Put Simply

Over the past couple of days I have been struck by the use of words in two items I read which made me wonder if PRs have a different language to everyone else.

The first was in an, albeit old, copy of PR Week where on the front page they had a story which declared that its own research showed that a certain coffee chain was “being deserted by a significant minority of consumers”. What is a ‘significant minority? The phrase tells us nothing.  A ‘significant minority’ could be 49 per cent or a mere 10 per cent.  (Further into the article you found it was actually 16 per cent of 62 per cent of the 1567 respondees – 155 to you and me.) It is a meaningless phrase of the sort PRs often fall into using trying to get something catchy out of non-news.

The second was the email tagline for a release from Sunderland Council which stated that ”Sunderland Council use digital safes to tackle crime”.  My immediate thought was that most people would use a policeman or security officers to do the job. I had visions of safes running around Sunderland saying, “stop or I’ll trap you inside.”

I know how difficult it is to find the right tagline and how often we are clutching at straws to make it interesting but I think PRs need to look at what they are saying and think how others would read it.

Mind blowing? “To find something new, and yet so fundamental, in the mature field of electrical engineering is a big surprise, and has significant implications for the future of computer science,” Dr R Stanley Williams, lead researcher HP Labs.

So HP Labs claim to have built a once-theoretical basic component for electrical engineering the memristor to retain an amount of electrical charge which flows through it. The concept came about in 1971 from a University of California researcher who said that the memristor was the missing companion to the resistor, capacitor and inductor devices we know and love.

HP sees the memristor eventually replacing conventional DRAM chips, allowing system memory to retain data after being shut down and virtually eliminating the concept of a booting process when the machine is turned on.
And because it can ratain more than just a logical 1-0 state the technology could even change the way computers function, eventually mimicking the human brain. Such machines could learn from previous experience and retain information for future use in associating events and recognising patterns – like a neural network but much much faster and simpler.

Also the quick start mobile phone, game or PDA may at last be a possibility thank goodness.  I thought this correspondent had an interesting take.

I never thought I would see the day when PR and Pensions were lumped together as the baddies, and dumping them listed as a good way to save money.

Apparently the Tax Payers Alliance believes that these are the two evils that local councils should shed to save the taxpayer money. Matthew Elliot of the Alliance states that, “On average, councils now spend £1m on publicity, paying through the nose to put glossy leaflets that hardly anyone reads through front doors across the land.”  Just shows how much he knows about PR – that is marketing and many leaflets that are put out are a requirement by the government to inform council tax payers of options available to them.

Why is it when things are tough the first item on the agenda to be cut is PR? I think this is very short sighted as surely when things get difficult you need all the PR you can get. A good campaign that addresses issues can be worth its weight in gold in times of trouble.

Well, not us but our access to the internet by 2010 if the doom and gloom merchants are to be believed. We’ll be on a road to nowhere.

It would appear that whilst providers of content are working hard to make the public’s use of the internet a full-on experience and a one-stop-shop for all our needs - think iPlayer, MP3 downloads etc - the actual infrastructure upon which this is being built is decidedly shaky. GB does not have the broadband capability to match the ever-growing demand and when we all change to IPTV - well, don’t even go there.

The suggestion is that fibre to the home would be the answer but that would be a costly exercise and who would foot the bill?

This conjures up an interesting vision of a sudden reversal to life without the Internet. Where would we all be? No on-line shopping, no instant answers to questions, having to post letters and press releases (having to print them off too - not very green), the list is endless.

I am sure it will never come to that but it once again it is a case of “seemed like a good idea at the time” with anyone realising where it could all lead.

In my blog post at the end of last month I gave BA’s director of operations Gareth Kirkwood a slating over his performance in front of the TV cameras during the debacle at Heathrow T5.  I think I might owe him an apology, especially as the poor chap lost his job yesterday, think it’s safe to say that wasn’t on account of my comments though.

This past weekend I experienced the glare of the media spotlight for myself when five friends and I were interviewed by a Sky Sports TV crew outside Gloucester’s Kingsholm stadium before the televised Guiness Premiership rugby game against Saracens… and boy were we rubbish.

The subject of the interview - why the hell all of us were dressed as Elvis Presley (stag do in case you were wondering) and what we thought of Gloucester’s chances of winning the game - hardly the same as poor old Gareth who had to defend the fact that his all singing all dancing airport terminal was collapsing around his ears.

Now I along with two of the five friends work in PR and are well versed on media training theory like the ‘ABC of interviewing’:
- Answer the question
- Bridge to the key message
- Communicate using your soundbite

Nevertheless all our experience went out of the window under severe pressure (I still blame the hangover though) and we broke the golden rules of television interviews, namely:

1. Dress is  important. Avoid checks, stripes and small patterns as these are distorted by television pictures and stick to simple, clean cut, dark suits. Don’t let your attire distract the viewers attention away from what you are saying.
NOBODY WILL TAKE YOU SERIOUSLY DRESSED AS ELVIS

2. If possible, discretely display a company logo either in the background or on a tie pin.
EML I’M SORRY

3. Be relaxed and answer in full sentences
OUR BEWILDERED YES/NO ANSWERS WERE NOT ACCEPTABLE

I did manage to pass rule number four though - “avoid fidgeting as this will annoy the cameraman who will have to keep reframing his shot” - I froze like a rabbit in the headlights.

Needless to say the interview didn’t see the light of day and my quest for a career as a sports pundit remains a pipe dream.

So it hit the news today that Yahoo is considering a strategic alliance with AOL in order to keep the wolf from the door, following Microsoft’s much-publicised takeover bid. At the same time, Yahoo is considering channelling the lucrative advertising system of its competitor Google (itself a shareholder in AOL) in an effort to generate revenues.

