BBC Trust ‘cuts consultation’ ends: The deadline for submissions to the BBC Trust as part of their public consultation on proposed cuts at the Beeb passed on Tuesday. The Trust is reviewing the strategic review put forward by BBC management earlier this year. A key part of the review, which many believe was written to placate commercial critics of the Corporation who it’s thought will enjoy a more sympathetic ear from a Conservative than Labour government, was the principle of “do less better”. As a result BBC bosses are proposing closing a number of its services completely, include radio stations 6music and the Asian Network, two youth-orientated strands and various parts of the BBC website. Licence-fee payer led campaigns have been mounted to save some of the services which face the axe, most notably 6music, which has benefited from having some high profile fans in the music and media industries. It remains to be seen if the BBC Trust forces management at the Corporation to rethink any of its review.

Major TV mergers and acquisitions upcoming: The British TV industry is likely to see further consolidation this summer, with insiders saying Sky’s talks to buy the cable channels owned by Virgin Media are close to reaching a successful conclusion, while it seems increasingly likely Channel Five could also be sold this summer. Virgin Media have been toying with selling their wholly owned TV channels – Virgin1, Living, Bravo and Challenge – for a while now, with Sky the preferred bidder. Those channels could become part of the Sky network of channels within the week. Despite Five being loss making, word has it a number of bidders could come forward if and when current owners RTL put the channel up for sale. The Guardian reckons US conglomerate Time Warner and ‘Big Brother’ makers Endemol could both bid. Though both ITV and Sky have previously been mooted as possible buyers, which would further reduce the number of major players in British television.

The Times primes its pay-walled website: Despite many elsewhere in the media still being sceptical that The Times’ big web experiment will work, the News International owned paper has launched its new look website which, while free for the time being, will only be accessible to those who pay by the end of next month. Media commentators have remarked how the new look site has a real broadsheet style feel to it, despite The Times paper now being tabloid in size. Certainly it looks like designers were told to make the home page have a real traditional newspaper feel to it, while enabling easy navigation around a lot of content. The new look Sunday Times site, though, has much more of a magazine feel to it, possibly because, unlike the main Times site, the Sunday version will be more feature than news driven. You can check out the new look sites at www.thetimes.co.uk and www.thesundaytimes.co.uk

The Newspaper Licensing Agency clearly wants a quick resolution to its dispute with the PR and media cuttings sectors over the so called links licence, because rather than waiting for a Copyright Tribunal ruling on the matter, it has now taken the matter to the High Court.

As previously reported, the NLA wants PR companies and cuttings agencies to pay a licence fee whenever they provide a list of links to newspaper articles to their clients, in the same way they would if they provided a pack of photocopies of newspaper articles. The PR industry, led by the PR Consultants Association, say no licence is required under UK copyright law, and they and cuttings people Meltwater have referred the matter to the UK Copyright Tribunal. But the Tribunal won’t rule on the matter until 2011, and the NLA has been forced to put is new links licence on hold in the mean time.

So the NLA has decided that, while the Copyright Tribunal would rule on any dispute on what royalties should be paid, the issue of whether the licence is legal at all can be answered by the High Court, which will likely address the issue much quicker. So much so, the Agency has begun legal proceedings against the PRCA and Meltwater.

Confirming the new legal action, NLA MD David Pugh told reporters: “We believe that clarity on all aspects of our web licences needs to be achieved as quickly and unambiguously as possible. The Copyright Tribunal will rule on the commercial aspects of NLA web licensing – and we welcome and support that process – but the High Court is the proper place to decide on the legality of our web licences. The objective of the action we have initiated today is to achieve as swift and complete a resolution as possible for all parties – publishers, media monitoring companies and their clients. By seeking legal clarity on aggregator and end-user licences, the NLA aims to support the Copyright Tribunal process and end uncertainty in the market”.

Responding to the action, Meltwater and the PRCA issued a joint statement as follows: “Having initially learned about the NLA‘s decision to take Meltwater and the PRCA to court through the press, both parties have only just received the papers concerning this claim. While we understand that the industry will want clarification on this issue, we do not see this development as cause for concern. Naturally, we are reviewing the papers in consultation with our legal advisors. But not wishing to prejudice our case with the Copyright Tribunal, which we believe to be strong, we will study the NLA‘s claim before responding. We remain confident, however, that the NLA‘s proposals for a web licence are flawed and that the courts will support our views on this”.

We all know government spending is facing some pretty major cuts in the coming twelve months now that the Tories are in charge, but how will that impact those working in government communications? Quite a bit it seems.

Comms consultancy Communications Management recently surveyed 105 public sector chiefs across the health, education and local government sectors and found that 84% planned to review their external communications activity in light of upcoming budget cuts being forced on them by central government.

However, while at least some of those reviews will no doubt involve communications teams facing their own budget cuts, most will also be looking at ways to make communications more effective as well as more efficient, because public sector bosses rightly see the important role communicators – and especially internal communicators – will play in the smooth delivery of cutbacks elsewhere in the system.

Commenting on her company’s survey, Communications Management boss Pam Calvert told reporters: “What stands out for us in this research is that public sector chiefs are crying out for communications practitioners in their organisations to take a lead in shaping the way organisations talk to those customers feeling the pain of cutbacks. Ultimately, the next 12 months will be a defining time for public sector communicators, who must seize the opportunity to put communications at the heart of change and not be left behind”.

Elsewhere in the communications mix, the government has announced that spending on all “non-critical” advertising campaigns will be frozen as part of the budget cuts. Quite what constitutes “critical” campaigning isn’t clear, but those leading the cuts in government expenditure hope to save millions by buying and commissioning less conventional advertising.

One thing is certain about the coalition agreement between the Tories and Lib Dems: some interesting times are ahead in the lobbying sector as the debate over lobbyists being more transparent continues.

Ahead of the election politicians on all sides called for more transparency in the lobbying sector, however the Lib Dems called for a statutory register of lobbyists while the Tories advocated self-regulation. But the post-election manifesto that has come out of the coalition agreement adopts the Lib Dem stance.

This could be controversial. While there is still some opposition in the lobbying sector to even self-regulation, many key players and agencies in the industry do now back such a system to make their work more transparent. To that end, as previously reported, the Association Of Professional Political Consultants, the Chartered Institute Of Public Relations and the Public Relations Consultants Association have joined together to create the Public Affairs Council.

But opposition in the industry to statutory regulation of the lobbying sector is much more widespread, and the PRCA for certain will fight any efforts to introduce such forced regulation, arguing strongly that the industry controlled Public Affairs Council is the best solution to tackle public concern over the way lobbying works.

A recent Guardian article pointed out that, while the Tories allowed the Lib Dems to have their way on this issue in the coalition agreement, key players in the lobbying industry have direct links to senior players in the Conservative Party, and they will be lobbying harder than ever on this issue. Meaning this could prove to be one of the first issues to really test the strength of the coalition between the two parties in government.

So, as the British electorate, media and lobbying industry get their collective heads around what exactly having a coalition government in power really means, here’s an interesting question for you: what does it mean for those charged with the task of communicating on behalf of the Prime Minister and his top team?
As expected, Tory comms chief and former News Of The World editor Andy Coulson has been appointed Director Of Communications at Number 10 Downing Street, but what lies ahead for him and his team, and what new challenges will he have to face as a result of having two political parties involved in government?

Some involved in the coalition have suggested this new era of British politics will operate with less spin, maintaining the myth that crafty PR moves by central government officials was a New Labour invention.

But that seems unlikely. Recent events in British politics have seen some of the finest moments of political PR in recent memory, from Gordon Brown’s wonderfully orchestrated departure from Number 10 as the classic father and family man, to Cameron and Clegg’s American-style love fest of a press conference in the rose garden at Number 10 Downing Street.

And, as PR Week editor Danny Rogers said last week, with a former PR man and a former lobbyist filling the top two jobs in the coalition, we can surely expect good communications – aka spin – to be high up the agenda of the new government.

Writing in The Guardian, Rogers says Coulson will have two key challenges.

Firstly, as the Tory’s comms man, he’ll need to find a way to keep the chief communicators in the Lib Dems onside, but without annoying the more right wing factions in his own party.

Secondly, he needs to avoid any further fall out from his own back story. Being a former journalist turned political advisor, rather than a neutral civil servant, some will portray Coulson as “the new Alistair Campbell”, which isn’t necessarily a persona he wants given all the possible detractors that already exist on the government benches in parliament.

And then there’s the issue of the phone hacking scandal, which kicked off on his watch at the NOTW, and which still rumbles on despite protestations from him and other News International execs that those journalists illegally hacking the voicemail boxes of celebrities and public figures did so without management’s consent.

Rogers points out a dozen MPs – including Lib Dems – are currently taking legal action in a bid to get to the bottom of the phone hacking issue, and if any dirt were to land on Coulson in the process, that could put further stress on relationships between Tory spin doctors and the Lib Dem MPs within the new coalition.

There have been definite signs in the last six months that a backlash is starting to emerge against Google, the uber-brand of the web era which is, arguably, finding it harder to be the quirky, anti-establishment brand we’ve all grown to love now that, within the digital space, Google Inc is the establishment.

Ironically that backlash, which was most apparent when the web firm opted Gmail users into its new slightly confusing social networking service Google Buzz, has emerged as the company made its bold (if, some would argue, at least partly commercially motivated) decision to basically quit the Chinese market by turning off government-forced censorship on its servers in the region.

But despite all that, Google has topped a brand power survey by WPP-owned research company Millward Brown for the fourth year running, with the research types estimating the brand to be worth $114 billion, 14% up on the last survey. Another technology firm, Apple, also scores highly, with the continued hype surrounding the iPhone and the new iPad boosting the value of their brand to $83 billion, and putting the IT giant into third place in the brand poll.

Another big player in the web space, though, doesn’t even appear in the Top 100. Despite Facebook frequently appearing in second place in web prominence charts, and despite the social networking giant seeing considerable ad income growth, Millward Brown’s researchers say that while Facebook scores well on profile and membership, they are yet to demonstrate how they will capitalise on that brand commercially. The power brands survey considers both brand profile and the commercialisation of the brand.

esPResso publisher Chris Cooke on major recent developments in the media.

Only Mirror supporting Gordon on Thursday: The Sun like to back winners in the General Election, which is why they’ve been getting so hot and bothered of late that a last minute rise in support for the Lib Dems could keep their man, David Cameron, out of power, or at least deprive him of the opportunity to form a majority government.

But, of course, it’s not only the Current Bun who have been laying into Brown and the newly popular Clegg in a bid to ensure the Tories win on Thursday – the Mail, Express and Telegraph are all fighting Cameron’s corner too. And, as of now, so are The Times and the Financial Times, who have both now come out in support of the blues in the big vote. The former is no suprise, but the latter is a particular blow for the Labour Party. The FT was one of the first of the previously Tory supporting papers to sign up to the New Labour initiative in the early 1990s.

With The Guardian, in another surprise move, formally coming out in favour of the resurgent Lib Dems, and with the Independent making much of the fact it plans to live by its name in the election, that leaves the Brown camp with only the always loyal-to-Labour Mirror on side.

Though even they are encouraging readers to vote Lib Dem in constituencies where doing so might keep the Tories out, meaning even Labour’s biggest supporters seem to think a hung parliament and resulting Lib-Lab pact is Brown’s only chance of staying in power.

If there is no clear winner on Friday, aside from taking Britain into an interesting place constitutionally, it will be equally interesting to see how the papers deal with such an eventuality. Will they push for a second General Election to win the Cam man a parliamentary majority, or accept that – in news terms if nothing else – a hung parliament could be rather fun?

Times braces itself for pay wall exodus: So, The Times will put up its previously reported paywall around its website next month. With everyone expecting a big drop off of users to occur almost immediately, it is perhaps not surprising that the broadsheet last week requested that its official web traffic figures, collated by the Audited Bureau of Circulation, no longer be made public.

Presumably that means Times management expect a dramatic fall in readers also. Still, Times bosses have made it clear they’d rather have a close relationship with a smaller audience of paying readers than speak to millions of freeloaders world wide. I still think this experiment will ultimately work for the Times (as I blogged here).

In sort of releated news, the legendary US music magazine Rolling Stone put a paywall around its feature content last month, so that users who want to access interviews from the title’s current print edition or its forty year plus archive will have to pay. It was a surprise development, and is one of the first big tests for the subscription model in the consumer magazine space. The independently owned magazine’s rivals in the magazine sector are sure to be watching the experiment closely.

New CEO arrives at ITV: So, after rather too long without any clear long-term leadership, ITV has both a Chairman and CEO in place.

Former Royal Mail chief Adam Crozier took over as boss of the flagging commercial telly giant last month, writing to his staff: “You don’t need me to tell you that ITV has been through some turbulent times recently with a combination of the economic recession and the changes occurring in our own industry putting us and our competitors under real pressure. It seems to me that the decisive action that you took last year has begun the process of helping get us fit to compete in a rapidly changing media world and for that everyone deserves a lot of credit”.

Despite that optimism, and other paragraphs bigging up current ITV telly shows, Crozier was clear that more change is still needed at the third channel broadcaster, telling his new employees: “We all know that we have some tough challenges ahead and some issues to face up to, but we really don’t need to be defensive about that – just recognise them, find a way to solve them and move on”.

ITV is doing better now than in recent years in both ratings and revenues, but some argue radical changes are still needed to futureproof the company, and some reckon Crozier has some radical ideas on his agenda.

I suspect for Eurostar the Icelandic volcano that grounded North Europe’s planes couldn’t have come at a better time.

Following Christmas’s “trains stuck in tunnels” debacle, and allegations of poor customer service as passengers were left stranded at St Pancras, now it was the airlines who were struggling to cope while, in many cases, Eurostar came to the rescue, putting on extra trains and resisting the temptation to artificially hike prices. And, while Christmas’s broken trains possibly sent some London-to-Paris travellers back to the planes, the lack of air travel for a week may have turned a new set of customers onto the benefits of going by train.

Meanwhile Eurostar’s more traditional PR offensive continues. The latest development is that the train firm has hired former Pulp frontman and current BBC 6music DJ Jarvis Cocker to head up a cultural marketing programme which will offer travellers discounts to culture-based attractions at the train firm’s destination cities.

According to the Financial Times, US bank Goldman Sachs will be stepping up its PR efforts in the coming weeks in a bid to repair public opinion of the firm following the widely reported recent fraud allegations. The bank’s chief Lloyd Blankfein has admitted that its efforts to tackle allegations being made against it have been hindered because the company “did not have a strong enough relationship with the American public”.

According to the FT, step one of the bank’s repair strategy has been to hire Mark Fabiani, an experienced and very well connected crisis management expert who counts Bill Clinton on his former client list. A source told the paper he’d be creating a “counter-narrative” to rebuild Goldman’s image and bring a more “disciplined approach” to the bank’s public relations efforts.

As Blankfein has been busy fending off the fraud allegations, he has also been trying to convince US media and their readers and viewers that his company is part of the solution to help over come America’s economic woes, not part of the problem, but that is difficult given the low public opinion for banks in general, and especially big banks that get caught up in fraud allegations.

Word has it the bank was already reconsidering some of its marketing and communications strategy prior to the current crisis, and it seems likely that building up a new reservoir of public goodwill, or at least goodwill with journalists and key decision makers, will now be even higher up the agenda as part of that review.

Staying with politics, and as the Twittersphere went into overdrive last week as pretty much everyone felt the urge to mock poor old Gordon Brown over the so called ‘Bigot-gate’ incident, The Guardian contacted PR people, pundits, journalists and every day voters, via the micro-blogging website, and asked them what their advice for the PM’s team would be as they tried to communicate themselves out of the biggest crisis of the election campaign so far.

There were mixed opinions. Some felt that, given some of Gillian Duffy’s reported viewpoints, calling her a “bigot” was justified, and Gordon should say so, fighting fire with fire. @paulwooding1973 tweeted: “If what she said was racist, play it back to media and say temper got the better of him – which is probably true. Will look human”. @lylebignon said “I’d want him to stand by his comment – explain his thinking, not blame it on the media melee”.

But others felt that, whatever the rights and wrongs, the Labour leader should just apologise profusely and try and move on – ie the strategy he seemed to employ. @WaughComms tweeted: “There’s no wriggling out of that one. Say sorry (sincerely), move on. Be honest, be human. Anything else makes it worse”. @oddsocks07 said: “GB’s mistake is probably the first where spin cannot come to the rescue. Apologise with hands up and move on!”

Others, like @StevenGeorgia, had slightly less useful advice for Labour’s top team. He joked: “Gordon should NOT do a radio interview and be filmed with his head in his hands… Oh – too late!”

You can read all the Twitter tips for Gordon supplied to the Guardian here.

As the election draws ever closer the Conservatives have issued a dossier of government “waste and excess”, presumably to pre-empt the spending cuts they are likely to make if they form the new government this weekend.

The bad news for those in government PR is that £564 million spent on “external communications and marketing” is among the expenditure which the Tories believe is a waste of tax payers’ money. Of course Cameron’s team is keen to assure voters that his government would be able to bring government spending under control, but without making major cuts to front line public services like health and education.

According to PR Week, the Tories’ dossier includes a list of the top ten “spin spenders” in government, with the Home Office at the top of the list. According to the Tories, officials in that government department “burned through £73m rather than policing the streets”. The dossier concludes that the Tories would “cut back spending on government spin and advertising and on unnecessary consultants”.

