The comms industry’s insatiable hunger for hoax marketing shows no signs of slowing. In recent weeks, we’ve seen a slew of online campaigns that seek to piggyback shareable trends while downplaying or totally hiding the brands they were made to promote. At the more mainstream end of the spectrum, Snickers tried to soak up some…
It’s a good job wreckage has been found off the coast of Australia, because if the search for missing flight MH370 goes on much longer the world won’t actually have any journalists left. Malaysia has acted like a kind of media black hole, sucking more and more of the world’s journalists away from their home…
Last week, the British Left mourned as it bid farewell to two of its leading lights – old Labour icon Tony Benn and legendary union leader Bob Crow. Both men will be sorely missed, too, by headline writers and casual observers of political theatre. Each was a stunning PR operator who made the weather and…
If you were a conspiracy theorist the “selfie” would be starting to look like a pretty blatant illuminati signal. Last year we had three world leaders taking one, and now Ellen DeGeneres has pulled stars of the silver screen into the world’s most retweeted tweet. What purpose do these smartphone shots serve? One thing’s for…
It took the urban dictionary to sum up the true definition of passion. It says: “Passion is when you put more energy into something than is required to do it. It is more than just enthusiasm or excitement, passion is ambition that is materialised into action to put as much heart, mind, body and soul…
Last Wednesday, the cuddly, credit card provider Mastercard ran into an alleged PR fail storm when their PR agency mishandled and misjudged a bevy of journalists they were inviting to the Brit awards. Scribblers claim that, in exchange for entry to the event, they were asked by email to guarantee coverage, and were requested to…
It’s now been a week since Flappy Birds, the infuriating iOS game, was taken down from the app store, and I’m still waiting to find out what it was a stunt for. For those unfamiliar, the game requires users to navigate a yellow, beaked blob with an insipid expression past a series of Super Mario…
Hats off to Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho – a true media operator. Where rivals babble incoherently about “games of two halves” or, at best, indulge in bland 1970s-style trash talk, Mourinho understands that the battles played out in the media can be just as important as those won or lost on the pitch. After he…
The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince is on our fair shores at the moment, reminding me of what a roller coaster it was to work with him 15 years ago. His set on Tuesday night at the Electric Ballroom in Camden may have seen only 1,000 fans in the comparatively…
So Scarlett Johansson has parted ways with Oxfam. The actress, who has served as an ambassador for the humanitarian group for eight years, quit yesterday over a “fundamental difference of opinion” (read: PR disaster waiting to happen). Johansson has recently signed as brand ambassador for the drinks-fizzinator (possibly not a real word) manufacturer Sodastream. It…