Michael Holland of New York Investment fund Holland & Co. said, rather uncharitably, “The AOL-Yahoo thing reminds me of two men drowning, both grabbing on to each other”. [Guardian 11.04.08, p26]. The consensus over Yahoo seems to be that these are the acts of a company in dire straits. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7340095.stm]

More interesting, I thought, and more broadly relevant to the search space, was the story that hit the press on Monday (07.11.08). A European Commission advisory body has issued a warning to search engines concerning the lengthy periods for which they retain users data. By analysing the websites you visit, search engines can build up a staggerringly comprehensive picture of our likes, dislikes and personality types. Yahoo is one of the better search engines in this regard, retaining its users’ data for only 13 months, compared to Google’s 18. However, whether used for marketing purposes, or purely for internal development, I suspect most people remain unaware that their data is used in this way.

Without naming any names, one of the elements of PR work we do is in the open source enterprise search space. One of the things such companies are understandably passionate about is the transparency of their software: anyone can see how they work and what they’re doing. Yahoo, Google and MSN search are ‘closed books’ to the outside world in terms of their intellectual property. Many would argue that we can only know as much about a search engine’s privacy policies as they are willing, or are forced, to tell us.

These high-profile data-gathering systems, facebook included, are a cause of mounting concern amongst net users. Following the recent PR disaster connected to the ‘Phorm’ advertising system, which was decreed to gather user information in a way that was genuinely illegal, you’d think that Yahoo would manage its PR extremely carefully regarding their ‘experiment’ with the Google advertising system. But with all eyes on the share price, Yahoo are, I suspect, keen to play down this partnership. Perhaps it’s time these companies threw open the doors to show, if only to a regulatory body, exactly how their market-information software works.

A short and sweet one from me this time. Just an observation that our beloved press have done a great PR job on the economy. Apparently, we are not facing a “recession”, it’s just a “credit crunch” (mmm, like crisps). Phew! Well, that’s OK then. Drinks are on me! (I’m the crazy man in the hat).

Short post from me this week but I had to flag this amusing story on the BBC website. Apparently The Simpsons has been dropped from morning TV in Venezuela after being deemed unsuitable for children - and, here’s the best bit, it has been replaced by Baywatch.

I think it’s fair to say that neither programme will find its way on to CBeebies any time soon but what was The Simpsons’ crime? Apparently portraying “messages that go against the whole education of boys, girls and adolescents”. On that basis, I can only imagine what they must make of South Park.

I don’t remember much about the plot of Baywatch from my young teenage days (was there even one?) but surely a show staring a host of Playboy models, illicit adult home movie stars and people who’ve gone on to become drug addicts or alcoholics doesn’t give children the greatest role models.

Venezuelan TV is an odd beast - one of the most popular programmes is a talk show hosted by the country’s president, Hugo Chavez. In a bumper episode last year he gave a speech which reportedly lasted eight hours. And we thought the Queen’s speech was a bit dull!

Perhaps Matt Groening should get the PR bandwagon going in Venezuela to salvage his reputation. He could invite Mr Chavez to join the long list of Simpsons celebrity cameos. Although he’ll have his work cut out if “The Hoff” is as big in Venezuela as he is in Germany.

Has anyone else noticed that there seem to be an unusually high number of really bad adverts on TV at the minute? My current pet hate is the new Citroen C5 advert. Apparently, the car (not the ad) is “unmistakably German”. I’m not sure how the car is German – perhaps if they drove through Rome it would be “unmistakably Italian”? And what’s that got to do with it being made in France or not? I’m confused.

Is there a strange group of people out there that this advert appeals to? OK so perhaps I don’t “get it” because, being a 28 year old female (shhh, my birthday isn’t until the weekend), neither the car nor the advert is aimed at me. It seems I’m not alone though. Even the car enthusiasts don’t buy into the car adds if this fellow blogger is any kind of example: Link

However the kind of advert that is aimed at my demographic also puts me off the products, including, for example, the “Live Academy” - hair dye that is used by women “who need help” – psychological help? Or the new Teletext Holidays advert which seems to be advocating leaving your pets on their own when you go on your holidays.

And… while I’m on the subject, what kind of weird planning is going on when an advert for the release of Disney’s “Enchanted” on DVD appears in a break in the film about everyone’s favourite fictional serial cannibal, Hannibal. Who is that aimed at?

I admit I’m biased. I’m not a fan of advertising in general. Being a “PR Girl” it’s always more difficult to prove the value of what we do as we don’t get that guaranteed result, but (in my opinion) we do offer better value. The main reason is that we don’t mess about trying to be cool and expect our audience to dig through 100 layers of nonsense to work out what kind of message we’re trying to deliver. We tend to stick to a (hopefully subtle) point – “Our client does X. It’s useful/appealing to you because Y”.

Oh dear. The car advert is back on again now. What utter rubbish. Perhaps they’re trying to distract us from the fact that it’s an ugly car?

And it was a daydream if anyone really believed that the Olympic Torch Procession would get around the world without encountering demonstrations given the current activity in Tibet.

But it was a ‘dammed if you do and dammed if you don’t’ PR situation wasn’t it?

The whole point of the Torch Procession is to raise the profile of the Olympics and bring out the crowds.  The trouble is, in the West if you want a crowd you have to take what comes and in the UK we are more Flashmob than Rentacrowd.

It could have been a PR disaster. With the snow and cold wind nobody might have turned up to see Paula, Sir Steve, Dames Kelly and Ellen et al do their bit. At least the streets were lined with people rather than empty, even if they were the ‘wrong’ people.

We PRs know that you have to be grateful if anybody turns-up to an event and it certainly generated publicity.