Looking forward to kicking back for some good old fashioned guilty pleasure in front of Eurovision this Saturday? Not as much as the President of Azerbaijan. His eagerness to use the contest for international relations purposes has been evident since his just slightly hyperbolic description of his nation’s 2011 triumph as ‘a victory for the…
The eventual defeat of The Voice by the Cowell war machine- compounded by that too perfect final story about the crew watching BGT in the gallery- has far more to do with the BBC’s mentality than it does with the show. Once again, the beeb has shown itself to be something of a shrinking violet,…
“The Wettest Drought on Record”: so a dry wit in the back row of a client meeting recently described our current weather situation to me. It’s a spectacularly British situation to be in- a combination of monsoon-esque precipitation levels and poor local planning found nowhere other than Virgil’s ‘edge of the world’. The whole situation…
Earlier this week, I became fascinated as a journalist acquaintance of mine- Grace Dent- suffered a much publicised insult at the hands of a young PR executive with a too-happy twitter finger. The guy, in what we can only assume was a moment of alcohol-fuelled ill judgement, as well as somewhat startling boorishness, offered an…
A deep collective breath is perhaps needed. Pippa Middleton’s identification with firearms last weel, thanks to the somewhat incautious actions of friend Romain Rabillard, has led many to predict that her fledging career in the public eye is already over. Like her sister, runs the thinking, Middleton’s image relies on propriety- all 3 Middleton siblings…
It looks like Tupac Shakur’s back on top for the foreseeable future- it was announced today that his frankly rather terrifying hologram will be going on tour following its first outing at Coachella festival. More than anything else, this is proof of the remarkable power of a great stunt- and is a blow for the…
Back at the start of last week, wherever you turned in mediaworld you found someone sticking their oar in (sorry) to the discussion on wayward idealist Australian Trenton Oldfield and his Pankhurst-esque self-sacrificial boat race stunt. I shan’t bother now to throw in my two cents about the morality of Oldfield’s actions, but I do…
Allow me to begin, somewhat cautiously, with a disclaimer: I do not agree with many of the political or moral views of Tim Bell, the legendary ex-S&S lobbying supremo who has found himself continually in the spotlight since the emergence of the Bell Pottinger scandal last year. Without going too far into it, I have…
What a week for political communications. ‘Pastygate’ is a uniquely 21st century scandal which, regardless of what it reveals about the government’s relationship with the everyday person, certainly says a great deal about the effectiveness of its PR machine. At the same time, whilst Ed Miliband has arguably had a decent week for once, the…
However much we hate him, anyone even vaguely interested in the saccharine world of Saturday Night Telly needs to say a quick prayer at the altar of Simon Cowell. Whatever side you came down on, the whole BGT/The Voice battle proved that, as an individual and a brand, he drives the whole weekend entertainment market…