Get your story straight before you pick up the phone: Always true, this one, but especially nowadays when a journalist might be live tweeting your conversation as it happens. A plaintive “off the record, right?” just won’t cut it. Get the right team for the job: Today’s PR industry incorporates dozens of diverse skills. Make sure you wow clients…
Last week, the PR buzz was all around Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary and his uncharacteristic mea culpa. This week, another combative consumer brand is filling up feeds across the globe: Miley Cyrus and her encounter with some of Amsterdam’s finest. Cyrus’s ‘outrageous’ awards ceremony performances are fast becoming a fixture in our lives. Regular, horrifying and…
Malcolm Walker and Tom Reddy how we applaud you! Being the subject of an observational documentary is not without risk, but Iceland emerges triumphant from their series because as an organization, they don’t perform. They don’t hide. Malcolm and his team remain unashamedly authentic whilst not taking themselves too seriously. How wise. Who would have…
Today could and should signal a new and better way forward for the Cooperative Bank. But to move forward now they must ignore the battering and negative comment from the media and create captivating narratives mined from their history and based on their true and original core values. As they take this latest hit, the…
The PR and marketing landscape has forever changed, thanks to the ever-present giant that is the internet – never was this more obvious than when I looked at my audience at the SearchLove conference, which consisted of a plethora of technophiles looking lovingly at their laptops. Interestingly enough, I was there to speak about PR…
If Facebook shares had audio to accompany the multitude of posts, the latest commentary surrounding Russell Brand on Newsnight would be littered with loud, smug and triumphantly-toned exclamations from people saying, “Yes! Finally, somebody is speaking the truth! Look at Jeremy; he’s being rendered almost speechless!” Fresh from his guest-editing spot on The New Statesman, Brand…
The marketing and exploitation of the female image as part of the fame trajectory – for good or for evil – has a very long tradition. I first encountered the detail of helpless blind-ambition of fame-hungry starlets, whilst researching my book the Fame Formula. The manipulative craft of the publicist can be detected in the…
Whether it’s the Adidas Olympics, the lazy brand leveraging notions, the mobile space, even the Costa Book Prize, over the last decade we’ve become used to the venues and events living in symbiosis with the corporate giants. Many of these relationships have been mutually beneficial, allowing for the growth and survival of one party, whilst…
If you’ve been anywhere near a newsfeed this week, you’ll have seen the clever “coffee shop surprise” viral ad for the remake of 70’s horror flick Carrie. The short video (it’s here if you’ve managed to miss it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlOxlSOr3_M) is set in a New York coffee shop, modified by some special effects pixies so that…
So the Mail/Miliband hoo ha drags on – as I write this an argument already played out a hundred times on twitter is being hashed out afresh on Question Time. I don’t want to contribute to either side of the moral debate, but I do want to make an observation. For once, the Mail, the…