Birmingham Post - Business Blog

PR's new target audience is un-human

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:58:11 +0000

How do YOU decide what is and what isn't news?

A web media company I work with did some analysis recently on why articles had been rejected by Google News. Whereas just about anything can go on to the web search, Google vets sites before it will include them in the 'news' category. It then checks each article against a set of pre-determined criteria to decide if it's a genuine news article - we can't have bloggers masquerading as journalists now can we?

Furry dice are a pretty blunt instrument for fighting a recession

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:43:31 +0000

One hot summer when I was a two-packs a day office worker and visited the local M&S every lunchtime for my prawns and BLT rations, I was given a free gift of a branded cool bag to take my sandwiches back to my desk.

This same cool bag it turned out was even better for carrying a single home-made sandwich into work, so it helped me break the lunchtime habit, loose weight and save money.

M&S on the other hand have lost several hundred pounds in lost revenue. It was perhaps not their brightest marketing idea.

Times is hard when PR fluff gets frozen out by Icelandic banks

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:33:44 +0000

PR agencies are struggling to get media coverage for their clients at the moment.

So says the weekly trade title PRWeek.

Quoting top people within the profession it says agencies are finding it tough going because the global economic downturn continues to dominate the headlines.

One London agency was forced to delay a client launch (they don't say what for) because finance journalists were preoccupied with the collapse of Icelandic Banks.

Yeh, right. That's what media relations is all about.

Good morning, Nitenite and bye-bye

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 22:44:32 +0000

I suppose any company that routinely requires its staff to answer the phone by saying "good morning, nite nite" must have a fairly relaxed attitude to correct use of the English language.

But what might raise a wry smile on the phone, creates an angry customer when it is applied to advertising. Misuse of the language is no longer humorous, it is misleading.

When it is a Birmingham hotel that is upsetting visitors it not only loses them potential customers, it impacts on the image of the city too.

Winning hearts and minds through business support for schools? Not with this recipe.

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 23:16:20 +0000

Please excuse any typos in this blog posting. It may be because of margarine on my fingers or keyboard.

Collecting the 'cooking for schools' vouchers is a messy business.

I don't know whether its since my children have been of school age that I have noticed this more, or whether it has been a recent trend - but a growing number of companies seem to think the way to win our hearts and minds is to give things to local schools.

The online battle between Birmingham and Manchester. A no-score draw.

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:47:32 +0000

Actually, the northern team might just scrape through on penalties - but you be the ref.

I started this little bit of research because Gordon has brought his Cabinet to Birmingham today.

It should be excellent news. But how well placed is the city's PR machine to reap the benefit?

Given that ninety percent or more of journalists will start their research on the internet, I thought I'd check out the critical websites...

If Birmingham City Council is busy briefing the media about our great city on the back of the Cabinet meeting, it doesn't show on the web site. That's a great pity.

There is a sort of silver lining - in that our great northern rival doesn't fare much better.

A fat day in Birmingham

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 10:32:38 +0000

I was told we were having "a fat day" when we hit the tourist trail in Birmingham city centre at the weekend.

Not being a follower of any of the Australian soaps this was not a phrase I was familiar with - but the meaning of the ICC delegate who had travelled many thousands of miles to be here was absolutely clear: both he and our family were having a great day out.

As Birmingham continues to compete on the world stage for both tourism and business visitors, it's very useful (and sometimes rewarding) for us local PR people to see the 'product' through the eyes of others.

Our guests from Wales - including an ex-Brummie who had left around thirty years ago - were thoroughly impressed and even casting envious eyes on the canalside apartments. The city has so much to offer compared to their rural abode. Though personally I still prefer the beach near their Welsh home to the one in Chamberlain Square.

Our children loved the boat trip and had a great time at the Myths and Monsters exhibition. They were also fascinated by the motorbike displays in the ICC mall - which is where we met the friendly Australian business visitor.

Public it's not. The art of first impressions.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:41:08 +0000

You only get one chance to make a first impression. Or, in business terms, you can only launch once.

If it goes wrong, quite a bit of PR effort can be required to persuade dissatisfied customers to return.

Earlier this year we were advising a venue (not in the Midlands) of the merits of a 'soft' opening. There would be no fanfare, just a few invited guests and critical friends, a chance for the staff to iron out any unforeseen problems. This came back to me at the weekend when I was a customer at a new venue closer to home.

Having read Terry Grimley's preview of 'The Public' in the Birmingham Post, I took the kids along for the opening day. We arrived when West Bromwich's new gallery/venue was just an hour old.

Indiana Jones and the Search Engine of Revelation

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 13:03:09 +0000

A whip cracks in the darkness of an ancient tomb. Flickering torchlight casts the shadow of our fedora-clad hero as he stoops in the gloom, his hand sweeping away ten thousand years of grime from a forgotten relic. As the dust falls away an ancient clue is gradually revealed and the secrets of a long-dead civilisation come slowly into focus.

Like practically every 20-something bloke I know, I've been swept up in Indiana Jones fever, eagerly anticipating last month's release of Indy 4 by reliving all of those backyard fantasies of fighting Nazis, dodging fiendish booby traps and snatching priceless relics from highly improbable places.

Whether watching an ageing Dr. Jones creak his way through two hours of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo was actually worth the 19 year wait is a matter for debate, but the recent tidal wave of Indy mania got me pondering our own place in the annals of recorded history.

And I came to the conclusion that we're a future anthropologist's dream come true.

The weighty issue of the recycling business

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:35:36 +0000

To help us save the planet, what we need is lots of really heavy rubbish.