PR group Burson-Marsteller has published the results of a survey of 115 senior journalists from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and it reveals a gloomy mood in the news industry, where the recent advertising recession and continued challenges posed by the internet mean smaller teams have to produce more content than ever before, while working in an insecure market.

81% of those journalists surveyed said they’d experienced cost-cutting measures in their editorial teams, and most felt that that was having an impact on the quality of their publication’s output. 34% said cost-cutting was the biggest threat to high quality journalism, while 17% said the internet was a bigger threat.

There were mixed opinions among those surveyed about the digital domain, with the internet having both positive and negative impacts. Most agreed digital tools gave them access to unprecedented amounts of information, but many added that the rise of so called ‘citizen journalism’ and what they see as a de-professionalisation of their trade were courses for concern.

On the up side for the comms profession, most of those surveyed admitted that, because of the cuts, PR agencies played a more vital role in their work than ever before, as sources of information and providers of story leads. Nearly half said they dealt with PR people more frequently now than before, while over a quarter said they saw PR agencies as being good sources of information.

Commenting on the survey, PR Week quote Burson-Marsteller’s EMEA media practice boss Dennis Landsbert-Noon as saying: “As the media industry undergoes these tremendous changes, there is both an onus on us to ensure that our standards remain exemplary, as well as an opportunity for us to use new and exciting digital tools to communicate with traditional journalists as well as a whole new digital and social media landscape”.

We recently reported on The Men From The Press, an online service operating in the music sector which planned to offer a “brand new type of PR” by paying journalists to fill out online feedback forms after listening to unsigned and self-releasing artists who signed up to the website. Shortly after that report, the service announced that it was closing its doors, a matter of weeks after launching, following widespread derision from both the journalism and PR communities.

As previously reported, the journalists who signed up to the scheme, who were seemingly all freelancers, did not commit to give anything they listened to any actual coverage in any of the media they work for (and in many cases would not be able to anyway), but, rather, they provided a direct critique to each paying artist, which might constitute useful feedback in itself and, if positive, could be used in a band’s other publicity. That said, the aim obviously was to force participating journalists to expose themselves to the music bands had paid to upload to the website, in the hope some of the hacks would genuinely like some of music, and then become influential champions of those bands.

Though in theory there was nothing ethically wrong with the service – providing paying bands knew they were buying feedback not coverage – because it charged a per journalist fee, and because the rate card listed the publications each writer worked for (minus their names), and also because the fee was higher the more esteemed the publication, some argued that the implication was that you could, in fact, buy coverage.

Certainly it would have been easy for less media-savvy exposure-hungry new artists to misconstrue what was actually on offer, and little was done to stress that actual coverage was not for sale. The page on the website where artists selected which writers they wanted feedback from was topped with this explanation: “Listed below are the current publications our journalists write for together with their respective submission fees, which are to cover our admin costs and journalist submission fees – there are no other hidden charges! Please note: Most of our journalists write for several publications, which is why some are bundled together as below… the submission fees are for each bundle, so this gives you more value for money”.

As a result, many of the publications listed requested that their titles be removed from the site, even if some of their freelance contributors were actually involved in the new service, because they didn’t want confused bands to think editorial coverage was for sale. Meanwhile, some of the journalists signed up seemingly withdrew their services, possibly because the publishers and editors of the titles they write for had started to express concerns. Or possibly because they never really understood what the Men From The Press offer was going to be. Some of the service’s participating journalists said they were originally approached by someone who simply asked if they would like to be paid to give feedback to new bands, without being told they’d be participating in a new kind of music publicity venture.

A statement posted on the website by founder Dave Chisholm the day it closed read: “The whole point of themenfromthepress.com was to provide PR in a ‘brand new way’. So bands, artists and small labels who simply haven’t got the funds would be given a chance! I put a hell of a lot of work into this and set TMFTP up for all the right reasons and with all the best intentions to help new bands and artists as I know how tough it is for them in this business… But we have now been shot down in flames!”

He continued: “Certain publications and some traditional PR companies (who I will not name) have made it impossible for us to carry on through their constant slanderous remarks and activities which have damaged our reputation to the point where we have lost all heart with the project. And so sadly and with great regret we have now closed! I would like to say a very big thank you to the many bands artists and journalists who have and still support us… I tried to make a difference but sorry guys… they wont let us…”

So, the election campaign has begun and, while it seems far too close to call with regards who might be forming the next government come May, what we do know is there will be a whole new generation of MPs taking seats in parliament this summer, with a large number of new parliamentarians expected to be voted in, if only because so many existing MPs have chosen to step down following a tricky twelve months for the political class.

And that could have an impact on the way the political community communicates with the electorate. PR firm Fishburn Hedges and researchers ComRes spoke to 100 new parliamentary candidates who seem likely to win a seat in the Commons on 6 May, and found – perhaps unsurprisingly – that digital platforms and social media are already much more important as communication channels for these future MPs.

83 of those interviewed are already using Facebook as a key communication tool, while 50 were also on Twitter. 84 said that Facebook, Twitter and blogs would play an important part in the way they communicate with constituents if they win at the election, while 82 said they expected to treat contacts made via social networks with the same importance as a formal written letter.

Fishburn Hedges Associate Director Simon Redfern told reporters: “A lot of new candidates have really embraced social media tools and talk to their constituents using these channels. But what’s good for the campaign may not work as well in power. [But] new candidates are innovating with the tools available. You only have to look at Charlie Elphicke’s (Conservative, Dover) use of Chat Map, Chuka Umunna’s (Labour, Streatham) YouTube channel and Stella Creasy’s (Labour, Walthamstow) Facebook page to see how modern political campaigning is changing”.

Staying with political communications, but from the other side of the fence now, and the previously reported UK Public Affairs Council has officially launched.

As much previously reported, this is the new body that aims to create and administer a voluntary register for the British lobbying sector, in which lobbyists will be encouraged to declare who they work with and who they deal with in government. The register, similar to one already operating at a European level, aims to overcome negative perceptions of the public affairs industry; though not everyone in the lobbying sector supports it.

The PAC is backed, though, but the three relevant trade bodies, the Association Of Professional Political Consultants, the Chartered Institute Of Public Relations and the Public Relations Consultants Association.

Launching the new council late last month, Philip Mawer, Chairman of the UKPAC Implementation Group, told esPResso: “For the first time the public can be confident that lobbyists from all walks of life, be they in corporations, charities, local authorities, law and accountancy firms, management or communications consultancies, think tanks and public affairs companies, will be able to be monitored by a single, independent organisation”.

He continued: “The UKPAC will create and oversee a central register, updated quarterly, which will hold key details of those who practice public affairs. All those listed will be demonstrating their commitment to promoting public confidence through transparency, accountability and effective self-regulation”.

There has been much chatter in the music journalism community in the last few weeks about a new service being offered to grass roots artists that guarantees to put their music in front of apparently influential music critics. The company can make that guarantee because it pays the journalists in question to listen to their clients’ music and to provide a one-to-one critique.

The service competes with those traditional PR agencies which offer their services to unsigned or self-releasing artists, normally for a few hundred pounds per campaign. The founders of the new service, called The Men From The Press, say their web-based promotional platform is more cost effective than traditional PR, because it ensures exposure to a small number of targeted journalists, whereas the traditional approach involves sending CDs or press releases to a long list of reviewers and editors, none of whom might actually listen to the music they are sent. With TMFTP bands pay a registration fee, and then an additional fee per journalist they wish to make contact with.

The journalists signed up to the scheme, who are seemingly all freelancers, do not commit to give anything they listen to any actual coverage in any of the media they work for, but will provide a direct critique, which might constitute useful feedback and, if positive, can be used in a band’s other publicity. Though presumably the real attractionfor bands is that it commits signed-up journalists to listen to any music they are sent, meaning that – if they genuinely like an artist’s music – an influential fan may be secured.

The page on the new service’s website that lists the journalists who can be targeted has been through a number of incarnations. Initially customers of the service could choose which publications they wanted to target, and presumably any freelancers who write for those titles would have been contacted on a signed up artists’ behalf. But that page was removed, reportedly after some of the featured publications complained it implied coverage in their titles could be bought, or that journalists participating somehow represented the viewpoint of the titles they may contribute to.

The crucial page is now structured by journalist, listing all the titles each reviewer writes for. The more titles, and the more influential the titles, the more it costs to put your music in front of a signed up hack. At one stage this page actually named participating writers, though currently the identities of participating reviewers are not actually revealed.

While there is nothing ethically wrong with it in principle, providing artists are clear they are buying feedback not coverage, and providing participating journalists are never unduly swayed to give coverage to paying bands, many music publicists and journalists are nervous about the implications of the new service.

It’s founder, Dave Chisholm, admits that part of the aim of his service is to try and win his clients new fans in the music journalism community, but told The Guardian that he disagrees with the viewpoint that it is wrong to offer cash-strapped freelance journalists a financial incentive to ensure his bands are exposed to opinion formers. He argues that such financial incentives are no different to traditional PRs offering journalists free perks in a bid to ensure they listen to their clients’ music.

But also speaking to The Guardian, one artist manager who previously worked in PR, Tim Vigon, said he still had concerns. He told the paper: “My instinct is that it’s wrong on every level… it feels like payola [paying for coverage], even though there’s nothing illegitimate about it and all they’re after is feedback”.

Meanwhile the founder of one influential music site, some of whose reviewers were approached by Chisholm’s team, was more blatant in his criticism. DrownedInSound’s Sean Adams blogged yesterday: “I sit around listening to mostly not very good unsigned bands for free. I can kinda see where the ‘concept’ came from, in terms of greasing the wheels to bring certain CDs to the top of the pile and give bands some feedback. Not all ideas are worth running with though, especially when they’re so poorly executed, and give the impression [bands will] get a leg up when it generally seems exploitative and EVIL. If you’re in a band, don’t do this, just do your research of who will like your stuff. People are easy to communicate with”.

Moves to regulate the lobbying industry are likely to be stepped up following the latest political scandal to rock Westminster. As you will no doubt have seen, the big story in the political world this week is last night’s ‘Dispatches’ documentary, which was previewed by reportage in the Sunday Times at the weekend, in which various outgoing MPs expressed their interest in cashing in on their political influence by taking on lobbying work on behalf of a fictitious American company.

Focus has fallen in particular on former Labour ministers Geoff Hoon, Stephen Byers and Patricia Hewitt, and to a lesser extent another Labour MP Margaret Moran, who were all secretly filmed expressing an interest in the non-existent lobbying work. In the interviews Hoon was seen saying he wanted to make “some real money”, Moran boasted about her access to a “girls’ gang” of ministers who could influence decision making in Westminster, and Byers described himself as “sort of like a cab for hire”. The latter was a particularly unfortunate turn of phrase, because it links back to claims made by Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed during the height of the Tories ‘sleaze scandals’ of the mid-nineties that you could “hire an MP the way you hire a London taxi”.

That said, Byers’ interview has dominated the headlines less because of the “cab for hire” quote, and more because in it he claimed to have previously influenced government policy in return for a fee, claiming he lobbied current ministers Andrew Adonis and Peter Mandelson on behalf of National Express and Tesco respectively. He seems to have distanced himself from those remarks after the interview, even before he knew he had been talking to an undercover journalist. Meanwhile, since the scandal broke both the ministers and companies name checked by Byers have denied any knowledge of his claims.

As both the political and lobbying community awaited the airing of the Channel 4 programme yesterday, key players in the latter were keen to stress the documentary showed the shady side of the former, rather than presenting their own industry in a bad light. The boss of the public affairs division of communications firm Weber Shandwick, Jon McLeod, told PR Week: “Yet again it is the fumbling attempts of parliamentarians to be lobbyists that have cast a shadow over the professional practice of the industry”.

As much previously reported, moves have long been afoot within the political community and the public affairs sector to regulate lobbying in someway, partly in a bid to end any dubious practices, but more to convince the increasingly cynical public that most of the PR industry’s work in this domain is completely above board.

Although politicians on all sides have supported such regulation, the favoured route to date has been some kind of voluntary code of conduct set up by the lobbying industry, possibly with a register in which lobbyists declare which politicians they have lobbied on what companies’ behalf. Some in the sector actively support such a voluntary code and register, though it does not have the universal backing of the entire industry.

But some believe that internal opposition will now be irrelevant as it looks increasingly likely politicians will force a statutory code on the lobbying community. As Labour went into damage limitation yesterday, with the Parliamentary Labour Party expelling the four shamed MPs despite their protestations they didn’t actually break any rules, the party also indicated it would include setting up a statutory lobbying register in its manifesto at the upcoming General Election. David Cameron’s previously reported commitments to make the lobbying world more transparent hadn’t previously gone that far, but the latest scandal – although focused on Labour ministers – may force him to support a statutory register too.

Confirming he thought the lobbying sector would now face compulsory regulation, McLeod added in his interview with PR Week that statutory regulation of lobbying is now “both right and inevitable”, though, also talking to the trade magazine, the MD of Hanover Communications cautioned “backing a statutory register for lobbyists is deliberately missing the point as it alone would do nothing to stop MPs taking outside interests”.

Another one from the political world, though one that provides a lesson in digital communications. An effort to seize the digital initiative in the upcoming General Election back-fired on Conservative supporters yesterday after the makers of a political website failed to grasp the risk of allowing Twitter-generated content to automatically appear on your site.

The website is called Cash-Gordon, and aims to embarrass the Labour government over the large donations the Labour Party receives from the union Unite, currently in the headlines for spearheading the unpopular British Airways strike. The website encourages visitors to read a speech by Tory frontbencher Michael Grove, to bug former Labour advisor and now Unite political director Charlie Wheelan via his social media accounts, and to check out what is being said about the campaign on the Twitter network.

Unfortunately the latter was enabled by a widget that showed any Twitter message containing the so called ‘hash tag’ #cashgordon. Labour supporters and general jokers on Twitter used this fact to tweet anti-Tory or just generally offensive remarks, alongside the required hash tag, knowing their contributions would then appear, albeit for a short time, on the home page of the anti-Labour website.

According to the Guardian, more advanced Twitter users then worked out how to embed images and programmes into their tweets that would add extra unwanted content to the political website, while others worked out how to use the Twitter widget to force a redirect, so that people going to the site would be taken to another, at one time the Labour Party website, at another the Rick Astley video that is so frequently used in online practical jokes these days.

Despite initially insisting a totally unregulated approach to #cashgordon tweets would be maintained, the website’s owners later admitted misuse by the Twitterati had forced them to remove that element of the site. As of last night it was back, but with a moderator installed to decide which Tweets go live. So much so, one Tweeter remarked “Aw, #cashgordon tweets are no fun anymore now that the feed’s moderated. I’m going to bed. Night all”. That tweet made it through moderation though.

The lesson for digital PRs? Probably best not to put an unmoderated hash-tag-based Twitter feed on your home page. Especially if you are involved in anything vaguely political.

The dispute between the media relations and press cuttings industries and the Newspaper Licensing Agency over the latter’s efforts to launch a ‘links licence’ will rumble on for at least a year. Papers published by the UK Copyright Tribunal last week revealed that in a preliminary hearing last month the copyright court rejected the NLA‘s efforts to have the legal case against the agency dismissed, and then ruled it wouldn’t consider the disagreement in full until February 2011.

As previously reported, the NLA argues that agencies who provide corporate clients with lists of relevant newspaper headlines and links to the actual articles than mention their company should have to pay a licence fee, in the same way they would if they provided photocopies of the actual articles. But the PR industry argues that because no copies are made when links are provided, the copyright laws that empower the NLA in the print media and photocopy domain don’t apply with digital links.

Cuttings agency Meltwater and the PR Consultants Association are opposing the NLA‘s efforts to launch the links licence, and took the matter to the Copyright Tribunal, the court that considers disputes specifically relating to copyright issues and royalty payments. The NLA was forced to suspend its link licence operations when Meltwater began its action, and given the time scale of the Tribunal hearing those operations will now have to be on hold for over a year.

In related news, the NLA recently announced a new fee structure regards their traditional newspaper copying licences for smaller PR agencies, those with less than five staff and three or less clients. The new fees will simplify the licence system for said agencies and, the NLA argues, reduce their costs. Though the boss of one affected agency said that while he recognised both the NLA‘s claims were true, it still wasn’t a cost effective licence for his company.

Mervyn Edgecombe, MD of London-based PR agency Mervyn Edgecombe Associates, told Communicte: “The old system was so complex and convoluted that anything that simplifies the process has to be welcome. [But while] £150 [per client] may not sound much, that’s £450 for the three main accounts that would warrant this license, and there’s not enough value to justify it. When we get the coverage, we just send the office junior out to buy an extra copy of the paper”.

It’s been reported that Matthew Freud’s PR agency has been appointed to the take the lead in communications activity for the 2012 London Olympics.

It is thought Freud Communications will lead the wide-ranging communications brief that will be attached to the Olympics games, with a portfolio of other agencies then brought on to deal with specific areas or mini-projects.

Freud’s company owns 20% in sports agency Pitch PR, who may well be involved in this brief. Freud Communications is in turn half owned by the Publicis Groupe, who may therefore get involved in the international dimension to the campaign.

A spokesman for the games would be not be drawn on their PR plans, telling the Guardian: “We are in the process of appointing a number of roster agencies to work on a range of campaigns between now and 2012. The procurement is ongoing”.

An interesting development from the advertising sector now.

The Advertising Standards Authority will expand its remit to cover all forms of online advertising. The ASA, which regulates advertising on TV and radio, in print media, and on billboards, does already oversee some online communications, ie banner and text adverts bought on other people’s websites.

