I’m still recovering from a sold out Hay Festival appearance and the blazing sun. I’d forgotten how wonderful the Festival can be when the weather’s good! The discussion, Hype and Glory, with the Guardian’s Marina Hyde and our excellent chair, Paul Blezard, was wide ranging and got an excellent response from the audience. Marina wanted…
Neal’s Yard have committed a grave PR error by backing out of the Guardian’s You Ask They Answer debate on homeopathic treatments and going into hiding. Twitter has been in a twirl about it all morning. In an age when there is a need for transparency in all things, Neal’s Yard have to fight to…
What do ex-pop star Dane Bowers and the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, have in common? They’re both publicity predators, prowling at the fringes of big news and ready to leap in and attach their teeth into the rump of a story that will get them attention. Griffin is all over the news at the moment,…
We asked a panel of experts how they would solve Parliament’s problems If you were to pick out one MP’s claim as highlighting the worst excess, which would it be and why? Sir Peter Viggers and his duck house. It’s not the amount of money that causes concern, but the underlying cast of mind. There…
Day fifteen of the Telegraph’s ongoing revelations about MP’s expenses rumbles into view with no end in sight and I’ve just recorded a piece for the Trevor Macdonald show on the affair – another in a long list of opinions given to the media. It may seem easy for a PR pundit to hand out…
The scandal surrounding MPs expenses has angered the voting public. So how can confidence in Parliament be restored? Here, we asked advertising gurus, branding experts and cool-headed commentators for tips on how MPs can pick up the pieces. Max Clifford, publicist “I have never known a time when the public are so utterly disgusted by…
The frenzy of moviedom and publicity that is the Cannes Film Festival is upon us again. Publicity stunts play an enormous part in the festival, however much the BBC’s Victoria Lindrea may protest that this year “really is all about the films“. Certainly there’s a great selection of serious filmmakers showing at this year’s festival,…
I was asked by the Guardian to comment on the new trend in contrite adverts, from the Marks & Sparks ‘We Boobed’ campaign to the Evening Standard’s resetting of standards adverts. “Over the years the public have become sick and tired of being ripped off and misled and as a result we are now in…
I was asked to comment in a dissection of the Susan Boyle phenomenon by Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post a couple of weeks ago – here’s the video…
Global media flocked to the island Some stories are as much about public relations as they are news. This week marked the culmination of one of the greatest examples, which has left the PR industry gasping in admiration, says Ian Hall. In a blaze of publicity, more than a thousand media organisations around the world…