News? What news?

From Tom Chivers' (Telegraph journalist) twitter feed: "PR email: 'Opportunity to film and photograph model and eco champion Donna Air, modelling a dress made entirely of sheep’s wool insulation'. You don't get that sort of opportunity everyday". Hardly newsworthy, eh? But look out for it over the next week or so...

Can you see the future?

Yes, you can do better than looking at an IKEA light rigged up to look like a crystal ball, like this lass here, when looking into the future... As a PR professional, your ability to predict the next trend, the next smash hit, the next big news, is key to your success for 2 reasons:
1) people won't read old news - you have to be cutting edge,
2) new ideas spark creativity - a new idea with your tired old product may create something extraordinary.
Here are some useful sources for trend spotting: trendwatching.com, TrendHunter magazine, YouTube trends blog, Mintel (including this consumer trends article), Euromonitor, Office for National Statistics (UK government) e.g. this report on household spend, and watch the newspapers and magazines too - here's a repeat of a Trendwatching.com article in the Independent...

Blackberry in a PR jam

As Blackberry users continue to experience email and internet outages, leaving them with 'essentially, a phone attached to a tiny typewriter' (thanks, Tom Chivers of the Daily Telegraph) we have a great example of crisis management, or not, as in this case. Chivers has also penned this excellent blog entry about the failure of Blackberry's PR in the face of crisis, comparing the company's response to that of Apple: "it's hard to imagine a crisis like this enveloping Apple, but if it did, you'd expect round-the-clock crisis management, constant, helpfully communication and swift resolution". Interestingly - Apple's handling of the iPhone 4 antenna gate story was neither helpful nor swift. How we forget...

'OMG. Someone dissed the Bloggess. The fallout? Spec-tac-u-lar'

The Bloggess is a blogger extraordinaire who frequently comments on PR 'professionals' and their profligate use of bribes, pointless press releases and offers of coupons to encourage her to promote their wares. So although her reply to a grammatically and aesthetically disturbing email about the "Kardashian's (sic)' and 'pantyhose' was both witty and biting, she didn't expect to be copied in on an unwisely 'reply-all'ed email calling her a 'fucking bitch' (sorry for the language but that's a direct quote from a vice-president of a PR firm).
Cue uproar across the blogosphere and amongst the twitterati: not only had Erica (presumably an account exec) threatened not to send any more 'advertising opportunities' through to the Bloggess (who routinely rejects such opportunities anyway) but the unfortunate PR VP (Jose) accused her of being snarky, rude and unprofessional. Exactly the best PR approach with an influential blogger followed by many other bloggers, who all tweet too and are more than happy to tear PR professionals apart - the very PR professionals who seem to believe bloggers are at their beck and call. Beware PR people: the bloggers are way more powerful than you... (N.B. the above title is from BushBabeofOz on Twitter)

Milking the media...

This summer the story of breast milk icecream ran and ran and ran. Whether it was the revelation that The Icecreamists of Covent Garden were selling icecream made with donated breast milk, or the saga of the local council taking samples and halting sales, or Lady Gaga suing to change the icecream's name (Baby Gaga...) - this story was in almost every UK national paper, most London newspapers, on the BBC, on blogs and news outlets aropund the globe. And it was all PR. The Icecreamists created a product they knew would outrage, stoke debates, engage celebrities and tick all the boxes of newsworthiness for publicity, helped by Taylor Herring PR. Inspired.

In-cider the Jacques Townhouse

This summer, cider brand Jacques opened a pop-up hotel for just nine days on the streets on London, inviting celebrities in film, music and fashion to attend and bring the name of Jacques to magazines and newspapers across the country. Here are some of the press articles the event prompted: Jaime Winstone in Glamour, Sophie-Ellis Bextor in the Observer , Hello magazine, Harpers Bazaar, Meanwhile, the blogosphere picked up on it too, passing on word of the townhouse and the cider e.g. StylePA, GirlalaMode.

Who is dumber: Internet Explorer users or the media?

As we start the new term it seems a good time to review some PR happenings of the summer... This first one is a hoax: a press release claiming that Internet Explorer users have a lower IQ than other browser users was picked up and reported in by the BBC, CNN, Forbes, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and many other prominent media outlets. Only when BBC readers found that the company behind the 'research' had only been trading for a month, had staff photos lifted from a French company and refused to answer calls did they begin to question whether these media should have checked their sources a little better. With the competition to fill paper and web pages as quickly as possible, standards slip, leading us to question the credibility of modern media with implications for the credibilty of PR. See teh blog 'A PR Guy's Musings' by Stuart Bruce for more.