However, the new development – which is supported by ad industry trade body the Advertising Association – will see ASA regulation extended to advertising content published on companies’ own websites, and on their social media pages, such as Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds.

Such online activity will now have to meet ASA rules regarding all advertising messages being responsible, legal, honest and truthful. Concerns have been raised that consumers, and especially children, may be misled by company websites and social media pages which have not previously been open to active regulation.

It’s an interesting development because those communication outputs are sometimes managed by marketing or even PR people, rather than advertising execs, meaning the ASA‘s remit is extending into other communication sectors.

The move will have to be approved by the Committee For Advertising Practice, which feeds into the ASA, but given the Advertising Association is already a supporter most seem to think that approval will be forthcoming.

There has been much chatter in the lobbying community in the last fortnight about an email sent by communications agency Luther Pendragon to every Conservative MP and parliamentary candidate on behalf of the Association Of Home Information Pack Providers.

The email, which came from a Luther Pendragon address, was very critical of Tory policy towards Home Information Packs, which the party says it will scrap if it forms the next government later this year. The email called the policy “irrational and regressive” and accused the Conservative frontbench of having ignored “many voices and reams of evidence” on the issue.

Strangely, the email was also sent to the Tory policy makers and frontbenchers it openly lambasted. It also personally thanked each recipient for their previous responses on the issue, even though many of the current and hopeful MPs receiving the message had never previously corresponded with Luther Pendragon or the AHIPP.

The Conservative leadership reacted angrily to the email. Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps, both a recipient of the email, and someone specifically criticised by the letter, told PR Week: “This is one of the most crass examples of public affairs I have ever seen from a lobbying company. Spamming parliamentary candidates with political abuse from a company email address hardly displays the intelligent political awareness that Luther Pendragon proclaim on their website”.

He continued: “Email has great potential to engage parliamentary candidates with the public in the forthcoming general election. Yet the public affairs industry needs to realise that, like poorly targeted, unsolicited press releases, email also has the potential to annoy and undermine the very issues you are championing. Conservatives are happy to talk to the housing industry over our plans to scrap Home Information Packs, but personal, angry campaigns are not a great way to win friends and influence people”.

The story subsequently gained more momentum when the AHIPP accused Luther Pendragon of having sent out the wrong emails to many recipients, hence why the correspondence openly criticised some of the MPs who were actually receiving it, and the odd remark regarding past responses. The lobbying agency subsequently admitted there had been an administrative error in the distribution of the letter, adding that it should also have come from an AHIPP email address, rather than being so clearly linked to their agency.

AHIPP has now apologised to any offended Tories, though it seems unlikely even placated backbenchers or parliamentary candidates will now have much sway on this issue with Shapps and his frontbench colleagues. Luther Pendragon had already told AHIPP it wished to bring to an end its relationship with the association before the email error took place.

The PR Consultants Association has confirmed it will be lobbying key decision makers in both government and the Conservative Party as part of its previously reported campaign to stop the Newspaper Licensing Agency from charging PR companies who provide clients with lists of URLs that link to relevant media coverage on free-to-access newspaper websites.

As previously reported, the NLA recently claimed companies who provide such links on a commercial basis need a copyright licence, similar to that required when a communications department or agency distributes photocopies of articles to their managers or clients. But many in the PR and newspaper cuttings industries disagree, saying that as no actual copy is made when a link to a relevant web page is provided, no such licence is required.

Media monitoring company Meltwater is taking the NLA to the Copyright Tribunal about their links licence claim. Meanwhile the PRCA is busy trying to win influential support for their campaign against the NLA‘s new licence. They recently surveyed 151 MPs on the issue, and say that 65% supported their viewpoint.

Now PRCA chief Francis Ingham now plans to engage in some lobbying on this issue. He told PR Week: “We will now be rolling out the next stage of our campaign against the NLA‘s plans. It centres on good, old-fashioned political lobbying”.

The PR Consultants Association has surveyed both PR agency chiefs and in-house communication execs about the agency pitching process, to identify what both sides of the buying equation are looking for, and what both buyers and sellers could do better.

Some in the agency community have complained in recent times about the increased tendency for potential clients to invite large numbers of their competitors to compete for the same job, or to invite pitches for projects where an internal budget has not yet been confirmed. Such activities increase the risk of the pitching process for agencies.

Commenting on some of those concerns, which have seemingly grown during the recession, PRCA Communications Director Richard Ellis told esPResso: “As the economy recovers we need to start to reverse some counter-productive trends that emerged over the last twelve months such as longer pitch lists and briefs without budgets. Even in the short term these tactics end up providing poorer value for the client. These surveys provide the basis for a series of discussions where both sides can highlight their frustrations and share best practice. More open discussion will lead to better pitching”.

The Association is talking to agencies and in-house teams separately at the moment, with the view to staging a discussion involving both parties in late May.

More from the world of digital advertising, and the Wall Street Journal’s tech blog has reported on plans at Twitter HQ to incorporate advertising into the micro-blogging service’s search facility, so that when you search the tweetosphere for tweets on, say, “New York”, you’ll see an ad for things to do in New York, when you search for tweets on “laptops” you’ll see an ad for laptops, and so on.

Basically it will work like Google’s basic search-linked ads system, though ad copy will have to be 140 characters long, so they take the form of a tweet. They should be much more obvious than the current text ads that appear on the web-based Twitter interface, and it’s thought the social networking firm will sell the new ad spots much more proactively, the existing ones generally just promoting Twitter-related services.

It’s thought these new ads would also show when searches are done off the Twitter network via third party clients like Tweetdeck. People who primarily connect with Twitter using such apps currently completely avoid all Twitter advertising. According to the WSJ the new ad system should go live this side of the summer.

The Chartered Institute Of PR has denied recent reports in PR Week that members of the association who work in the lobbying sector and who refuse to sign up to new efforts to introduce more transparency into the public affairs arena could be forced to give up their membership.

The CIPR has been collaborating with the PR Consultants Association and Association of Professional Political Consultants on new measures to encourage those in the lobbying sector to voluntarily become more transparent about which companies they represent and which political types they have access to. Pressure for increased transparency has been growing both within Westminster and at a European level.

A voluntary register of interests for the UK public affairs industry, similar to one that already operates in Brussels, is a favoured option, though not everyone in the lobbying sector agrees such a thing is needed.

As part of these efforts, the CIPR, PRCA and APPC are collaborating on the creation of a Public Affairs Council, which would spearhead increased transparency in the lobbying world. PR Week speculated that by supporting the Council, the CIPR would have to change its own members code, and in doing so force lobbyists in its membership to sign up to the new transparency commitments. The trade mag reckoned this would force those CIPR members who oppose the register to leave the body.

But a CIPR spokesman subsequently denied that the Institute’s support for the Public Affairs Council would necessarily require a change of its own code of conduct. The spokesman said: “The article in today’s PR Week is purely speculative. Contrary to the report, the CIPR is not looking to make changes to its code of conduct. What we are doing is taking a leadership role with our partners in this drive for increased transparency in lobbying”.

The statement continues: “As part of a planned process we have consulted with members on the implementation of the UK Public Affairs Council, and the need for lobbyists to be registered and declare their clients. We are currently reviewing their comments. We are also looking at the possible implications that CIPR membership of the Public Affairs Council would have for our membership joining and renewals process. Ultimately, it is our members who will decide our next step. Once comments on the consultation have been reviewed we will report back to members”.

David Cameron has said that he will introduce new rules to better control the lobbying sector if he forms the next government. In a speech at the University Of East London, the Tory leader said lobbying rules would be introduced as part of a Parliamentary Privilege Act.

There has been increased debate in recent years about whether new rules should be introduced to force those in lobbying and political consultancy to be more transparent about who is talking to whom about what. So far there has been considerable disagreement within the lobbying sector as to whether new rules are needed at all, and if so whether they should be introduced by new laws or a voluntary industry code.

But Cameron says he will take the initiative on this issue if and when he is in power. He said: “It’s important that businesses, charities and other organisations feel they can make sure their voice is heard. And indeed, lobbying often makes for better, more workable, legislation. But I believe that it is increasingly clear that lobbying in this country is getting out of control. We don’t know who is meeting whom. We don’t know whether any favours are being exchanged. We don’t know which outside interests are wielding unhealthy influence. This isn’t a minor issue with minor consequences. Commercial interests – not to mention government contracts – worth hundreds of billions of pounds are potentially at stake”.

While, as we say, not everyone in the lobbying world will welcome Cameron’s comments (and some are probably already lobbying to reduce the impact of any new rules!), the head of public affairs at the PR Consultants Association, Mark Ramsdale, welcomed the Tory man’s remarks, though added that new rules should put obligations on MPs and ministers as well as lobbyists, both while in office and once they have left parliament or Whitehall.

He told esPResso: “This is something that is both timely and necessary. We support fully a transparent and open system. This does however require the system to work both ways. While we continue effectively to provide self-regulation for public affairs practitioners, Parliament must be prepared to do the same for its members. Those who have held office must remain accountable beyond their tenure. With individuals moving so quickly from government positions to roles outside Whitehall – whilst still maintaining a seat in Parliament – their use of insider knowledge and connections inevitably brings into disrepute a vital and legitimate component of the democratic process”.

Reputation management expert Jonathan Hemus of Insignia has said that while there have been some impressive elements to Toyota’s PR effort in responding to the recent ‘sticking accelerator’ issue, the whole escapade throws up some serious questions about wider communications at the motoring giant – and in particular about their internal communications activity.

Writing in The Guardian, Hemus says: “Toyota has done many things right in responding to its current crisis: its spokespeople have filled the media with messages of reassurance, its PR people have blogged and tweeted non-stop to fill the information vacuum, its website is full of details about the recall and its call centre is working flat out to deal with customer enquiries”.

But, noting that Toyota’s reputation is still taking quite a bashing, despite those efforts, he continues: “Central to Toyota’s problem is its perceived delay in identifying and addressing the situation in the first place. Whatever Toyota says now, and however well it acts, there is a sense that it ignored the problem until it was forced to take action. [And] the most effective crisis management takes place before the problem escalates out of control during the ‘incubation’ phase”.

Achieving that early response, Hemus continues, is also a comms challenge, but an internal communications one. He says: ”[There is] a hierarchical approach to management and a lack of open communication. Where this exists, junior employees who are best placed to spot early signs of crisis feel unable to point out flaws. As a result, problems go unnoticed and unresolved until they explode into a major crisis. Much better to put the fire out before it has reached this stage”.

You can read Hemus’ full piece on Toyota’s communication challenge here.

Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw last week confirmed that the government will allow product placement on British TV shows for the first time.

As previously reported, the government announced last year that it planned to allow commercial broadcasters to generate new revenues by charging brands to have a subtle presence within TV programmes. Unlike in the US and many other European countries, such paid-for brand exposure has been banned on British television until now.

Broadcasters like ITV hope the relaxation in product placement rules will provide a valuable new revenue stream to help compensate for the fall in traditional TV advertising income. Though some critics reckon that many advertisers will be cautious about embracing placement in case of a public backlash towards brand presence in programmes, while others may simply divert money originally pencilled for traditional ad spots to the new opportunities of in-programme exposure.

Confirming that product placement was being given the green light on British TV, albeit with some very specific restrictions, Bradshaw wrote in a ministerial statement earlier this month that the new system would “provide meaningful commercial benefits to commercial television companies and programme-makers while taking account of the legitimate concerns that have been expressed”.

ITV welcomed the new rules, despite the broadcaster’s management having a problem with some of the restrictions. A spokesman told reporters: “While we do not necessarily agree with the restrictions placed on certain categories, it is a step in the right direction as it will deliver additional revenue for investment in original content in the UK”.

Edelman, the “world’s largest independent PR agency”, as they like to say, has recruited former BBC global news boss Richard Sambrook, who will join the company as its Global Vice-Chairman and Chief Content Officer in May, after three decades on the media side of the fence in various roles at the Beeb.

Sambrook’s news and television skills will be very much utilised in his new role, helping Edelman clients to produce their own video content (an increasingly important task for many PR departments, as discussed in this esPResso interview with Dan Humphreys) and advising companies on crisis and issue communications.

Confirming his new job, Sambrook told esPResso: “I’m delighted to be joining Edelman in this new senior role. They are a company which I have long respected. Edelman’s leadership with digital media and their work on Trust and public engagement sets them apart and I’m greatly looking forward to helping to develop their content production and their approach to crisis and issues management”.

Edelman chief Richard Edelman added: “We are delighted to have someone of Richard’s calibre and experience joining our global team. His journalism and senior media company management resume is difficult to rival; equally important to us and our clients, Richard has been at the forefront of the digitisation of news and its interaction with the audience and stakeholders. Through his work establishing several BBC News channels [around the world] and his own long-term and personal commitment to social media, he understands very well how the audience is now – to use his own words – ‘on the pitch’, how content and news must be shaped by the needs of the consumer, and the new opportunities provided by social technologies”.

Despite recently announcing it would no longer comply with government censorship in China, a bold statement that reaffirmed its reputation as the friendly free spirit of the internet, the ever-expansive Google is nevertheless having to tackle the challenge that faces any trendy start-up once it becomes the establishment figure of its sector, the end of its honeymoon relationship with early adopters and opinion formers.

Which is possibly why bloggers and tech journalists gave the web firm’s latest innovation – Google Buzz – something of a lukewarm reception when it was launched earlier this month. And why many then jumped on the bandwagon when people started to express privacy concerns about the new service, which automatically set itself up on existing Gmail webmail accounts.

Google Buzz is an attempt to add Facebook and Twitter style social networking functionality to the search engine firm’s existing Gmail platform, enabling users to have a more public Google profile and to share status updates with those people they most frequently communicate with via the Gmail’s email and instant messaging services.

Complaints began to surface, though, over Google’s decision to automatically add Buzz functionality to every GMail account, and to automatically ‘connect’ each GMail user with those they already communicate with frequently by email. Many GMail users objected to such connections being made without their consent, and complained that the auto-connect function revealed to others who they most frequently correspondended with in private, information they may not want made public.

But as criticism for the new service spread through the blogosphere and on Twitter, Google did react quickly, both in terms of altering those parts of the service that had caused concerns, and in issuing a statement on the issue via their own blog. A Google product manager blogged thus: “We quickly realised that we didn’t get everything quite right. We’re very sorry for the concern we’ve caused and have been working hard ever since to improve things based on your feedback. We’ll continue to do so”.

Google have always been good at responding quickly and honestly to issues via their own website. Whether that will be enough to overcome the decline in trust and goodwill which naturally comes with being a multi-billion dollar multi-national corporation remains to be seen.

A new website has launched promoting best practice in the media relations sector, with a ‘bill of rights’ calling on PR agencies to adhere to various rules when sending bumf to media people. The rules have been devised in association with various journalists and bloggers, and cover most of the PR bugbears of your average media type.

Among the ‘rights’ listed on the ‘An Inconvenient PR Truth’ website are that PR people only send press releases to journalists who have given the OK to receive such things, that releases are timely and targeted, and that PR officers don’t bug journalists on the phone once a release has been sent. Yeah, good luck with that.

A number of key PR people have given their backing to the website, including Borkowski founder Mark Borkwoski and Stephen Waddington, MD of Speed Communications. The former told PR Week: “PR spam is as contagious as chlamydia and has the same effect. It can cause sterility in the people infected. The only difference is that everyone in the PR world’s passed on a spam infection at some point, accidentally or not”.

You can find out more about the campaign at www.inconvenientprtruth.com

Phil Hall’s PHA Media has confirmed to PR Week that it will be advising England football captain John Terry on his media strategy now that an injunction blocking coverage of his affair with Vanessa Perroncel, the partner of former Chelsea and current England teammate Wayne Bridge, has been lifted.

A number of other celebrity PRs had previously said they would be cautious about taking Terry on as a client, especially once it became clear Max Clifford was representing Perroncel. However one of those who said he wouldn’t be keen to represent Terry at this time, Gary Farrow, nevertheless admitted to the trade magazine “sport is a different area and people have short memories – his branding within Chelsea won’t be a problem”.

Of course the fact Terry tried to bury this story by using one of those increasingly controversial super-injunctions, similar to that used by energy firm Trafigura last year, hasn’t helped. Firstly it could reduce the number of sympathetic journalists who might otherwise come to his defence, given how hated the newly oppressive British privacy laws are among the press. And secondly, it implies to the public that the England captain has more to hide than he probably really has. It’s another demonstration of the fact that if celebrities or companies want proper reputation management they are better turning to reputation managers from a PR background rather than a legal one.

Ian Monk, PR advisor to Wayne Rooney among others, told PR Week: “Lesson number one for reputation managers: only call in the legal attack dogs if there is a real chance of a sustainable victory. Securing a killer injunction which is publicly torn up by the courts a week later multiplies the damage ultimately done.The initial story gets published with venomous interest through its status as ‘The story they tried to ban’. This has always guaranteed extra blood in the water”.

Still, some reckon Hall, more than anyone, is up to the job of turning things round for Terry, despite the reputation damage his lawyers (and before that his libido) has caused. It will certainly be interesting to see how Hall does, given, as the Guardian pointed out yesterday, he himself was critical of the PR people handling that other recent sportsman in scandal, Mr Tiger Woods, going as far as to write on his own blog: “On every main principle of crisis management, Woods and his team failed”.

So back to the ongoing dispute between those involved in media monitoring and the Newspaper Licensing Agency.

As much previously reported, the NLA is the body which licences the companies which make photocopies of newspaper cuttings available on a commercial basis, so mainly cuttings and PR agencies. Such a licence is required under UK copyright law, which gives a publisher the right to control who makes physical copies of its content.

