a public display of contrition, perhaps in a television interview. […]
Selling Your Name for Christmas
I spoke on the BBC’s World Update yesterday about a 19 year old Wisconsin man who sold his name to an online Finnish electronics retailer via eBay. I discussed the pros and cons of this old idea – dating back to Jim Moran and Maynard Nottage, who both persuaded people to change their names to […]
Katie Price and God
Katie Price, aka Jordan, was bitten by a funnel web spider in the jungle whilst competing in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and had to be helicoptered out at high speed to the nearest hospital. As she was slipping in and out of consciousness in the helicopter she had a near-death experience; […]
Quantum Physics and Thierry Henry
The Independent on Sunday published an article of mine yesterday, looking at what could have happened to Thierry Henry had he confessed to handling the ball in the France v Republic of Ireland match last week. The What If? is a classic sci-fi and fantasy conceit borrowing the idea of a multiverse from quantum physics, […]