PR In A Jar

Sportsgear for community project needed

Alison Short — 2008-10-09T11:04:08+01:00

Account Manager Alison Short says: My pro bono client RAPAR is setting up a sport in the community project for youngsters in Longsight and Levenshulme. The project is designed to teach sports skills to children from different cultural backgrounds aged 7-16 with a view to providing them with the skills, ability and confidence to compete in local clubs and leagues. RAPAR has been given some money from the nice people at Manchester City Council to get the project off the ground but we are looking to help them with sponsorship and of course great PR. If anyone out there has a contact with a trainer company, we need 30 pairs for free (or subsidised) and t-shirts. We also need assistance with coaching and venues in Levenshulme or Longsight so please spread the word and come back to alison@smithandsmithpr.co.uk with any suggestions. Naturally any nice corporates that help with this will get mentions in the associated PR and can come along and take part. Looking forward to hearing from you! RAPAR is always looking for volunteers and donations so if you are interested in getting involved with a fantastic and very interesting set of people, plesae contact RAPAR on 0161 834 8221 or go to www.rapar.org for more information.

The 'Checking You've Received It' Ring-Around: or, How to Lose Journalists and Infuriate People

Jane Smith — 2008-10-06T10:52:59+01:00

The weekly 'Editor's Desk' slot in PR Week, where editors do a Q&A on how PRs can best deal with them, very often features a pet PR hate which seems to really rile editors, and understandably so.

In the current issue, it's the turn of Sainsbury's Magazine editor Sue Robinson, and the gripe is a common one: "PRs ringing to see if I've received a press release."

"It's a waste of time," says Robinson, who also complains that many PRs aren't even aware of her magazine's lead times.

Surely the content of a decent press release should be good enough to speak for itself - and in this day and age, e-mailed releases can be safely assumed to have arrived. Why waste journalists' time with these daft calls? I don't see what these sorts of calls can really achieve.

I think it comes back to a training issue again. It makes me really wonder about (i) the quality of the press releases being written, in terms of both content (for relevance and interest) and style (for useability / pasteability), but also (ii) how targeted the distribution lists are in the first place.

I've lost count of the times journalist friends have complained that PR people do this ridiculous calling-around, and especially younger staff in agencies. It's a disservice to the youngsters if they're being taught to annoy journalists ... or being left to their own devices - in other words, not being trained properly.

Shhh! ... Chatham House Rules

Jane Smith — 2008-09-22T13:54:08+01:00

Went to a business breakfast this morning organized as a fringe event to the Labour Party conference in Manchester. All well and good, except that despite the main speaker being a Whitehall lynchpin (and therefore hardly likely to say anything controversial to a business audience), it was 'Chatham House rules'.

I've blogged before about the uses and benefits of Chatham House rules. The concept certainly has its place. And in the case of today's breakfast, I suppose the main benefit was to promote a 'frank and free discussion' where businesspeople present could ask whatever questions they wanted and the speaker would be able to answer how he or she wanted.

In theory, any of us - businesspeople or not - can pose questions to the Government via our MPs or indeed through direct correspondence and any number of lobbying groups and issue-based organizations. And in the case of economic policy, one would hope that Governments have plenty of access to business people (from sole traders through to blue-chip directors) on an ongoing basis and in various formats. So I do wonder why these gatherings really have to be CHR. For one thing, it means we can't blog about it properly!

Lehman's, PR and Internal Comms

Jane Smith — 2008-09-19T09:47:36+01:00

Today's PR Week ruminates on the Lehman Brothers story, and how poor internal communications won't have helped matters for the bank.

As Lehmans had recruited former Financial Times editor (and Gowers Review of IP author) Andrew Gowers, no less, they surely had media expertise on board.

But sources have apparently told PR Week that senior communicators had been excluded from high-level discussions at the firm and that the US side had been poor at seeing the value of key PR staff.

I have to disagree somewhat with one statement from a Lehman's 'insider' though, who's quoted as saying that management errors and serious company problems can't really be smoothed over. From what we've seen in the media the past few days, basic internal comms procedures, which should include exiting strategies in case of bankruptcy or redundancies, aren't in place or aren't being implemented.

PR can't do that much for a company when it goes bust; but more effective endings can certainly be achieved even with a skeleton communications team. Every demise has opportunities, if only for learning and the sharing of learnings, and Lehman's would do well to salvage what they can with the PR staff they have left.

Mr Brown Gives Up Smiling as Part of PR Campaign

Jane Smith — 2008-09-16T13:41:10+01:00

An interesting article by PR Week editor Danny Rogers in yesterday's Guardian discussed Gordon Brown's media team and PR tactics.

"Wearing brighter ties and trying to smile more proved a waste of time," says Rogers, alluding to the recent and less-than-successful campaign to make the Prime Minister seem more likeable.

It did seem ill advised to try to make GB a beaming cheermonger ... and I'm sure a lot of people were wondering why we'd necessarily want a grinning japester of a leader anyway.