The NLA has recently seen a decline in the number of companies buying its licences because increasingly PR people provide their clients or directors with lists of links to online versions of articles about their companies, rather than actual physical photocopies. Because this is basically a digital alternative to the old method of making photocopies of relevant articles, the NLA announced last year that PR agencies would now need to get a licence to legally provide ‘link lists’ to their clients as well.

However, the PR industry disagrees that such licences are required. Because no copy of an article is actually made when a link to a relevant piece is provided to a client, copyright law does not apply, and therefore no licence is needed. One media monitoring company called Meltwater is so sure this is the case that they have taken the NLA to the Copyright Tribunal – the court that considers copyright disputes – in a bid to get judicial confirmation that no links licence is required. In response to that legal action the NLA put its plans to launch the new licence on hold – or, rather, it claims a licence is still needed, but says it won’t invoice anyone until the Tribunal has ruled.

The latest development is that the PR Consultants Association, who have opposed the proposed licence since it was first mooted last year, have formally joined Meltwater as a partner in its legal action against the NLA. The PRCA had previously welcomed the cutting agency’s action, and will now work with it in presenting the PR industry’s case to the Copyright Tribunal.

PRCA Director General Francis Ingham told esPResso: “In the face of their aggression, it’s not good enough just to talk tough with the NLA – we need to act tough too. That is why we have intervened in support of Meltwater. We will now pursue this case with vigour and to a conclusion. We are clear that the NLA‘s pretensions have no basis in law, and represent an intolerable attempt to restrict and to tax knowledge. We are certain that standing up to the NLA – and standing up for the PR industry – is the right thing to do”.

A spokesman for the NLA told reporters: “This move from the PRCA comes as no surprise and makes no difference to web licensing for newspaper content. Monitoring agencies are still required to have and pay for a web licence but we will not invoice their clients for their NLA web licences until the Copyright Tribunal has ruled. We regret that, unlike other trade organisations and companies, the PRCA chose not to engage constructively while the NLA consulted on its web licences throughout 2009”.

In related news, the Financial Times has announced it will start to licence digital images of FT newspaper articles directly to cuttings and PR agencies, rather than via the NLA. This isn’t related to the controversial links licence, but rather to the licence needed to access PDFs of FT print output for distribution to clients. Such access was previously available with an NLA licence, but as those licences come up for renewal FT content will no longer be included and companies will have to get a licence for the business paper directly. The FT say the move to cut the NLA out of this part of its operations is part of a wider “direct licensing strategy”.

A Scottish PR firm which in part specialises in digital PR has called on more communications agencies to give their staff on-the-job training in all things digital.

The bosses of Revolver say that while an increase in the number of formal PR courses covering digital matters is a good thing, developments in internet technologies and digital media happen so fast these days, agencies should encourage employees to keep abreast of changes as part of their day to day jobs.

Revolver MD Iain Bruce told esPResso: “While there is a need for existing PR qualifications to encompass digital issues in order to meet the growing demand from agencies for digital PR practitioners, there is a limit to what you can expect such courses to achieve. The digital media moves at the speed of light and is in a constant cycle of evolution and change, meaning that formal course materials are at risk of falling out of date before they’ve even been written”.

He continued: “In our experience new staff benefit far more from on-the-job digital PR training than they do by following a course-based syllabus. While this requires more time and resources to be focused upon each individual, it’s a process that ultimately produces far greater returns”.

So, the ongoing battle between the fiercer of the celebrity PRs and the bolder of the gossip journalists went public this week when the Daily Mirror’s 3am.co.uk gossip team decided that Peter Andre’s people had gone just too far with their demands while offering the tabloid five minutes with their man to talk about his latest celebrity endorsement deal, as the face of Costa Coffee’s latest hot, caffeinated drink.

On Andre’s big coffee day the Mirror hacks wrote on their website: “Do you know where we’re supposed to be right now? At a central London coffee shop, waiting for five glorious minutes with Peter Andre. However, instead we’re going to tell you exactly why we won’t be obediently trotting along to meet him”.

Was it because coffee is a lovely drink but a tedious topic of conversation? Yes. And because Andre’s management, Can Associates, had apparently insisted on a contract being signed beforehand ensuring that there would be no talk of anything else but the reality TV star’s sudden passion for the caffeine drink.

And while they were at it, they demanded that no pictures of Katie Price come anywhere near the finished article, that all photo captions would be positive, and that Can and Andre would be allowed to approve the whole thing before it went online.

The Mirror continued: “We’ve all seen contracts like this before, particularly those of us who’ve worked on celebrity magazines, but nobody is more controlling than Can, who might want to look into changing their name to Can’t”.

So, 3am returned an email informing Can that “we’re simply not prepared to agree to such ridiculously strict terms… we wouldn’t agree to these insanely restrictive terms for Britney or Brad, so we’re hardly going to for Peter”.

The result? Can are now refusing to allow 3am access to any of their clients ever again. 3am, meanwhile, are informing all their readers to go to Starbucks.

And if you’ve now got a taste for good news, then here, have some more.

New figures from the Institute Of Practitioners In Advertising has reported that, while marketing and communication spends continued to decline in the last quarter of 2009, the level of decline was at its lowest since the start of 2008, leading to the trade body expressing renewed optimism for the wider communication industries in the year to come. The part of the so called Bellwether Report that specifically looks a PR and other ‘below-the-line’ marketing activities reported that overall budgets declined 4% in the final quarter of 2009, compared to a 24.4% decline in the previous quarter.

Commenting on the stats, Andy Viner, Head of Media at accountants BDO LLP, who sponsor the survey, told reporters: “These results are good news for the marketing services sector. After nine consecutive quarters of reduced marketing spend, it appears that the rate of decline is at its slowest in nearly two years”.

He continued: “There are a number of indicators to demonstrate that confidence is returning, with companies being upbeat about their own sectors and their corporate performance. Marketing budgets in 2010 are now set to grow, with companies re-thinking their budget allocation. [Though] unsurprisingly, companies are continuing to seek cost effective and flexible options where the return on investment can be measured”.

While many in the sector had to trim their waist lines and hold their breath during the difficult year that was 2009, some reckon that with hindsight this might turn out to have been a pretty good recession for the PR industry.

That is to say, an increasing number of companies have recognised the value of good communications in protecting corporate reputations during tricky times, and the crucial role public relations – as a more nimble and reactive communications discipline than advertising and marcomms – has to play in successful corporate management. Which means business leaders increasingly recognise the importance of good PR, which has to be good news for the industry as the economy recovers.

And you don’t have to believe me about this. An article in the latest edition of The Economist headlined “Good News” reports on the relative good health of the US PR industry following the economic turmoil of the last twelve months, and observes: “PR has done well in part because it is often cheaper than mass advertising campaigns [and] its impact, in the form of favourable coverage in the media or online, can also be more easily measured”.

Perhaps stating the obvious to those within the industry, but reaffirming an important trend to the wider business community, the article continues: “PR firms are beginning to encroach on territory that used to be the domain of advertising firms, a sign of their increasing clout. They used chiefly to pitch story ideas to media outlets and try to get their clients mentioned in newspapers. Now they also dream up and orchestrate live events, web launches and the like”.

The article adds that it is not just economic turmoil that has helped boost the credibility of PR, with the changed media landscape also playing a role. It observes: “The withering of many traditional media outlets has left fewer journalists from fewer firms covering business. That makes PR doubly important, both for attracting journalists’ attention, and for helping firms bypass old routes altogether and disseminate news by posting press releases on their websites, for example. The rise of the internet and social media has given PR a big boost”.

If you’re enjoying all this “good news” then you might want to check out the full Economist piece for more. It’s available here.

A cautionary tale now for those in the business of celebrity endorsement, and no, it’s nothing to do with Tiger Woods.

A government supported campaign to tackle the rise of so called cyber-bullying in schools – where bullys target their victims via email, text or social networks – last year signed up popular urban pop outfit N-Dubz to front their campaign. When the trio released a special anti-bullying song to mark the launch of the BeatBullying campaign last November, Schools Minister Ed Balls said the group were “great ambassadors” for the project.

But the association turned sour last week thanks to the actions of the most maverick member of the N-Dubz set up, Dino ‘Dappy’ Contostavlos. During an interview on the Chris Moyles show on Radio 1 one listener sent a text message to the studio dissing the band and branding Dappy “a little boy with a silly hat”. Not happy with the comments, the rapper seemingly wrote down the mobile number of the listener and later sent her threatening emails. This included the message: “Your gonna die, U sent a very bad msg towards N Dubz on The Chris Moyels show yesterday Morning and for that reason u will never be left alone!!”.

Once the listener started sharing the messages with the press both the band and Radio 1 were quick to apologise, but it was the PR team at BeatBullying who arguably had the biggest challenge on their hands, given their ambassador was doing the very thing they were campaigning against – cyberbullying.

A spokesman for the campaign quickly announced they would no longer be working with N-Dubz, telling reporters: “BeatBullying in no way condones this behaviour and we stress that sending any threatening messages of any kind is completely unacceptable. Dappy’s behaviour is not becoming of an ambassador to young people. We have no further plans to work with the band”.

Meanwhile Balls was forced to review his opinion of the urban act, telling reporters: “This text message was completely unacceptable and it is right that he has not only apologised, but accepted there was no excuse for his behaviour. I know that many artists work with Beatbullying because they genuinely want to use their influence with young people to campaign against bullying. But that starts with ensuring their own behaviour sets the right example”.

The Newspaper Licensing Agency has put its new ‘links licence’ on hold pending a Copyright Tribunal ruling.

As previously reported, the NLA, which traditionally provides licenses to companies who want to frequently photocopy newspaper articles for commercial reasons, including PR firms and clippings agencies, last year announced its plan to licence those companies who now provide links to online versions of articles rather than physical copies, as has become the trend in the media relations sector in recent years.

The announcement was controversial because most of the companies providing such links deny they need to be licensed. They argue that because no actual copies of any articles are made when links are provided, copyright issues are irrelevant, and therefore so are licensing concerns. As also previously reported, last month media monitors Meltwater announced they would take the NLA to the UK’s Copyright Tribunal – the court that considers copyright disputes – in a bid to get judicial backing for this viewpoint.

Given that action, the NLA has said it will put the introduction of the new links licence on hold, and will not bill those agencies providing commercial link services.

The boss of the Public Relations Consultants Assocition, who had previously spoken out against the link licence proposals, welcomed the NLA‘s announcement. Writing on his blog, Francis Ingham wrote: “The fundamental point is this. If they [the NLA] were confident of their position, they wouldn’t have blinked. But they have. And in our view, it’s because their bluff’s been called. Now their plans are in limbo. And they’ll remain there for between nine and twelve months while the Tribunal completes its work. We’re considering what our next step is, and we’ll keep the industry up-to-date about how we’re fighting for their interests. But be in no doubt -this is a terrible day for the NLA; a good day for the PR industry”.

Some had previously argued that the NLA‘s proposals were especially unwarranted given plans by many newspaper owners to put the bulk of their content behind ‘pay walls’. This would mean that companies receiving link lists from commercial link providers would have to have active subscriptions to see the content linked to, meaning newspaper owners would be receiving due payment from those accessing their content anyway.

A fun one from the advertising industry now, that demonstrates the power of one increasingly news-worthy website, as well as the influence of so called outdoor advertising – so billboards and bus advertising etc.

It centres on a recent marketing campaign staged by the outdoor advertising sector’s own trade body, which was designed to prove the power of their ad medium in getting consumers talking. Members of the Outdoor Advertising Association have posted a number of adverts for a website called Britainthinks.com onto the sides of buses and billboard poster sites around the UK. The posters carry deliberately contentious slogans like “educashun isn’t working”, “1966 – it won’t happen this year” and “career women make bad mothers”. The ads encourage people to go to the Britainthinks.com website to vote and comment on the remarks in the ads.

While the Britainthinks.com website claims that it’s been “created to give people a new voice and support the vibrant democracy that the people of Britain already participate in up and down the country – in the pubs, living rooms and street corners of our nation”, in fact the whole thing has been set up by an ad agency called Beta to prove that, despite the growth of digital advertising and viral marketing, traditional posters on a wall (or bus) are capable of attracting consumer attention and generating public debate.

It’s the “career women make bad mothers” remark that has proven that is indeed the case, albeit with the help of the increasingly vocal website-for-mothers Mumsnet. Seemingly unaware that the ads were deliberately contentious, or that the whole thing was set up to demonstrate the power of outdoor marketing, Mumsnet readers have been hitting out at the posters. According to The Guardian, one reader commented on one of the site’s message boards: “The poster I saw on the side of a building today felt like a kick in the stomach”.

As outrage grew a spokeswoman for Beta recently announced its career mum ads would be taken down, partly to appease the outraged, and partly, possibly, because the aim of their campaign has sort of been achieved.

Beta’s Sharon Johnson told reporters: “There has been a misunderstanding with an important mothers’ forum about this campaign which is about sparking a debate. It is not what the campaign thinks. But rather than offend people the decision has been taken to replace the posters saying ‘career women make bad mothers’ with other slogans which work just as effectively”.

At the end of November six more black and minority ethnic graduates from the University Of East London completed the second Brunswick Internship Programme, the unique PR training programme run by Unicorn Jobs with our sister company Taylor Bennett and leading communications firm Brunswick, designed to address diversity in the communications industry.

Over ten weeks, six talented communicators at the very start of their PR careers received intensive on-the-ground training, with formal sessions on the media, the City, stakeholders, channels and messages, campaign planning, and general business and communication skills, plus introductions to media relations, investor relations, internal communications, public affairs and financial PR.

They also got to meet leading media and PR practitioners from a wide range of companies, including Reuters, Save The Children, BP, The Financial Times, Glyndebourne, CIPR, and The Observer, while also visiting both the Bank Of England and London Metals Exchange.

For the final two days of the internship at the start of this month, the interns were invited to Yorkshire by PR agency Northern Lights, where they met numerous business leaders and PR professionals from companies and organisations based in Bradford, Leeds and Harrogate. Northern Lights CEO Victoria Tomlinson is currently planning to run a similar diversity programme in Yorkshire during 2010.

Commenting on her interest in the programme, Victoria told esPResso: “Skills in corporate communications are needed by businesses, public sector and voluntary organisations – but there is a shortage of black and minority ethnic candidates choosing this career path. When we heard about this internship, we knew it was right for Yorkshire. These six young people were selected from 200 applicants in a gruelling two day interview process. We are sure they will have successful careers – and we also want them to be ambassadors for Yorkshire as they progress.”

Commenting on the Yorkshire visit, one of the interns, Jenard Dyer, added: “As a team, we carried out research before our visit and that started to change our perceptions about Yorkshire. But meeting the region’s leaders and seeing Saltaire, Harrogate and Leeds really blew our minds. We had imagined very rural areas before, and a lot of sheep! We couldn’t believe how much business there is here – there are definitely opportunities to work with Yorkshire in the future as we go into our communications jobs in London”.

You can read about the 2009 Brunswick Internship Programme on the interns’ blog here. If you would like to support future programmes in any way contact Sarah Stimson at sarah@unicornjobs.com

While many in the PR industry have seen their workload winding down this week as the Christmas break approaches, the decidedly wintery weather has made it a particularly demanding few days for communicators at certain travel companies.

Not least Eurostar, who are facing a big ‘reputation repair’ challenge in the New Year after icy temperatures put their trains out of action for three days. Much of the media coverage of the cancelled trains has focused on disgruntled passengers stranded at St Pancras station in London complaining about the lack of communication on Eurostar’s part.

Typical of the quotes being run by the TV and papers this weekend was one carried in the Financial Times, with one stranded passenger complaining: “The biggest problem is a lack of communication. Yesterday we got a phone number for Eurostar from a member of staff and there was no answer”.

With the faltering cross-channel service dominating the headlines in both France and the UK since Saturday, and with the French government calling for action, Eurostar’s PR efforts did seem to be ramped up yesterday, with the all important CEO statement delivered to the cameras in time for the tea time news bulletins.

Of course there was similar chaos at some UK airports, which were also negatively impacted by the snow. Though, while some stranded passengers were complaining about poor communication there as well, no one company has been saddled with the blame, with both airport owners and numerous airlines being involved. Though credit to Manchester Airport for making sure TV cameras saw that their MD was on the ground dealing directly with customer complaints.

It will be interesting to see what measures Eurostar take after the Christmas break in a bid to restore their previously good reputation following the technical faults and much reported customer complaints of poor communications.

Simon Cowell has reportedly offered communications jobs to the couple who managed to beat him and his ‘X-Factor’ machine to the Christmas number one slot this week. Though I’m not sure they are all that interested in the offer.

As you have surely seen, Essex-based couple Jon and Tracy Morter staged a grass roots Facebook campaign to try and get a 1992 track by shouty rockers Rage Against The Machine into the Christmas number one slot, instead of a cover version by the winner of Cowell’s talent show franchise.

Despite staging their campaign from their living room, while Cowell had a prime time TV show, major record company, high street presence and large marketing budget on his side, it was the Morters who were celebrating when the Christmas chart was announced on Sunday. It was a real victory for organised online communications, and another demonstration of how social networking has really come of age in 2009.

Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Cowell revealed he had called Jon Morter and offered him a job at his record company. He said: “I am genuinely impressed by the campaign they have run. It has been a good campaign with no dirty tricks and without any funding. This is their first attempt at putting out a record and they got a Christmas number one, so they have not done badly at all. [I called them], I wanted them to come and work for me. I was deadly serious, but they haven’t taken me up on the offer”.

