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.

Lessons from the demise of the News of the World

Front pages this week are dominated by the demise of the News of the World, the biggest selling Sunday paper until its final edition last weekend, when forced to close in the face of the phone hacking scandal. What is less reported is the role of consumers in bringing the paper down, using activism tactics to express their dismay at their lack of ethics. Public relations practitioners have a lot to learn from this: that consumers have more power than ever; that they know how to use it; and that they won't stand for immoral practices in modern business. The Huffpost Business blog reviews this in depth, providing excellent insight into modern PR issues.

Good idea + good idea = great idea

Many of this year's students found it challenging to come up with completely new ideas for PR, but be assured - there is NO SUCH THING as a completely new idea (well, 99.99% of the time anyway). For instance: take T-Shirt War(!!) the YouTube phenomenon made for minimal budget by Rhett and Link, with over 7 million hits. To this add the oogachaka dancing baby, one of the first internet viral phenomena back in 1996, later immortalised in the TV show Ally McBeal. And what do you get? The new Evian dancing baby T-shirt TV ad, which is brilliant all its own right.

Online reputation management

Today's 'The Times' has a good article on page 9, about the manipulation of online reputation particularly through reviews posted on TripAdvisor or Amazon. This is either about organisations enhancing their own reputation, using tactics such as posting fake positive reviews, hiding genuine negative reviews, building links from other sites, and amassing fake followers and 'likes' on Facebook and Twitter - all of which boost search engine rankings or build reputation. Or, more insidiously, competitors can post fake but damaging reviews, or find other ways to scupper search engine rankings. This is leading to online war, where rankings are skewed by professional online reputation management companies promoting their clients, and demoting the opposition. This practice is outsourced to countries such as India and Thailand, where low-paid workers create fake accounts and post numerous blogs and reviews for or against the targeted companies. I would provide a link to 'The Times' but as that involves paying for online access - here's a similar Daily Mail article from today (both emanating from the same press release!).

Fifa sponsors fear football image tainted

As Fifa continue with presidential elections despite accusations of bribery and corruption, their key sponsors Emirates Airlines, Coca-Cola and Adidas - as Coca-Cola spokesman Petro Kacur said "The current allegations being raised are distressing and bad for the sport". The issue here is image transfer potential (see Consumer PR lecture) - if football looks bad, so do its sponsors. See this Sky News article for more info.