As BP’s reputation slips further down the plughole, its PR strategy is beginning to look like an envelope without an address on it. The comms department believe big emotions come from big statistics. Lazy damage limitation tactics are fuelling the storm – they should be pouring oil on troubled waters metaphorically rather than allowing it…
There’s growing concern, and a fair amount of hand wringing, about alcohol advertising and the possibility of banning it. It looks like the glory days of inventive, witty and satirical booze advertising may be over for good. This would be very, very sad. Ban them and yes, you’ll get column inches. Keep them and you’ll…
The confidence and utter belief in the State of Israel the Israeli government have displayed, as they justify their violent attack on the ships attempting to bring aid to Gaza, is breathtaking. Both factions in any war tend towards insanity of some sort, but Israel organise theirs with terrifying rigour. They have an enormous number…
New media commentators have decreed that the age of the personal PR minder is dead. “Long live Twitter” is their clarion call. It’s the new communication tool for folk in the public eye. Openness and willingness to feed the twitter cycle offers an opportunity to unveil the ‘real you’; to be judged as well as…
So Sarah Ferguson has been turned over by the News of the World this morning? Reading the front page, it was as much as I could do not to yawn. Yet another sorry tale of money grubbing in Banana Republic GB. The cash for access sting is unsurprising; it indicates that some people close to…
Clegg and Cameron are making a surprisingly good fist of unity thanks to the brand new and shiny PR machines behind the scenes, not to mention the PR machine that is Cleggameron. It’s working so well that even Rory Bremner admits to being unsure about how to satirise them. I can’t help but feel a…
Looking carefully at the one-eyed Manga nightmares that are the 2012 Olympic mascots, I have been wondering at the designers’ thinking – and not as negatively as you might suspect. I think there may be a classicist at work behind these Cyclopses. According to Hesiod, the Cyclopses were strong, stubborn giants who were “abrupt of…
Top PR marks to Gary Lineker for withdrawing from writing his column for the Mail on Sunday in protest over their handling of the Lord Triesman story. Lineker has done the right thing by distancing himself as effectively as possible from the Mail on Sunday’s stance – even though they have offered him the opportunity…
The London Olympics committee launch the 2012 Olympic mascot tonight on the One Show and everyone with an interest in design is hoping that it’s not a dog’s breakfast, like the logo, which looks, most unfortunately, like an abstracted version of a Simpsons porn cartoon as drawn by a committee, all of whom were wearing…
There’s quite an outpouring of anger in the wake of Melissa Jacobs’ kiss and tell on Lord Triesman – some of it is even being directed at Max Clifford, who is attempting to sail over the affair with the caveat that he was only doing his job. It’s worth bearing in mind that, had this…