Bear this in mind as you’re handed yet another chocolate on Christmas day – despite the sector’s reputation for excessive partying and boozing, the PR industry is actually one of the healthiest. Which presumably means too much turkey this Christmas and you will stand out among all your healthy colleagues.

The PR sector’s good health was declared by cash plan provider Medicash, who conducted an online survey about the lifestyles of people in various different professions. It seems PR professionals, and their colleagues in marketing and advertising, drink less and are less likely to smoke. It’s the hospitality industry where people eat the most junk food and indulge in plenty of cigarettes and alcohol.

PR Week quote Medicash Sales & Marketing Director Peter Lauris, presumably fresh from a very healthy booze-free lunch, as saying: “The survey showed that stress and unsociable hours can have a negative effect on people’s ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The fact that employees in this sector find work demanding but still manage to limit the effect this has on their lifestyle is testimony to their resilience”.

A leading online media monitoring company will test the legality of those previously reported attempts by the UK newspaper industry to earn a licence fee from companies who commercially provide links to specific stories on newspaper websites.

As previously reported, the move to charge licence fees to the growing link provider industry is being led by the Newspaper Licensing Agency. They currently licence companies, including PR agencies and traditional media monitors, who regularly make photocopies of specific stories from newspapers, normally stories relating or of interest to their clients. Under UK copyright law, said companies are obligated to pay a licence fee for making commercial copies of newspaper articles.

However, an increasing number of companies in the media relations industry now provide clients or senior executives with lists of links to relevant articles on newspaper websites, instead of actual photocopies of articles from print editions. Aware that this will have a negative impact on their income, as more and more agencies decide to go without a traditional press cuttings licence, earlier this year the NLA announced it would require the PR industry to pay a new licence fee for commercial link provision, which it sees as simply a digital version of the provision of press cuttings.

However, most people in the PR and media monitoring industries disagree. They say that because no copying is done when mere links are provided to a client, there are no obligations under copyright law to pay a royalty. Now the Meltwater Group is planning to put that argument to the test by taking the NLA to the Copyright Tribunal, the British court that adjudicates on copyright disputes.

Meltwater CEO Jorn Lyseggen told esPResso: “Media monitoring services create value for internet users similar to search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. We use sophisticated search algorithms to help our clients find content they otherwise would have difficulties locating. The NLA‘s attempt to license our clients is essentially a tax on receiving these internet links. This fee is not only unjust and unreasonable, it is contrary to the very spirit of the internet”.

Francis Ingham of the Public Relations Consultants Association, who are also opposed to the NLA‘s proposals, added: “This is an absurd tax which we believe has no legal justification. We are delighted Meltwater is taking a stand against the NLA and will examine whether we can intervene to strengthen their case in the interest of our members. It is ludicrous for organisations to need a licence to receive links to coverage that is freely available to view online”.

The NLA‘s proposals are backed by many, though not all, of the UK newspaper publishers. How the Agency’s new licence claims will stand up in court remains to be seen. Presumably the fact a number of British newspapers plan to start putting a lot of their content behind ‘virtual walls’ in 2010, charging a subscription fee for access, will make the NLA‘s claim even harder to justify, given the link providers’ clients will have to pay to access the content they are directed to anyway, paying via a subscription to each newspaper’s website rather than an NLA licencing system.

Michael Heseltine has announced he will stand down as the Executive Chairman of the Haymarket Media Group, the publishing company who, among other things, publish PR Week and a number of advertising and marketing industry trade magazines. The former Deputy Prime Minister has led Haymarket since its creation in 1957. He will continue to act as Chairman for the company, but his son Rupert will take over the running of the firm on a day-to-day basis from the New Year.

The change in management follows a difficult year for the wider publishing industry, and a resulting restructure at Haymarket, particularly within its marketing industry titles, where Media Week will become an online only operation. Commenting on changes in the media industry, and how he planned to respond to them, Rupert Heseltine told the Telegraph: “The power of the internet is ever growing so we have to find new revenue streams, new business models. We have an advantage with incredibly powerful brands. That strength will be the key to our success but what we will need to do is to move to different sorts of products”.

The CIPR yesterday announced the names of the first ever ‘chartered PR practitioners’, the people who have successfully completed the trade body’s new professional qualification.

CIPR Acting Director General Ann Mealor told esPResso: “Those receiving Chartered Practitioner status this year are all pioneers, setting the bar for future generations of PR leaders. They’ve had to successfully complete a rigorous assessment process to emerge as the profession’s first Chartered PR Practitioners and are to be congratulated. This is a landmark for the CIPR and the PR profession as a whole. This status delivers parity with other business disciplines, and supports our Royal Charter obligation to promote, for the public benefit, high levels of skill, knowledge, competence, standards of practice and professional conduct”.

Those to achieve the chartered status are: Matt Appleby, Golley Slater; Hilary Berg, Corporate Culture Ltd; Paul Corry, Rethink; Jonathan Cross, People, Words & Pictures Ltd; David Crundwell, PR Consultant; Jane Cumming, Platform PR Group Limited; Tricia Defty, Thinc PR; Susan Fox, Information Commissioner’s Office; Pat Gaudin; Jane Howard, Mandate Communications; Emma Leech, University of Nottingham; Matthew McKay, BioMed Central; Anne Moir, Institution of Civil Engineers; Paul Mylrea, Department For International Development; Paul Noble, Noble Ink; Jay O’Connor, Influence Crowd; David Russell, East Lothian Council; Alan Smith, Altium Limited; Paul Smyth, River PR; Matt Tee, Cabinet Office; Martin Turner, NHS Warwickshire; Francoise Van Buuren; Peter Walker, Pielle Consulting Group; Jason Wassell, DLA Piper UK LLP; and Sue Wolstenholme, Ashley Public Relations.

The Conservative’s culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt has denied allegations that his party has entered into an official alliance with Rupert Murdoch’s News International newspaper group. Peter Mandelson led the accusations against the Tories and The-Sun-and-Times owning newspaper company last week, after The Sun’s coverage of Gordon Brown’s hand written letter to the mother of a solider killed in Afghanistan.

The story was the first major manifestation of The Sun’s much publicised shift of political allegiance to David Cameron’s Conservatives. Though – while reigniting the debate about Britain’s role in Afghanistan – if anything the Brown-bashing scoop boosted public sympathy for the Prime Minister, many seeming to think he was being unfairly criticised for making an effort to personally respond to army families’ grief.

Nevertheless, some at the heart of government felt the need to publicly chastise The Sun for running the story. It was while doing some chastisement of his own that Mandelson accused the Tories of “effectively forming a contract” with the Murdoch papers, adding that he wondered what concessions Cameron might have to make to the media firm, if and when he forms government, in return for their fulsome support.

But Hunt says such allegations are “absolute nonsense”, and that for Mandelson to make them was “completely wrong and totally improper”. In an interview, albeit with Sky News, the news channel partly owned by Murdoch, of course, Hunt said: “There are no deals. I think what Peter Mandelson said is extraordinary. If there was some deal between the Conservatives and News Corp now, then what about Labour’s deal in 1997 or 2001 or 2005? It’s absolute nonsense. If you look at what we’ve been saying on media policy, it’s been very, very consistent for the last two years”.

Mandelson’s comments about The Sun/Conservative alliance come as Hunt confirmed changes his party would make to media ownership rules should they form the next government. Ahead of speaking at the Manchester Media Festival, Hunt told the Telegraph the Tories would remove rules that limit cross-media ownership in the regions, allowing local radio and newspaper groups to merge. Hunt is also expected to reconfirm plans to limit the digital expansion of the BBC. All of which will be welcomed by the Murdochs (Rupert and son James), though also and possibly more so by many of their competitors.

In reality The Sun is probably backing the Tories at next year’s General Election because their victory seems more and more assured, and the red top tabloid likes to be seen to back the political winners. Since the tabloid announced its support for the Tories, and even as it began its first really vitriolic attack on Brown, Rupert Murdoch announced that he still had a lot of respect for the Prime Minister, and that he regretted his UK taboid’s decision to switch sides, even though he conceded it was the right decision.

Paris-based advertising giant Publicis Groupe has announced plans to restructure the PR agency part of its business, creating one umbrella brand under which all its corporate communication agencies will sit. The umbrella brand will take the name of one of its bigger PR divisions, MS&L Worldwide. Also sitting within the all new MS&L Group will be Publicis Consultants Worldwide, JKL, Winner & Associates, TMG Strategies, PBJS, Relay, Capital MS&L, Hanmer MS&L, Carré Noir, SAS, Masius and Publicis Events.

The Group will be overseen by Olivier Fleurot, who will take on the role of Group CEO. He has reportedly been overseeing both MS&L Worldwide and the Publicis Consultants Worldwide since those agencies’ respective bosses departed earlier this year.

Explaining the move to bring all of the Publicis PR operations under one division, Fleurot said in a statement: “By sharing best practices and knowledge across regions, we provide clients with a seamless and consistent approach and help them to manage their most pressing business and communications needs. In a fast-changing world undergoing unprecedented transformation, our clients are looking for an organisation that provides both global scale and specialised services. Our network, under one brand, one leadership team, and a common purpose, will be able to meet the challenge”.

Political bloggers have welcomed the review of Downing Street’s communications which was announced last week, and which may further open up the channels between the heart of government and the media at large. Some reckon the move is in recognition of the growing importance of political bloggers over more traditional political journalists. Infamous blogger Paul ‘Guido Fawkes’ Staines announced the review with the headline “Guido killed the lobby star”. In reality the secretive nature of the British government’s press briefings to so called ‘lobby journalists’ was ended years ago, not least when Tony Blair’s press secretary Alastair Campbell put the daily updates ‘on the record’. These days a summary of the daily briefings is also put on the Number 10 website. 

But the new review of communications at Number 10 may further open up the daily press meetings, especially proposals to televise some or all of the briefings. Among the TV proposals being considered is one that the Prime Minister’s press secretary’s briefings be filmed, while another suggests that a senior minister provide a bespoke weekly briefing for the TV cameras. In the current government that minister would most likely be Peter Mandelson, widely seen as the current government’s best communicator, despite continued mixed public opinion of the Business Secretary, even among faithful Labour voters.

The review is being headed up by Simon Lewis, the former Vodafone and Buckingham Palace communications chief who recently became Gordon Brown’s press secretary. He announced the review, alongside Financial Times journalist Jean Eaglesham, who chairs the lobby reporters’ group. Both will lead the review, which will also involve a number of other journalists and government officials.

Lewis and Eaglesham admitted the review was needed partly because of dramatic changes in the news media in the last decade, not least the 24/7 nature of news reporting in the internet and rolling-news-channel age, and the increasing importance of bloggers and social media in setting the news agenda.

However, there are other motivations for the review. With the reputation of the political community at an all time low following the fall out of the expenses scandal, Lewis’ review is also part of an initiative to try and make government seem more open in a bid to renew public confidence in MPs and ministers.

The Cabinet Office has resisted calls for tougher rules to regulate the lobbying sector, rejecting proposals made by a parliamentary select committee that a statutory register be created where political consultants must state their clients, and record any meetings they have had with MPs. There has been increasing support in political circles for more transparency in the world of lobbying. Some in the public affairs sector support some sort of register, though mainly on a voluntary rather than statutory basis, perhaps in line with the voluntary register that has already been launched at a European level. But others in the industry are opposed to any new regulation of the way they operate.

In its report, the Cabinet Office throws its support behind the voluntary register idea, though without the stick of threatening to launch a compulsory system if the industry can’t agree on how to better self-regulate. The Office has said, however, that it will continue to review efforts made regarding a voluntary register.

The report does put more pressure on those of the political side of the equation to declare their exposure to lobbyists. The list of civil servants who must declare any hospitality or expenses received from political consultants or their clients will be extended, and that information will be published online every quarter.

Responding to the government’s decisions regarding the lobbying review, the chair of the Select Committee who proposed the statutory register, Tony Wright, told reporters: “I am glad that the government has accepted some of our proposals to increase the transparency of lobbying but disappointed that it has not accepted the case for a statutory register, which is where I think we shall eventually end up”.

In related news, a group in the House Of Lords has proposed that peers should not be allowed to do any paid lobbying work. The committee of Lords is also keen to improve the public perception of Parliament, and hopes the ban on lobbying work would end damaging “peers for hire” stories in the press. It’s thought that if the government adopted the proposals about eight Lords would have to give up ongoing lobbying work.

If the rules are introduced in the Lords, pressure for similar restrictions on MPs in the Commons would grow. Responding to the Lords committee’s recommendations, David Miller of SpinWatch told PR Week: “It is obvious that the ban on parliamentarians acting as lobbyists must now extend to the House of Commons. Public trust relies on knowing that MPs and Lords are acting in the public interest”.

Any new rules to restrict MPs and Lords operating in the lobbying sector would actually be welcomed by the Association Of Professional Political Consultants. Their chair, Robbie MacDuff, told PR Week: “Our view on this is very simple: Parliamentarians should not be paid lobbyists”.

An interesting development over in the advertising sector now. The UK’s Advertising Standard’s Authority will extend its remit and start policing online advertising activities thanks to a deal with Google. The advertising industry’s regulatory body has been interested in having a more proactive role in overseeing online marketing for a while now, especially so called ‘search advertising’. But the body is funded by the industry it regulates, and has so far struggled to agree with key players in online advertising, in particular US-based Google, how its regulation of their part of the industry should be paid for.

But the ASA announced yesterday that Google had agreed to provide “vital seed capital” to help launch a digital advertising regulation initiative. However, the agreement is pretty short term, and a more long term arrangement needs to be sorted out. Nevertheless, it has been hailed as a landmark deal in the self-regulation of online advertisng. 

The ASA‘s Winston Fletcher told reporters: “This stands to be an incredibly important development in effective self regulation by the advertising industry. It promises to strengthen significantly the reach and work of the ASA, which will be good for our industry and vital for consumers. The active role that Google has played has been essential”.

Waitrose has entered into a multi-layered marketing partnership with Camilla Kerslake, the 21 year old classical music singer who has been winning press attention mainly by being the first signing to Gary Barlow’s new record label. The campaign will centre on a new TV ad which will be sound-tracked by Kerslake’s version of the hymn ‘How Can I Keep From Singing?’, recorded exclusively for the supermarket chain. A number of other promotions will follow, including Kerslake performing at various Waitrose organised events. They will also stock the singer’s music in store.

As well as promoting the retail chain in the run up to Christmas, the partnership will also promote the singer, whose debut album is released this month. Presumably Waitrose hope that if they help launch Kerslake to the masses they will share in the press coverage that may follow.

Six graduates from the University Of East London are about to head into their fifth week on the unique PR internship run here at Unicorn Jobs.

As previously reported, every Autumn Unicorn Jobs teams up with Taylor Bennett and Brunswick to offer six black and ethnic minority graduates from UEL a unique paid PR internship. This year’s team are, from left to right, Junior Ayanbeku, Param Lard, Tina Tam, Charlotte Robertson, Claude Peters and Jenard Dyer.

Over a ten week programme they receive formal and hands-on training in business, media, office and project management, and everything there is to know about PR and corporate communications.

To find out more about this acclaimed diversity programme, how you could support or enable similar initiatives, and to properly meet this year’s interns (and read their weekly blog), click here.

The big story in the media industry last week provides a valuable case study for those communicators trying to convince employers or clients that a PR approach can be better than litigation when trying to bury bad news, even if there is a legal claim under the laws of confidence that could stop newspapers from reporting on a tricky story.

Last week mainstream media attention fell on so called ‘super-injunctions’, a relatively new kind of court ruling which bans all media from reporting on a certain news story – normally on privacy or confidence grounds – and from reporting on the existance of the injunction.

The super-injunction under the spotlight was one secured by legal firm Carter-Ruck on behalf of London-based oil traders Trafigura, and related to a confidential report into allegations a ship they had chartered illegally dumped toxic waste into the seas off the Ivory Coast, allegedly leading to illness among some of the population who lived near the coast line. The injunction stopped papers, in particular The Guardian, from reporting on an internal investigation into the affair.

It became news worthy when Trafigura learned that MP Paul Farrelly planned to raise a question in the House Of Commons about the super injunction, and its impact on press freedom, and that he would name check both Carter Ruck and the oil firm in his question. The lawyers quickly issued a warning to The Guardian that if they reported on Farrelly’s question they would be in breach of the original super-injunction.

This put the story on a whole new level, because the media’s right to report on events in parliament has been sacrosanct for centuries, and it’s not for the courts to interfer with parliamentary protocol. The Guardian subsequently let it slip that it was in dispute with a legal firm over their right, or not, to report on a question due to be asked in parliament.

The Twitter-sphere went into hyperdrive and, as bloggers found the offending question in parliamentary papers and published despite Carter Ruck’s warnings, and with MPs piling in to criticise the legal firm and their clients, the lawyers quickly withdrew their claim and gave The Guardian the all clear to report the story in full.

It’s interesting in PR terms because, without the super-injunction, Trafigura would have faced some negative reporting in The Guardian, and maybe some other broadsheets, but would have almost certainly not found themselves under anything like the media glare that resulted from Carter Ruck’s perceived attempts to interfere with parliamentary convention. Legal attempts to avoid a tricky PR challenge resulted in a PR disaster.

Reflecting on the fracas, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger wrote last week: [The textbook approach for dealing with tricky stories] has been blown away by a newspaper, together with the mass collaboration of total strangers on the web. Trafigura thought it was buying silence. A combination of old media – the Guardian – and new – Twitter – turned attempted obscurity into mass notoriety. This week’s Trafigura fiasco ought to be taught to aspiring MBAs and would-be journalists”.

