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…
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…
“Dying is an art,” wrote Sylvia Plath, in her poem Lady Lazarus, and the very public final weeks of Jade Goody are reinforcing Plath’s point remarkably well. Jade Goody has moved on from the unthinking, mouthy persona that brought her to national attention with a sudden aplomb, becoming, in her need to make a better…
I received my old friend Julia Hobsbawn’s Editorial Intelligence report called The Power of The Commentariat. It features research which involved a self selecting small group of individuals from business, media, politics, public life, academia and a group set up by Editorial Intelligence on Facebook called Keep Up With The Commentariat to say who they…
I smell an ambitious new brand, hungry for attention – step forward FpsBrain. A number of blogs have noticed with a mix of amusement and depression that this brand will do anything to get noticed. Great stunts should never be seen and the slight of hand is crucial when trying to use this form of…
Cold Mud www.coldmud.com – the excellent site that links you to all you need to know about food posted Monsanto profit news this morning. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a1GHj4N2tLEI&refer=us – All very interesting. Some time ago, Coldmud reminded us that Monsanto invented Agent Orange, “herbicide and defoliant” used by the States Armed Forces in its Warfare programme during the “Vietnam War. Between 1963 and…
Ben Goldacre of the www.guardian.co.uk neatly summarises why irrelevant surveys – a tool used by countless lazy PR companies are a useless device. Read on… http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/sep/01/1 I wish we could cut out the virulent cancer of incompetent PR execs.
There is another row over the pharmaceutical industry and EU reforms, in today’s Guardian. With drug companies being faced with declining sales, they seem to be making headway with their plans to enlist the patients themselves, their greatest allies, in the struggle to make more money. After drug companies were given permission to advertise their…
This morning’s Guardian obit of Ian “Woolers” Wooldridge is a work of art; penned by none other than the other sport writing legend Frank Keating. http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2027343,00.html. His first paragraph is enchanting, “Ian Wooldridge, who has died aged 75, was an undisputed heavyweight champion of British sports writing. For his readers, with his perception, passion and…