“Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”  Wise words from John Gooden and not ones followed closely by many. Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears – over the last 10 years we’ve heard the sad cry of the poor celebrity seeking help after divorce, hard-partying, rehab trips, sex tape scandals, drink and drug meltdowns and more.  We can’t prepare for natural disasters of the the earth-shattering, world-ending kind. But smaller celebrity disasters, cataclysmic on a local scale, strike all the time. And yet each time they do, they never fail to take us by surprise….

Ever since it was announced that David Moyes would be stepping into the Manchester United hot seat last summer, the vultures have been circling around Old Trafford – and finally, it’s feeding time. Following a miserable ten months at the helm, the ex-Everton boss has this week been hung out to dry by his employers, who bowed to building pressure in the aftermath of a 2-0 loss to Moyes’ old club over Easter weekend. In truth, the new man was always going to find it difficult to follow in the footsteps of Sir Alex Ferguson – but even the most…

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 fourth wave feminist traffic with their “feminist builders” spot.  At the subtler end, there are rumours that US actor James Franco’s attempted liaison with a 17 year old may be part of an ingenious PR stunt . The smug hipsters who dream all this up probably…

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 countries and into its gaping maw. Our screens fill more and more with shots of wailing families, repeated footage of bemused politicians and, well, not very much else. This is the biggest breaking story of the year so far, and in some ways it’s easy…

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 livened up the political news agenda. Benn had an instinctive understanding of humanity – how to stir the heart and speak to the soul of all who encountered him. In the days following his passing, stories have emerged of his warmth and compassion and the…

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 sure – PR orthodoxy is now seriously in favour of them. Want to look cheeky and relatable? Snap a selfie. It’s not totally flawed, either. Ellen’s effort on Sunday night earned her 1.7m retweets in less than an hour – a new world record. Ever…

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 keep to social media guidelines including using brand hashtags. Why the inane babble was thought important, is another discussion. The first thing to say is that this is but a irritating itch, not a full blown brand ebola. Journalists may have ‘taken to Twitter’ to gloat…

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 World-esque green pipes. Keep going until you snuff it, then either stop or have a shot at beating your score. So far, so derivative. Flappy Birds is different because of its maddening difficulty level. A generation of gamers used to being spoonfed their points, coins…