A PR expert who worked for the McCann family in the months after their daughter Madeleine first went missing while on holiday in Portugal in May 2007 has won a libel action against The People.

Justine McGuinness sued the tabloid after they reported in October 2007 that she had charged the McCann fund £20,000 more than originally agreed, and that she had been forced to cease working for the family. McGuinness stepped down as the Find Madeleine Fund’s communications strategist after a few months, being succeeded by former BBC journalist Clarence Mitchell.

Responding to the newspaper’s allegations, McGuinness’ legal representative Amber Melville-Brown told the court: “In fact, Ms McGuinness did not overcharge the fund and indeed bore many of the necessary expenses herself. Neither was she forced to resign. As initially agreed with the fund, she left in September 2007 to meet other pre-arranged commitments”.

The People publishers MGM Limited have accepted that the allegations were untrue and apologised for the distress and embarrassment caused. They will make a donation to a charity of McGuinness’ choice as part of the legal settlement.

The Sun’s political editor, George Pascoe-Watson, is leaving the tabloid to move into a PR role at Portland, the political communications consultancy led by former Tony Blair advisor Tim Allan. He leaves the paper just weeks after it formally switched its political allegience to the Conservative Party.

Confirming his appointment as a Partner at Portland, Pascoe-Watson told esPResso: “I cannot wait to join Portland’s brilliant, energetic and dynamic team. I leave The Sun with nothing but happy memories of 22 years on Fleet Street. I was thrilled to have played a key role in switching The Sun’s support to David Cameron. I leave The Sun in the brilliant hands of Dominic Mohan, a friend and colleague who I anticipate will build on Rebekah Brooks’s formidable success. And it is now time to use the skills and experience of 22 years on the country’s biggest paper to great effect”.

Tim Allan added: “George is one of the best political journalists of his generation, and there is no training ground like The Sun. He has a superb knowledge not only of the media but also of today’s political landscape. His skills and experience are genuinely unique and will be absolutely invaluable to Portland’s clients”.

Pascoe-Watson will be succeeded at The Sun by Tom Newton Dunn.

The former Sun man is the latest in a number of high profile appointments at Portland. The other big names joining the comms agency in recent weeks are another sign of the lobbying sector preparing for a Conservative government next summer. David Cameron’s former press secretary George Eustice will join the company, as will Tory heavyweight Michael Portillo.

The exact nature of Portillo’s part time role with Portland is not known, though he did recently confirm the appointment, saying in a statement: “Portland has built a strong reputation and a first class knowledge of politics and the media. I look forward to working with the team and helping the business grow”.

I’m not convinced this is what the world needs in 2009, but smoothies brand Innocent is planning on reforming the St Winifred’s School Choir of 1980 this Christmas to re-release their Christmas number one single from that year, ‘There’s No One Quite Like Grandma’.

It’s all part of the drinks brand’s annual cause-related marketing initiative the Big Knit campaign, in which people all over the country knit special mini woolly hats which are placed on top of bottles of the smoothie drinks and sold in aid of Age Concern.

Frank PR are behind the St Winifred’s add on to this year’s Big Knit campaign. The agency’s Graham Goodkind told PR Week: ‘We are confident that reuniting St Winifred’s School Choir and re-releasing their 80s hit will generate plenty of talkability and give fresh impetus to the Big Knit”.

Staying with political communications, and the boss of the Public Relations Consultants’ Association recently called on key players in the lobbying sector to sign up to proposals for self-regulation. If they don’t, Francis Ingham warned, he believes any new Conservative government will deliver on its promises to introduce statutory regulation.

Proposals to increase transparency in lobbying through a register of interests and/or voluntary code of conduct have been much discussed in the public affairs industry, mainly because of moves by political types at both a European and UK level to force more regulation upon the sector. While some advocate voluntary regulation, some key players are still resisting any changes in current practice.

Writing on his blog earlier this month, the PRCA chief wrote: “Too many public affairs agencies out there still choose not to be regulated. They provide various excuses for this. They say that their internal codes of conduct are better than independent ones; that it wouldn’t be fair to their clients to reveal who they work with. What they really mean is that they’re free riders on the ethicality of their peers. That they are ashamed of who they work for. That they are incapable of adhering to proper codes of conduct”.

He continues: “Well, they now have a choice. If they continue to remain outside the pale of decent practice, then they will bring statutory regulation down upon not only themselves, but upon the public affairs industry as a whole. Their intransigence and obstinacy will inflict personal professional damage upon us all”.

Setting out his own plans in the area, he concluded: “We’ll be working over the next few months to extend our coverage of the industry, and to increase the already forty-plus public affairs agencies that are today members of the PRCA and already embrace self-regulation. And we’ll also be naming and shaming those companies – and their chiefs – that are putting our industry’s future at risk. Because it’s time they realised the threat they pose to the industry that they purport to love”.

You can read Ingham’s blog here.

The Unicorn Jobs team has just expanded with the recruitment of a new Consultant, Tanya Ferris.

Tanya has over eight years experience in PR and communications recruitment, most recently at Media Recruitment. She has placed candidates in agency and in-house roles, working with clients as diverse as Starbucks, Christies, Xbox and the RSPCA on the in-house side, and Hill & Knowlton, Mandate, Borkowski, Exposure and JCPR/Edelman in the agency domain.

Before moving into recruitment, Tanya worked in PR herself, overseeing consumer-focused campaigns for a range of clients across the retail, publishing, fashion and FMCG sectors.

General Electric, one of the biggest companies in the world, recently refreshed its UK communication set up, partly in bid to push forward the firm’s green credentials.

According to PR Week, GE have promoted their government relations chief, Miles Webber, to the new role of Director Of External Affairs. Although political types remain an important audience for the US-based conglomerate’s UK comms activity, it is alsokeen to ensure as many people as possible are fully aware of its investment in eco-friendly technology, and particularly in wind power – GE is a big provider of wind turbines.

Confirming his new role, Webber told PR Week: “We have always engaged with governments and stakeholders, but there is an increasing need for us to make sure our communication with key stakeholders is absolutely at the front of our corporate focus. We have a great story to tell about the range of things we care about – from wind to smart-meters, to early diagnoses in the health service, through to funding SMEs. We need to have a profile that reflects this”.

One from the celebrity endorsement file now. TV favourites Ant and Dec (do they still count as “favourites”?) are the new faces of Nintendo.

Although based around a television ad campaign which will see the ITV duo bigging up the gaming company, there are other elements to Ant and Dec’s Nintendo partnership too.

The presenters are expected to give a number of media interviews talking up Nintendo later this year and, possibly in a bid to give the dynamic duo something to talk about in said interviews, the pair will also be involved in the creation of some new games specifically created for Nintendo consoles.

In another bid to give the celebrity partnership more PR mileage, the people behind the campaign have been recruiting members of the public to appear in the Ant and Dec fronted TV spots, ads in which the telly pair will compete with real people playing Nintendo games.

Announcing the partnership, Nintendo UK’s General Manager David Yarnton told reporters: “Given Ant and Dec’s popularity with everyone from grandparents to grand children and with the broad appeal of Nintendo’s products from ages five to 95, we knew they’d make the perfect partner for the brand”.

The only slightly tedious political blogger Guido Fawkes has vowed to throw a light on the world of lobbying in the coming year, with plans to focus on those in the PR world with close links to David Cameron and other senior Tories who may, or may not, be in power come this time next year.

Fawkes, probably best known for publishing that infamous email written by former Gordon Brown advisor Damian McBride, which led to the ‘smeargate scandal’ and the end of the spin doctor’s career, has vowed to let his readers know about “the fat cats of spin and their hidden hand in politics”.

In somewhat less dramatic speak, Fawkes, real name Paul Staines, explained his motivation to PR Week, saying: “What I would like to see is much more above-the-counter lobbying. There is a legitimate role for lobbying, but I don’t want it to be over coffee and cigars after a meal. I want it to be up-front and out in the open – like a political campaign”.

Never frightened to name names, Staines says he is keeping a particularly close eye on Brunswick’s Alan Parker, Finsbury’s Roland Rudd and high profile PR man Matthew Freud, claiming: “These guys are right in with David Cameron. People are coming to me with information and I’m building up a picture of who, what, where”.

Most in the lobbying sector seem to be playing down Staines’ promises of sordid revelations, adding that the blogger will probably be disappointed to discover most political consultants are much more above board than he and other cynics assume.

Nevertheless, if Staines can unearth any shady dealings on the sidelines, and if the tabloids pick them up, that could provide further ammunition for those already pushing for more transparency in the lobbying sector, whether that be through voluntary codes and registers or new legislation.

With the Tories themselves already giving their backing to more transparency in any PR-enabled conversations between government and big business, it seems some sort of new lobbying code is now inevitable, even if some in the industry are cynical as to how big an impact such a code could really have.

There was an interesting development this week in the ongoing erosion of the line between editorial and advertising when the government said it had been persuaded, in principle, that product placement should be allowed on British television.

Unlike in the movies, and US television, TV viewers in the UK have rarely seen real world products proactively pushed or even discussed on light entertainment shows, or soaps and dramas, because of strict rules governing the promotion of goods within programmes. And unlike their American counterparts, British broadcasters have not been able use product placement as an additional revenue stream to conventional television advertising.

As TV ad revenues slide, a number of British broadcasters, most notably ITV, have been pushing for a change in the law. Earlier in the year the government seemed reluctant to comply with those requests, but now a spokesman for newish Culture Secretary Ben Bradshaw (pictured) has said the minister responsible for TV has accepted the need to lift the ban “in principle”. A three month consultation on how it might all work is now expected.

ITV welcomed reports that it may soon be able to add product placement to its rate cards. A spokesman said: “ITV plc has led the campaign for product placement in the UK, which could be an important new revenue stream, as it already is in Europe. Reforming the UK prohibition would also be a welcome acknowledgement of the pressures currently faced by an industry in transition. New sources of revenue mean better funded content – which can only be good news for viewers”.

However, some analysts say ITV shouldn’t expect product placement to be the solution to its recent financial woes. Aside from the fact it will probably take 2–3 years for product placement to actually be introduced in UK television, some reckon many advertisers will be cautious about the new opportunity at first, expecting a consumer backlash to blatant product pushing within programmes.

Others argue that those brands which do recognise the value of product placement may simply divert their existing TV ad budgets into that rather than buying spots in commercial breaks, therefore the innovation wouldn’t bring any new money to ITV et al. Though as commercial breaks become increasingly skipped over in the on-demand TV age, perhaps the big broadcasters would be happy if product placement simply helped them hang on to existing ad revenues, rather than bringing in new sources of income.

One of the PR companies involved in the government’s social worker recruitment initiative has spoken to PR Week about the project.

Several agencies are involved in the media relations component of the government initiative to encourage more people to consider a career in social work. The initiative follows a difficult period for the social worker profession, which received widespread bad press in the wake of the Baby P scandal, during which news media who often criticise those in social work of being too eager to take children into care hit out at social workers in Haringey for not being eager enough.

The initiative, which kicked off with a celebrity-backed advertising campaign last month, aims to use real life stories of how social workers have helped at-risk people, aiming to show that as an industry there are many more happy endings than sad ones.
The TV adverts feature music star Goldie (pictured) and actress Samantha Morton, both of who benefited from the support of social workers earlier in their lives, and both got much media coverage when the ads were launched at the end of last month.

The aim for the PR teams involved is to maintain that momentum with other real life stories involving less famous people. One of the agencies involved is Band & Brown Communications. Their CEO, Gill Brown, told PR Week: “We’re implementing a far-reaching media relations programme to generate positive coverage about the real-life stories of social workers and the people they help. We are also working with the profession, government and wider stakeholder audiences such as local authorities, professional associations and unions”.

The Guardian’s Patrick Barkham has been considering the possible PR issues for the makers of energy drink Lucozade after it was revealed that it was their bottles three terrorists planned to use in a plot to blow up seven planes.

Details of the canisters in which Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Tanvir Hussain and Assad Sarwar planned to smuggle hydrogen peroxide bombs onto seven flights from the UK to the US were revealed as the three plotters were found guilty of a terrorist plot. It was this plot, foiled by British authorities in 2006, which resulted in a crack down on hand luggage at airports and the ban stopping passengers from taking bottles of liquid onto planes.

Although only some of the trio’s planned bombs would have used Lucozade bottles, it was one of the revelations most widely reported of their trial, leading to Barkham’s paper to call the plotters the ‘Lucozade Bombers’.

Barkham writes: “The fact that the terrorists also used bottles of Oasis has been less reported. ‘The Oasis Bombers’ just doesn’t have the same menace to it. They would have had artistic differences and never got their plot off the ground. What if they had used smoothie bottles? Headline writers would really struggle with ‘The Innocent Bombers’”.

While observing that smaller edgier brands might quietly like the association, and the increase in press mentions it delivers, it seems unlikely Lucozade owners GlaxoSmithKline will appreciate people linking their product with such a serious potential crime.

So much so, PR man Mark Borkowski told Barkham he reckons the brand’s PR team would have been having crisis meetings this week. He told the paper: “You can see ‘Mock The Week’ having great fun with it but it’s too uncomfortable for the parent company. The problem is these brands are owned by enormous companies who are incredibly nervous because media have a morbid curiosity about kicking them”.

We suspect Lucozade’s strategy will be to let the association run its course, hope it drops out of the public consciousness as quickly as possible, and then return with some positive messages of its own later in the year.

Former Outside Organisation publicist Stuart Bell has announced he is launching his own PR firm.

As previously reported, Bell left Alan Edwards’ London-based entertainment PR agency somewhat suddenly back in June. Although the reasons behind his sudden departure were never revealed, it was widely assumed Bell would return heading up a rival agency once his non-compete obligations with Outside were fulfilled.

This week Bell did indeed confirm he was launching his own PR company. He has teamed up with Richard Dawes, formerly Head Of Publicity at Universal Music’s Polydor Records, to create Dawbell PR.

Like Outside, the new company will focus on entertainment PR with a music bias. Initial clients will include Leona Lewis and Polydor-singed artists Ronan Keating, Take That and newish band Detroit Social Club. It’s also thought Paul McCartney, one of Bell’s highest profile clients at Outside, will move his representation to the new company.

Confirming the launch of the new agency, Bell told reporters that Dawbell would provide a wide range of communication services to its clients, commenting that: “The role of the publicist has changed greatly in the last few years. We’re not just press officers, we provide the whole package. With a lot of PR agencies, their offline and online just doesn’t join up”.

Dawes added: “We want to offer a fresh new service that looks at every aspect of communications. We want to come up with creative press plans that will get people noticed”.

Facebook is more popular among young people than Twitter according to a new survey by research firm nfpSynergy. I’m not 100% sure it’s sensible to compare these two web platforms, given they perform quite different tasks, but it is still interesting to see that Facebook – which seemed to slightly fall out of favour last year – is now stronger than ever in the social networking stakes.

In the latest edition of its Youth Engagement monitor, nfpSynergy found that 72% of 11–15 year olds used Facebook, versus 28% on Bebo, 25% on MySpace and 12% on Twitter. In the 17–25 demographic 80% used Facebook. 

What this shows for those communicators focused on social media is that while Twitter is the social networking tool that has garnered the most media attention in the last six months, those trying to engage young consumers should still be putting their energy into Facebook-based campaigns.

Now this will be an interesting test of whether communicating the same message in a totally different way can really deliver substantially different results. The message is that it is wrong to pirate movies; the change in communication strategy is to thank the people who don’t rather than bad mouth the people who do. For years the movie industry has screened hard hitting adverts in cinemas and on DVDs based around the slogan “piracy is a crime”. The aim of the ads was to convince consumers that accessing films from illegitimate sources was a serious crime, and that film pirates were comparable to car thieves and their like. The problem is that as the ads became more hard hitting, they became increasingly mocked; plus there was the issue that they were being screened to people who had invariably paid to watch the film the ad preceded – ie customers not criminals.

In response to criticism of those adverts, an organisation called The Industry Trust For IP Awareness has decided to launch a totally new series of adverts thanking people who pay to access films, with the strapline “you make the movies”. The Trust says the ads are in response to research that shows that content industries will get a more positive response to communication justifying why people should pay to access copyright material, rather than relying on the legal implications for people who choose not too.

This is even more true, the Trust says, with what they called ‘Generation Y-pay’, who have grown up with a ready supply of free content online, and who need to be given reasons other than dry or confrontational legal claims as to why they should pay to access music or movies when they can easily access the same content for free from illegitimate sources.  

Discussing the new campaign, which will launch next month accompanied by a series of advertorials in The Sun, the Trust’s Director General Liz Bales told The Guardian: “With the digital revolution set to open up access to more unauthorised film and TV content, it is going to be more important than ever for people to understand the positive connection they have to the British creative industries [as consumers]. Our industry must share responsibility for showing the public the positive role they play”.

She continued: “Film and TV is the industry that we as a nation are most proud of, the challenge is that Generation Y-pay underestimates how vital they are to funding future films and TV shows. They don’t realise that without them [buying legal products] great British film and TV couldn’t get made”.

Cadbury’s communication team, including their financial agency Finsbury, could be in for a busy few months after a takeover approach from rivals Kraft sparked much City speculation as to other possible buyers, even though the confectionary firm is not, in theory, for sale. Cadbury plc knocked back the £10.2 billion takeover offer from Kraft Foods Inc, stating that the possible buyer had “fundamentally” undervalued the firm. A statement from the chocolate maker added that the top guard there believed their “strong brands, unique category and geographic scope” assured a rosy future as a standalone firm.