He also says some people within Brown's office are hoping the public will quite simply get fed up with the message that the Government is doomed. I think that's a fair point - the media should never underestimate the public's capacity for political boredom.

Thanks to Craig McGinty for passing over the article!

Emory Douglas Exhibition at Urbis from October

Jane Smith — 2008-09-15T15:42:27+01:00

Exciting new exhibition coming up at the excellent Urbis in Manchester city centre, focussing on Black Panthers graphic artist and self-styled Panthers 'Minister of Culture' Emory Douglas.

Douglas's powerful images were revolutionary in more ways than one, and I'll be really interested to see how far the exhibition goes in making the link between the Black Panthers' media savvy, especially in terms of images and icons, and its legacy today.

Discussions about black consciousness aside, the Panthers were really instrumental in changing the face of political PR, and many organizations since - both inside and outside politics - have owed them a great debt.

The exhibition runs from 31 October into April 2009.

Surviving Crises: Focus on What can be Controlled

Jane Smith — 2008-09-09T12:00:37+01:00

The current issue of Management Today condenses some advice that would stand anyone in good stead during PR crises.

Condensing advice from the Time Warner book The Mind Gym: Give Me Time, the piece 'Holding Onto Hope' advises that managers shouldn't deny the severity of given situations, but at the same time they need to focus on which elements can be controlled, and work out how to best control events to ensure the most positive outcome: "Ask yourself: What can I hope for?"

Good advice from a PR point of view as well as from a general management viewpoint.

Publicist Digs Dirt on Former Client

Jane Smith — 2008-09-08T13:56:52+01:00

Oh dear ... awful piece in today's Daily Mail with Heather Mills's former PR Michele Elyzabeth spilling the beans on how dreadful her client was, and how as her publicist she was forced to lie on behalf of Heather.

The piece is awful for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it's an unnecessary dissection of a broken-down relationship, once again gnawing at the bones of other people's private lives. The newspapers do enough of that without publicists wading in with more.

Secondly, and more pertinently for our industry, it's a so-called PR practitioner dishing the dirt on a client from whom she once presumably made a very good living. I've just had a look at Michele Elyzabeth's blog (... last updated Dec 2007, which tells you something) - incredible. And her official website still has photos of her and Heather when they were bezzie mates, as well as a video clip of Heather 'sharing vegan tips'.

Perhaps Heather forgot to write into the publicity contract a bit of small print about client confidentiality during and beyond the campaign. And perhaps Michele conveniently fogets she's fallen out with Heather when trying to attract new celebrity clients on her website. But in any case, it's just not on. In the same way that lawyers and accountants shouldn't slag off their former clients in public, neither should be PR practitioners. We've long been banging the drum to be recognised as professionals, and as such most of us wouldn't dream of doing this sort of public laundry-airing.

The worrying thing is, some people will be reading today's Mail and assuming that this is what PR people and publicists generally do. We don't ... and we need to be more vocal about people who drag our profession into the mud.

'Dotcom Dinosaurs'

Jane Smith — 2008-09-04T13:19:05+01:00

In the current issue of Director magazine, Martha Lane Fox complains about the way she was introduced at an event recently, which reflected how the web has moved forward.

"Dotcom dinosaur" isn't the way most of us would like to be introduced, but it shows just how fast things have developed in the years since we first heard the word Internet.

Martha Lane Fox will be speaking at the IoD's Women as Leaders conference on 2 October.

Talking of dinosaurs, the other night we caught a bit of a Jurassic Park showing on TV and it was amazing how dated it looked in terms of sets, costume design and technics. When we looked up what year the film came out it was 1993 - yes, before I'd heard of the Internet.

Smith & Smith Five-A-Side Football Team Kicks Off

Jane Smith — 2008-08-22T10:22:44+01:00

By Smith & Smith account manager Alison Short

We had fun recently when we decided to have a go at five-aside football at the Powerleague in Ardwick (much to the amusement of a number of male onlookers from the local hostel).

After months of deliberation at Smith & Smith PR as to what sport to try as a team (including the usual netball, hockey and lama trekking), five-a-side football was chosen. Apart from the odd injury here and there (broken collar bones and arms), at any one time there should be around five of us available to play against other PRs in friendly matches!

We're going to train for a couple of months to see how we get on (thanks to Harry, Nathan’s dad) and then look to play seriously.

Our friends at Footie Chick found out about our efforts and got us rigged up with a very smart tailored black-and-red kit with our logo on it, so now all we need is some spare time and a sunny day.

Our other good friend James Russell popped down to snap us in action for our hall of fame - a big thanks to James for helping us out. When we’re playing in the England ladies squad, we’ll remember you.

We had a great time actually and really got into the swing of it once we’d stopped laughing and missing the ball. PRs and other organizations, please drop me a line if you'd like to play against us - alison@smithandsmithpr.co.uk.