Go on. Start throwing it in the recycling bin. The more it weighs, the better.

That's nonsense of course - so why do we give our local councils recycling targets measured by the tonnes of waste collected?

As part of it's recent Climate Change Festival, Birmingham City Council challenged all residents "to increase the amount of waste they recycle over the coming months by at least 20 kg per person."

I was discussing the issue with someone who knows the waste management industry pretty thoroughly (someone who journalists writing about fortnightly bin collections would call 'an industry insider').

Sex, Lies and Video Games

Thu, 22 May 2008 23:19:09 +0000

Whilst browsing the web the other day I happened across a fairly innocuous-looking story that, at first glance, seemed nothing more than one of those "strange but true" tales that you mentally file away to impress your mates with down the pub after work.

However, something about it set a few alarm bells ringing for me and, on further inspection, this throwaway story turned out to be a nugget of pure viral marketing gold.

It also prised open a family-sized can of worms in my hardened TV researcher's brain and set them wriggling in the part of my cranium that exists to remind me that the web can also be a truth-hunters worst nightmare.

The story concerned Ralph Hardy, a 13 year old kid in Texas who had been arrested after he swiped his dad's credit card and embarked on an epic $30,000 spending spree. This misadventure wound up with him and his mates holed up in a hotel room with a pile of junk food, a brand new Xbox and two nubile $1000-a-night prostitutes procured from the local whorehouse. It also landed Ralph in the arms of the law when the hotel room was raided by the local Texan constabulary after being tipped off by a delivery guy who'd supplied the boys with snacks.

Apparently our young hero claimed he was funding this escapade through the winnings of a World of Warcraft video games contest and, when the high-class call girls questioned his age, he convinced them that he and his friends were in fact "people of restricted growth" who worked for a travelling circus. Even better he went as far to inform them that, if they refused his custom, they would be in direct violation of the state's disability discrimination laws. Only when the boys seemed more interested in playing Halo than getting to grips with their "hired help" did the penny finally drop.

In a strange twist of narrative the poor, misinformed sex workers were released without charge whilst young Ralph was slapped with a three year community order for fraud, presumably ruing the day he figured out his dad's pin number.

Unsurprisingly the story turned out to be complete hogwash. It was later revealed to be the result of a viral marketing experiment by Cornish social media marketer Lyndon Antcliff (aka Lyndoman) who unleashed the story on popular finance site Money.co.uk.

Lyndoman deliberately laced his Munchaussen-esque tale with every conceivable narrative trigger point needed to ensure its viral success.

What's in a name? (or welcome to the Kings Heath International School Fete)

Thu, 22 May 2008 12:58:53 +0000

All of us doing business in Birmingham are tied up, whether we like it or not, with the reputation of the city. We help create it and we are measured by it.

Your address is a part of your company image. That's presumably why big corporates like tall buildings (and why helicopter shots of Canary Wharf feature in the title sequence of 'The Apprentice' even though Sir Alan Sugar's office is miles away in Brentwood.

Or it's why traditional craft industries like to use pictures of country cottages and rural workshops in their literature.

Boing Boing... Eh? Where's the celebration then?

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:04:35 +0000

I still can't quite believe that the Baggies have won promotion by ending up as Champions, whilst also reaching the semi-finals of the FA Cup where 'we' (you can see I'm a Baggies fan) put in a very creditable performance.

In fact, we haven't won anything for ages, and the chance for an open-top civic victory parade and party to celebrate our dizzying heights seemed a no-brainer. Well not to the PR chiefs down the Hawthorns who thought it was all too much hassle.

Being a Baggies fan, even a fairly lazy one like me who only makes a handful of matches a year, isn't exactly fun for much of the time. You're either biting your nails hoping to make promotion or the play-offs, or biting your nails hoping to avoid the drop.

Such is the reality of yo-yo football. Of course, it's all hugely exciting, but like others I do crave the boredom of mid-table mediocrity and safety. Until that happens it would make sense to celebrate our victories as they don't come around too often (my dad was still talking about that 68 Cup Final well into the 90s).

What's the point of a special offer?

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:24:00 +0000

How do you feel if you get a free gift of an electronic gadget, but then have to buy the batteries to make it work?

Do you remember the story of a radio station offering a free trip to watch the Champions League final in Athens? A winner was all ready to soak up the atmosphere in the Greek capital, only to find out he'd actually won the chance to watch the game on TV at a restaurant called Athens.

It was supposed to be a joke, they said. But Ofcom didn't find it that funny (they actually described it as a "serious breech") and so the result was a publicity stunt that generated bad publicity.

The following is another tale of a special offer that wasn't all it was cracked up to be. The amount at stake is only a few pounds, but the value of the lost goodwill to the business is, I would suggest, considerably more.

Let's get lost - harnessing creativity through experimental web exploration

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:27:21 +0000

Sometimes the longer you spend in a creative job, the harder it becomes to actually keep on innovating. Over time, you find that your ideas are just becoming rehashed versions of things that have been done before or that you've become so entrenched in your day-to-day routines that you just can't remember how to think outside the box any more.

What's more, because everyone in your industry is most likely reading the same magazines as you, browsing the same Sunday papers, watching the same TV shows, and exploring the same websites, chances are that even when something does spark off an original idea, a dozen other people have just seen the same thing and are now beavering away on projects pretty damn near identical to yours.

So what the hell do you do about it? Jack it all in and work in a factory? Cryogenically freeze yourself until a time when your hackneyed ideas suddenly seem ironically retro? Bury your head in the sand and try to ignore the whimpered cries of your inner muse as it slowly shrivels up and dies?

No. Just get yourself lost.