But despite the knock back, City types began speculating yesterday that a second sweetened takeover offer from Kraft may now follow, as well as possible counter-bids from Nestle and Hershey. Whether any of the possible suitors would consider a hostile takeover isn’t clear, though Cadbury’s share price surged by 40% yesterday morning as a result of all the acquisition talk.

On a PR front, this potentially means an increased workload both for in-house teams at Cadbury’s and any possible suitors, as well as for the agencies they employ. According to PR Week, Brunswick were speaking for Kraft as the US food giant went public about its takeover approach yesterday.

For the financial PR sector any talk of major mergers or acquisitions is good news, M&A work a good earner for such agencies when other communications budgets are still being cut back.

With public sector PR work more important than ever, what with private businesses still keeping those budgets tight, the Public Relations Consultants Association last month launched a new group within the organisation to specifically bring together people working in this area, on both the in-house and agency sides.  Explaining the logic behind the new PRCA public sector group, its chair, Quantum PR MD Charlie Vavasour, told esPResso: “Agencies play a key role in supporting in-house public sector teams, but on occasions the relationship can be frustrating for both parties. For example, as agencies we would like to raise awareness of the time and effort invested in preparing pitches and completing long tender documents, particularly on the occasions when there is a decision to abandon the process or not appoint”.

He continued: “On the other side the public sector gets understandably irritated when agencies use a pitch team to win the business and then have the project staffed with different individuals – this is something we want to help change. The group will also address effective evaluation, an ongoing bugbear for both agencies and in-house teams, and will work together to come up with solutions for many other issues”.

Needless to say, given its remit, the new group is open to both the PRCA‘s traditional agency members and those newer members who work in-house.

It’s not really all that surprising to hear, but new research by ComRes has confirmed there is an increasing interest in the lobbying sector to connect with the Tories as we head into party conference season. According to the research, 79% of those lobbyists surveyed said they planned to attend the Tory conference in Manchester next month, up from 72% in a similar pre-conference survey last year; while 72% said they planned to visit the Labour party conference in Brighton this month, down from 74% last year.

According to Public Affairs News, ComRes say the results of this year’s pre-conference survey show a ‘noticeable shift’ towards investment in lobbying the Tories, which presumably suggests the public affairs community are increasingly expecting a new government to be in power by this time next year, led by David Cameron.

Last week Unicorn Jobs hosted a networking event for IGNITE, the new name for the UK Black & Asian PR Networking Group. Open to all, these events provide an opportunity to hear leading PR and recruitment practitioners share their knowledge and expertise, and to network with other corporate communications professionals.

Last week’s event focused on “online PR for clients and for you”, and explored how social media can be used by PR professionals both on behalf of their employers or clients, and also personally to help develop an individual communicator’s career.

Unicorn Jobs MD Sarah Stimson provided some advice on the latter, while Daljit Bhurji from Diffusion PR discussed the former. We took the opportunity to throw a few questions at Daljit ourselves and you can read an interview with him later on in this week’s esPResso.

Look out for details of future IGNITE events here in esPResso, and if you want to plug your PR networking events here just send all the details in an email to esPResso@unicornjobs.com.

Talking of government, the powers that be have issued a twenty page document advising government departments on how they should use Twitter. It’s written by Neil Williams from the Department For Business, Innovation And Skills and, according to the Guardian, the author himself admits there is a certain irony that his guide to using the microblogging service, where each message is limited to 140 characters, is twenty pages or 5382 words or 36,215 characters long.

Williams, who originally wrote the document for those managing his department’s Twitter account, but who has now shared it with others in Whitehall via the Cabinet Office’s ‘digital engagement blog’, commented: “I was surprised by just how much there was to say ‑ and quite how worth saying it is”.

Of course the ability to connect with the public so quickly via Twitter brings both opportunities and challenges for all organisations. In recent weeks we’ve seen Habitat criticised for using so called ‘trending topics’ in their promotional tweets so to force them on people searching for chat on certain newsworthy topics, while the office of Boris Johnson was commended for responding fast to tweets about unreasonable heating on London buses, and communicating that action had been taken back via the networking service.

Williams advises that someone in each department’s digital media team should take responsibility for their Twitter account, discussing possible tweets at daily press cutting meetings, and consulting ministers by email for thoughts on what should be said. That person should also deal with incoming messages as quickly as possible.

Recognising there is often suspicion of organisations using Twitter as simply a tool to link to existing communications, such as press releases, Williams also recommends including minister insights, and updates on their movements, in a “light or humanised” style on a Twitter feed – ie creating unique communication content for the social networking service.

It remains to be seen what kind of uptake there is of Twitter as a communication tool across Whitehall, and just how successful government communicators prove to be in utilising the channel.

Gordon Brown’s former chief spindoctor Damian McBride has given his first interview about the scandal that ended his career at Number Ten and rocked Gordon Brown’s goverment.

McBride, who was forced to resign after sending an email to Derek Draper suggesting the spreading of various made up rumours about senior Tories on a new Labour-supporting website, spoke to the Guardian as he prepared to start work away for the political communications world as a business liaison officer for his old school.

He admitted it was a mistake to ever send Draper the email suggesting various Tory slurs, admitting “I let [Downing Street] down appallingly”, and adding “I was brought down by the newspapers, and obviously my own stupidity”.

Recalling the weekend when he realised that political blogger Guido Fawkes had obtained a copy of the Draper email and was about to make it public, McBride told the Guardian: “I lost my dad three years ago. He was from a religious Scottish upbringing, very stern, and he would have hated reading those emails. I remember thinking, ‘Thank God my dad didn’t have to see this’, but the way Gordon reacted to me that day, it was as bad as telling my dad. He was just so angry and just so let down he could barely even speak to me”.

He used the interview to apologise to Brown and the Tories he proposed slurring in the email, though he still showed a little bitterness to those that exposed his slip, remarking “as far as I was concerned, those emails went in the bin shortly after they were written… and that’s where they should have stayed”.

After his resignation, there was speculation as to whether McBride would find a role in one of the big lobbying firms; though most thought it unlikely given the scandal surrounding his departure from Number Ten, the ongoing belt-squeezing at most major agencies, and the fact McBride’s Labour-heavy address book may only be useful for a short time, given next year’s General Election is still too close to call. Come next Summer some of those Tories McBride proposed slurring could be in the key positions of power.

It’s not clear whether the former spindoctor ever plans a return to politics or communications, though he did admit he’d kept a diary of his fall from grace, so a mini-career as a writer may be on his agenda.

The CIPR have described as “nonsensical” previously reported attempts by the Newspaper Licensing Agency to extend their licensing operations to so called “content scalping” when it is done on a commercial basis, mainly for media monitoring purposes.

As previously reported, the NLA provides licences that let those companies who need to make multiple copies of newspaper articles for internal consumption to do so without infringing the copyrights of the newspaper owners, whose permission is needed when making copies of any newspaper article in a commercial context. The role of the NLA and the revenues they bring in for the newspaper industry is, though, in decline as an increasing number of companies forward their staff links to online versions of relevant articles, rather than making physical copies of the printed newspaper.

It was in recognition of that fact that the NLA recently suggested that companies who provide other businesses with links to articles that reference them as a commercial service should be required to have the same sort of licence as companies who traditionally provided hard copies of articles.

That, of course, has a potentially big impact on the PR industry, which makes the most use of media monitoring and copying services, both in print and online. In a letter to PR Week, CIPR president Kevin Taylor said the idea that the NLA licence should be extended to the provision of web links was an “absolute nonsense” noting that under the proposed system: “If I call someone and tell them a web address – no charge. But if I send them the web address by email – that requires an NLA licence”.

The proposals could prove to be controversial, despite attempts by the Agency to limit the reach of their licence so that it won’t affect search engines and bloggers who primarily provide links to other articles, even though both search engines and bloggers may be commercially benefiting from their link aggregation through advertising sales.

But even with those limits, the agencies most likely to be affected by the proposed new licence, which includes Meltwater and Moreover, are talking about taking legal action to test whether copyright law really gives newspapers control over the distribution of links to their articles. As not actual copy of any real content takes place when links are forwarded, some legal experts doubt the NLA really have a case to force the new licence on the PR industry. Though stranger things have happened.

The Chartered Institute Of PR earlier this month awarded Tim Berners-Lee, often dubbed the inventor of the world wide web, with their President’s Medal, an annual award presented to someone deemed to have made a considerable contribution to the world of communications. As the man behind what is surely one of the most important communication tools of the modern age (especially if you throw social media in as a component of the web), I don’t think anyone could doubt the CIPR‘s decision on that one.

Presenting Berners-Lee with his prize, CIPR President Kevin Taylor said in a statement: “The world wide web enables PR practitioners and organisations to interact directly with their audiences; to engage in meaningful, personal dialogue; and to ensure messages can be heard all over the world. It has revolutionised communications for the world in general and the PR industry in particular. As a specialist in IT and telecoms PR, I could think of no better way of marking my presidency than by recognising the contribution to global communications of Sir Tim Berners-Lee”.

A second award, named after one of the founding members of the Institute, Stephen Tallents, is also presented each year, this one for services to the CIPR. And this year that medal went to Professor Anne Gregory of Leeds Metropolitan University, of whom Taylor said: “Anne’s drive and leadership was instrumental in the Institute achieving chartered status and this year will see further fruits of that campaign when we create our first individual Chartered Practitioners. It is fitting to mark that milestone with this award to someone with a commitment to raising practitioner standards, to ethical behaviour and to professional recognition. Anne’s campaigning for our industry standards has been an example and inspiration to us all”.

A spokesman for Welsh charity Action Camp has hit out at media coverage of an incident on Tenby beach this weekend in which children on one of the organisation’s camping weekends had to be rescued by lifeguards after a beach-based team building exercise went wrong.

36 children and four adults were taking part in the team building game, which involved walking backwards down a sandbank towards the sea, when the sandbank collapsed, causing some participants to slide into the sea. Fortunately a life guard had already seen the party and was on his way to warn them about the unstable sandbanks as the collapse occurred, meaning a quick life-saving operation could be mounted to rescue those children who had fallen into the sea.

Project organiser Bill Fitzgerald, while admitting some errors may have been made in the planning of the team building game – in particular they’d failed to notice a sign warning people about the unstable nature of the sandbanks – he said that media coverage of the incident exaggerated the risk to his party and the extent of the rescue operation mounted.

While keen to commend the life guards who came to their rescue, he said that a press statement issued by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution claiming they had saved forty people made the story seem bigger than it really was, and fed a news media hungry to lead with ‘forty people saved from near death’ stories.

According to PR Week, Fitzgerald insists only six children were out of their depth after falling into the sea, and says he is keen to communicate to the press that, without wanting to take anything away from the bravery and skills of rescue workers, a risk assessment undertaken by the charity prior to the weekend also helped ensure the accident wasn’t more serious than it turned out to be.

PR Week quote Fitzgerald as saying: “There’s been a lot of sensationalism. I can’t believe it’s the second story on Sky News ahead of swine flu and is making international headlines. Only six children went out of their depth when the sandbank collapsed and only two were mildly injured. The RNLI press release claimed they saved 40 people. I’m not taking anything away from the lifeguards, because they were brilliant, but they didn’t need to rescue 40 people”.

He adds that his organisation wasn’t given a chance to communicate its side of the story by news agencies, complaining: “We didn’t get a chance to get our message across. We are being portrayed as irresponsible, as if we hadn’t done any checks”. Fitzgerald and his team had checked there were lifeguards in the vicinity, and that there was an adult for each eight children.

He concludes: “Journalists are nice to you on the phone, but then they try to hang you in the article. The way they edit you makes you sound like you said something you didn’t. There are loads of inaccuracies”.

Action Camp is a Caerphilly-based charity that stages camping weekends for disadvantaged youth from across Wales.

A handful of marketing and PR professionals once again appear in the MediaGuardian’s 100 list, the broadsheet’s annual list of the top movers and shakers in the media industry. Though it’s the IT sector that has made the biggest impact, with the founders of Google at number one, and the bosses of Apple and Microsoft at 4 and 5 respectively. BBC top man Mark Thomson is at 2, and more traditional media players like the Murdochs (Rupert and son James), outgoing Sun editor Rebecca Wade and the Telegraph’s Will Lewis also appearing in the top ten.

Marketing and PR wise we have to look down to number 15 where we find WPP chief Martin Sorrell, traditionally the highest positioned ad man in the Guardian’s media poll, normally securing his place not only because of the combined ad spend of his agencies, but also because of the PR businesses that sit within his communications group.

Other people from marketing and PR backgrounds in the hundred include the celebrity publicist Max Clifford at 65, the woman who heads up Procter & Gamble’s massive ad budget, Roisin Donnelly, at 66, high profile PR man Matthew Freud at 74, Brunswick founder and chief Alan Parker at 82, that other well known ad man Trevor Beattie at 84, and Finsbury co-founder Roland Rudd at 88

The Conservative Party are standing by their top communications man Andy Coulson, despite efforts by the Guardian and some in the Labour Party to use the brewing News Group phone bugging scandal as ammunition against David Cameron’s top advisor.

Coulson is caught up, of course, in allegations that the illegal tapping of phones by News Group journalists (or agents they hired) was more widespread than previously thought while he was editor of the Group’s News Of The World title. The Tory spindoctor quit his old job at the tabloid as a result of the conviction of the paper’s royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, for hiring private investigator Glenn Mulcaire to illegally tap phone calls on his behalf. Although Coulson insisted he was not aware of Goodman’s actions at the time, he said he was resigning in recognition of the fact the bad practice happened “on his watch”.
At the time Coulson and other News Group execs claimed Goodman’s use of phone tapping was an isolated case, and insisted illegal bugging was not common practice at the News Of The World or sister paper The Sun. But the Guardian last week claimed otherwise, saying it had evidence other reporters there used illegal phone tapping as a research tool, and alleging that the paper had entered into confidential out-of-court settlements with individuals who had discovered they had been tapped, agreements designed to avoid privacy lawsuits being pursued through the courts.

While News Group denies many of the Guardian’s allegations, there has been much speculation as to whether Goodman-style tactics were more common than previously admitted by the company and, if so, whether senior execs like Coulson could really have been ignorant of that fact. Said execs previously denied knowledge of any other illegal phone tapping when questioned about the Goodman issue by a parliamentary select committee and the Press Complaints Commission.

Coulson will come under a stronger spotlight than most of those involved in the Goodman saga because of his politically sensitive current role. Some Labour campaigners are sure to take advantage of the story to try and tarnish David Cameron’s team as the inevitable 2010 General Election gets closer. The fact that one of the people alleged by the Guardian to have had his phone tapped by News Group is John Prescott hasn’t helped.

Confirming that the News Of The World phone tapping scandal would be used as ammunition by Labour supporters, one insider told PR Week: “Cameron wants to present himself as the man who’s going to clean up politics. That’s going to be difficult if the public think his right-hand man is a complete sleazeball”.

But David Cameron is, for the moment, standing by his man, telling reporters that Coulson did the honourable thing by resigning in the wake of Goodman’s conviction in 2007, adding: “The work he has done for me, for the Conservatives, has been beyond reproach”.

And there seems to be support for Coulson among most senior Tories. PR Week report that shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt told the ‘Question Time’ audience last week: “The reality is that Andy Coulson stepped down from editing the News Of The World and he did it because he was taking responsibility for something he did not know about but something he wanted to take responsibility for… He has behaved totally honourably”.

Some point out that many in the print media, and not just at newspapers owned by News Group proprieter Rupert Murdoch, are not giving this story top billing – perhaps aware that they don’t want the activities of their own journalists pre-Goodman to be too closely analysed. But the Guardian are putting a lot of energy into developing their scoop, and with political types and the PCC promising to reinvestigate phone tapping at News Group, whether or not Cameron et al can continue to give their top PR man complete support may well depend on how this story develops.

One of the Israeli Prime Minister’s closest advisors, Ron Dermer, has admitted that the country needs to launch a public relations offensive to better communicate its position and policies. However, one expert has estimated that to truly win hearts and minds abroad, Israel would have to invest over $100 million into PR.

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald in his first interview since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to the position of Israel’s Prime Minister, Dermer was unsurprisingly critical of Western coverage of the Middle East issue, but admitted that successive Israeli governments had failed to effectively communicate their position to the media and public at large, especially in neighbouring Middle Eastern states and in Europe. He indicated that that was an issue Netanyahu’s government was keen to address.

However, the Herald also quote Eytan Gilboa of Bar-Ilan University, Israel’s leading public diplomacy expert, who reckons Israel’s global PR budget would need to increase tenfold to truly have an impact on public opinion.

They quote Gilboa as saying: “We need to be spending $US100 million a year on information campaigns abroad – primarily in Arab countries and then in Europe, where there is a complete lack of knowledge of what Israel is and what Israel does”. And any campaign, Gilboa added, should include the most modern forms of communication, including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Coffee firm Carte Noire is about to launch a series of online adverts which the Guardian has dubbed “the thinking woman’s equivalent of the Diet Coke break ads”.

The ads see a number of male celebrities, including Greg Wise, Dan Stevens and Dominic West, the latter best known for playing Detective Jimmy McNulty in ‘The Wire’, reading romance scenes from various classic novels, including ‘Pride & Prejudice’ and ‘Sons And Lovers’, and some newer books like Nick Hornby’s ‘High Fidelity’. Thirty excerpts will feature in total.

The ads suggest that female coffee drinkers might want to sit back and enjoy one of the videos while enjoying some “me-time”, presumably with a cup of Carte Noire coffee in hand.

The campaign, which will launch later this month, also sees the drinks brand partner with Penguin Books, who will be promoting the novels from which the excerpts originate on the website that hosts the videos.

Communications group Freshwater, who have offices across the UK, have expaned into the Irish market by acquiring Life Communications, an Irish PR agency with bases in Belfast and Dublin.

Freshwater confirmed the takeover last week, having raised funds to finance the expansion through the issue of new shares. The initial takeover will cost Freshwater £300,000 in cash plus an additional 263,505 in ordinary shares in the expanded comms agency, with further payments due based on the Irish division’s future performance.

Confirming the acquisition, Freshwater CEO Steve Howell told esPResso: “In spite of the economic climate, we are pleased to be in a position to take another step forward in our strategy of expanding the regional scope and specialist expertise of the Freshwater Group. This acquisition not only adds a new regional dimension to Freshwater but it also provides a platform for the extension of Freshwater’s offering into Ireland in specialisms such as stakeholder communications and public affairs, especially in sectors such as health, technology, property, energy and transport”.

On the new share sale that enabled the acquisition, Howell continued: “The fact we have been able to raise funds through [a share issue] is a clear demonstration of the level of investor confidence that exists in Freshwater’s unique regional-specialist strategy”.

Life Communications will continue to operate under that name within the Freshwater group, led by the company’s founder and existing MD Darlene McCormick.

You might think that the chance of avoiding death would be reason enough for customers to pay attention, but we all know how airline passengers tend to tune out when safety messages come on the screens. So, how do you successfully communicate such important information when your audience believes they’ve heard it all before and automatically ignores you?

Well, Air New Zealand have re-recorded the safety messages shown on its internal flights in a very informal fashion, so informal in fact the staff members relaying the information are naked.

Though their distinctive uniforms have been painted on to their bodies, and clever camera work ensures certain parts of their anatomies are always hidden, so much so it takes a while to realise what’s going on. Presumably it’s hoped that while passengers work it out they might just absorb the important information being communicated.

For natives, the videos will probably come as less of a surprise, linked, as they are, to a recent TV advertising campaign which saw staff members from across the airline, including chief exec Rob Fyfe, wearing only body paint uniforms. It was part of campaign to explain that their budget packages had no hidden charges using the strapline: “Our fares have nothing to hide”.

You can check out the naked safety film here

The Australia division of restaurant chain Nandos this week won themselves a lot of domestic press coverage by taking on comedian Sacha Baron Cohen at his own game and out-pranking comedy character of the moment Bruno, the gay Austrian fashion reporter.

In a publicity stunt staged by the Sphere Agency, the firm sent an actor dressed like the Baron Cohen creation to the Syndey premiere of the ‘Bruno’ film. Arriving half an hour before the ‘real’ thing, Nandos’ fake Bruno made it to a stage set up outside the cinema and had his entourage of models reveal their promotional message for the restaurant before security latched on to what was happening.

Two male models held out posters bearing the slogan “This year’s hottest chicks are covered in Peri Peri”, while three female models covered themselves in the sauce (or something similar). The fake Bruno continued to shout out random lines in a mock Austrian accent as bouncers removed him from the scene.

With the press already in line to photograph the real Bruno, there was plenty of coverage of the imposter’s moment in the spotlight, and a video of it all has now been seen over 18,000 times on YouTube. You can check it out here.

David Prescott, the son of former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, and a former Head Of Media at Geronimo Communications (now Kindred), has launched a new London-based digital PR consultancy which will seemingly help left-leaning political organisations harness the power of the internet, and social media, as a communication tool.

Prescott will be joined at the new venture, which will be called Game Changer, by PR Week columnist Alex Hilton. He is also a co-founder of LabourHome.com, the online hub for grass roots Labour supporters.

The two men were also recently involved in setting up Labour’s Go-Fourth project, a website already campaigning in a bid to win the political party a fourth term in government, and collaborated on the ‘Give Up The Bonus’ campaign, which focused public opposition to the large bonus rewarded to former RBS boss Fred Goodwin.

Commenting on the new venture, Prescott told PR Week: “We’ve set up the consultancy because we really want to put web 2.0 at the very heart of all our campaigns”.

The new agency already has two clients – left-wing magazine Tribune, and one of the UK’s biggest trade unions Usdaw.

Retailer Habitat has admitted it made a mistake when it sneaked popular keywords, or ‘trending topics’, into its promotional tweets in a bid to increase its profile on Twitter.

The furnishing store got itself a bad name on the micro-blogging website recently when it started including popular keywords in its own Tweets about special offers and a current sale. By including words like ‘iPhone’ and ‘Apple’, and even some related to recent political unrest in Iran, it meant the retailer’s plugging Tweets would be seen by any Twitter uses following comments on those topics.

A clever move you might think, but doing so broke one of the albeit unwritten rules of Twitter etiquette, and the backlash against the retail firm was quick to follow.

Spotting a PR disaster on the horizon, the retailer quickly deleted its incorrectly tagged promotional Tweets, while a spokesman told Sky News: “This was a mistake and it is important to us that we always listen, take on board observations and welcome constructive criticism. We will do our utmost to ensure any mistakes are never repeated”.

A PR consultant who was involved in providing the Daily Telegraph with all that information on MPs’ expenses has said that he is “extremely proud” of his involvement in the media scoop of the year, adding that “nobody involved in this did it for money”.

Henry Gewanter, MD of London-based communications agency Positive Profile, has now admitted that he worked with former SAS soldier John Wick in orchestrating the expenses story, his name having been linked with the scoop as early as last month.

Last night he gave an interview to the BBC’s Newsnight about his involvement in the affair, claiming he and everyone else involved in providing the controversial data to the broadsheet did so for moral rather than financial reasons. He told the news programme: “Being on your show tonight, I get fifty quid and cab fare home. That is the extent of the payments I actually will be seeing from this”.

Gewanter refused to say whether the Telegraph had paid for the data – the paper itself has been very coy about their deal – but said that rumours that hundreds of thousands had exchanged hands were not true. More modest estimates of what the paper paid have been in the region of £70,000.

Confirming that there had been talks with various newspapers about the expenses information, he said that negotiations centred not on money but on how each paper would report on the MPs’ claims. He said he and his co-conspirators were adamant coverage of the expenses claims would focus on parliamentary-wide abuses of the system, rather than being used to bring down one or another of the political parties.

Those conditions, he says, made doing a deal over the data more difficult than he expected. He said: “I thought it would be a very simple straightforward job, all I would have to do is approach one decent newspaper and that would be the end of it. But to my great surprise, it turned out to be one of the most difficult, complicated and long-running projects of my entire life. Several newspapers were approached from several different newspaper groups. There was at least one newspaper who wanted to use it to destroy one party”.

As for finding out the identity of the insider at the Houses Of Parliament who actually leaked the expenses data, Gewanter says he can’t help. He claims he never met the whistleblower, having deliberately chosen to not even know the person’s name in case he was arrested and questioned about the source of the expenses files.

The data, of course, led to a string of mini political scandals and resignations in the short term, as well as forcing a radical change to the parliamentary expenses system that could have ramifications for decades to come.

Although parliament had reluctantly agreed to publish information about MPs’ expenses before the Telegraph’s series of scoops began, the fact the official release was so heavily censored when it was made public last week has, for many, further legitimised the actions of Gewanter, Wick and the Telegraph, even if the way they obtained the confidential parliamentary accounts information in the first place was illegal.

Media news now, and Sun editor Rebekah Wade has been promoted and will become CEO of News International, Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper business, which, of course, owns The Sun, the News Of The World, The Times, The Sunday Times and thelondonpaper. She will report to Murdoch’s son James, who has been heading up his father’s UK newspaper business of late in his role as CEO of News Corp Europe & Asia. A new Sun editor will be announced later this summer.

Wade, who has worked at News International for two decades, spending three years as News Of The World editor before taking over at the Sun in 2003, confirmed her new appointment telling reporters: “Our titles are among the best in the world thanks to an unrelenting focus on high quality journalism that connects with its readers. At such a crucial time for the newspaper industry, I am honoured to have the opportunity to work with the exceptional team here and believe that we have an exciting future”.

Another big media story this week is, of course, the demise of sports broadcaster Setanta which, while a long time coming, is still one of the highest profile media firms to collapse since the recent advertising recession began.

The sports TV firm went into administration after rescue talks with possible new investors faltered yesterday. Most people in both investment and media circles had already given up on the broadcaster after it was confirmed at the start of the week that it had lost its rights to English Premier League football games after defaulting on payments.

The impact of the move into administration was immediate in the UK. The two main Setanta channels went off air immediately, while its sports news channel, a joint venture with Virgin Media actually operated by ITN, was switched off at 6pm. The firm’s 200 UK staff will be made redundant, while the future of the 60 staffers at ITN that worked on the sports news service is unknown; the news firm said it was consulting affected staff and hoped to redeploy as many of them as it could elsewhere in the company.

Deloitte have come in as administrators. A spokesman for them told reporters: “We can confirm that no further monthly subscriptions or direct debits will be accepted from customers of the UK business”. The firm’s Irish and North American services were still running last night, seemingly because they both make a slight profit and Deloitte are more confident they can find a buyer for them.

Earlier this week the English Premier League announced it had reached a deal with Disney-owned US sports broadcaster ESPN to take over Setanta’s football contracts. Reports suggest ESPN has agreed to match the financial commitments previously made by Setanta (minus what Setanta had already paid) meaning that the League and the clubs it represents shouldn’t be hit by a loss of telly revenues, as had been feared. Other sports organisations with lucrative TV rights deals with the broadcaster may not, however, be so lucky.

It seems very unlikely Michael Schumacher really is the mystery test driver on TV show ‘Top Gear’ but, as a publicity stunt, claiming the former Formula One star was the real identity of the man known as The Stig definitely delivered.

For those that don’t watch or especially care about the BBC’s cars n stuff show, new cars are put through their paces on the programme by a mysterious man who is never seen out of his white overalls and helmet, the latter complete with a heavily tinted visor. The anonymity of the test driver, and the various claims about his true identity (presenter Jeremy Clarkson once claimed it was BBC news man Nicholas Witchell), is very much part of the show.

The original Stig, who wore a black outfit, eventually outed himself as stunt driver Perry McCarthy. Various people have been suggested as being Stig V.2, the most famous another Formula 1 champion, Damon Hill, though the most likely candidate is professional stuntman and Le Mans racer Ben Collins. That said, some reckon a number of different drivers play the role, the anonymity enabling producers to present different test drivers on different episodes as the same person.

Anyway, back to the publicity stunt. With a new series of the show to plug, Jeremy Clarkson cheekily used his Sun column to reveal that the identity of The Stig would be revealed on the first of the new shows. As chat rooms started to chatter about the upcoming revelation, a BBC spokesman confirmed: “As Jeremy said, in tonight’s Top Gear Stig will remove his helmet for the first time”. Clarkson joked: “As a television moment, it’s up there with Neil Armstrong walking on the… corpse of JR Ewing”.

And so the moment came, the helmet was removed, and standing there in The Stig’s clothes was one Michael Schumacher, a revelation met firstly with excitement and then doubt by the show’s faithful fanbase. Even within the show, Schumacher was shown making a mess of a Stig style test drive, leading to Clarkson concluding “I don’t think Michael Schumacher is the Stig”.

It was, of course, a stunt – if a car-based TV programme was able to get someone of Schumacher’s standing on their show each week, they’re not going to hide him behind a mask. But as publicity stunts go, it ensured the new series of ‘Top Gear’ was on the home pages of many a news and entertainment site this weekend. The result? An overnight rating for the BBC 2 show of 7 million – that’s a 30% audience share, easily beating BBC 1 and ITV’s big Sunday evening shows in the same slot.

With the made up revelation scoring the show further press coverage this morning, I think whoever thought up the Stig/Schumacher stunt definitely deserves a pat on the back. Or at least a lift home.

So, one for those of you involved in the never dull world of newspaper clippings.

The Newspaper Licensing Agency, which provides licences for those wishing to make copies of newspaper articles for commercial use – such as PR agencies providing their clients with multiple copies of cuttings – has said that it will start similarly licensing the provision of links to online versions of newspaper articles.

Technically speaking any company making multiple photocopies of a newspaper article for commercial use – which includes distribution to clients or staff – must have a licence from the NLA otherwise they are infringing the copyright of the newspaper owners and could, in theory, be sued (such action has happened).

Of course in the online age, where companies increasingly circulate links to articles about their products for clients or staff to read, rather than making physical photocopies, the old fashioned NLA licence is becoming less relevant, potentially resulting in a loss of income for the agency and the copyright holders they represent.

As a result the agency says it will now require any company who aggregates or passes on links to others as part of a commercial operation to have a licence to do so. The new licence will come into effect next year, and the agency has sent a message to members of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations explaining how it will work.

It’s an interesting development from a legal point of view in that when you forward a link you don’t, as such, make a copy of any copyright material, so arguably the new licence amounts to an extension of the rights newspaper publishers are claiming over their content. Current Copyright Law pre-dates the internet so doesn’t specifically cover such things, so I suspect if anyone chose to challenge the new licence through the courts it would not be clear cut as to which side would win.

At launch News International and the Financial Times will not be part of the new licence, so in theory a licence will not be needed to pass on hyperlinks to their content or, depending how you look at it, you won’t be able to legally pass on their links even with an NLA licence.

So it was Ladies Day at Royal Ascot yesterday, and aware that the newspapers would have their snappers on hand to get a few pictures of those ladies in their hats, at least two PR firms commissioned headwear that subtly (well, not that subtly) plugged their clients’ products. And sure enough numerous news organisations took the bait and splashed pictures of the hats, and some free plugs for the commissioning companies, on their pages (print or web).

First up the team at Frank PR, presumably representing the chocolate bit of Nestle, had a trio of Ascot attending ladies decked out in Quality Street headgear, two of which sort of work as traditional looking hats with a sweetie style rapper, the third of which – styled on the noisette triangle – was less practical and looked a little bit uncomfortable.

Second the team at Taylor Herring, plugging Cadbury’s Flake but actually working for Fredericks Ice Cream who market the 99 ice cream brand, threw practicalities completely out of the window when they commissioned an ice cream cone hat, which model Freya Berry bravely wore to yesterday’s races.

While the Quality Street creations win the practicality prize, the ice cream hat had little chocolate flakes incorporated into it which could be picked out by passers-by, so I suspect that one would have been more popular with fellow race goers

You can see a picture of the Quality Street hat courtesy of Sky here, and a report on the ice cream hat in the Telegraph here.

Major league PR agency Ketchum, part of the Omnicom Group, has announced it will merge with Pleon, another PR consultancy within the Omnicom network, though one previously affiliated to the BBDO part of their business. The combined Ketchum Pleon could well be the biggest communications consultancy in Europe, as well as being a major player worldwide.

The new firm will trade as Ketchum Pleon in Europe, ie the market where Pleon is already well established, but as just Ketchum elsewhere. It will be headed up by Ketchum’s existing CEO Raymond L Kotcher, with Pleon’s top man Timo Sieg becoming CEO of Europe for the new combined outfit.

Confirming the merger, Kotcher told esPResso: “Today, organisations everywhere around the world value the competitive advantage that well-executed public relations and communications programmes can deliver. Clients are looking to their agencies for service that is effective and efficient at the local and regional level and consistent and seamlessly integrated globally – across time zones, geographies and cultures. In today’s highly complex environment, clients are also looking for expert counsel and innovative communication solutions to help them meet their challenges and seize opportunities. By combining operations, we create a platform that ensures we will continue to deliver demonstrable value for our clients everywhere they do business and well into the future”.

Ketchum’s London chief David Gallagher, who will continue to head up the UK office as well as being the new firm’s President of Europe, has told PR Week that the merger is not the result of any recession time cost cutting, and that he does not expect any redundancies to result from the deal. The two company’s teams will be integrated, however, with a goal set to have the merger properly complete, in logistical terms, by the end of the year.

PR commentators have commended Gordon Brown’s decision to bring former royal communicator Simon Lewis in as his Director Of Communications. Number Ten announced that the experienced PR man will be taking over communications at the heart of government yesterday.

His brief, presumably, is to help lift the Brown team’s reputation following the fallout of the parliamentary expenses scandal, the local and European election defeats, and the various high profile ministerial resignations that surrounded this month’s Euro ballot. He will also want to stop claims that have been made by a number of Brown’s critics, including some within the Labour Party, that there is a blame culture at Number Ten where aides automatically brief against all of Brown’s critics.

Both journalists and PR professionals alike seem to think that, while this is no easy brief, if anyone can improve the media and public perception of the Gordon Brown brand, Lewis can.

He, of course, became prominent beyond the corporate communications industry in 1998 when he was appointed as the communications chief at Buckingham Palace, the first proper PR man to work for the royal family. He was brought in to overhaul the palace’s media relations and tackle public perception issues following the stresses put on the monarchy after the death of Princess Diana in 1997.

That said, some say his biggest comms achievement is more recent than that, when he aided the boss of Vodafone, Arun Sarin, as he faced boardroom coups and shareholder rebellions. The Guardian quote one PR professional who observes: “He helped Sarin hold his nerve. He has a very calm manner. That’s what he will exercise at No 10. He won’t be part of the blame culture”.

Whether Lewis will be able to reinvigorate the fortunes of the flagging government through a communication programme remains to be seen. With a General Election having to happen at some point in the next twelve months, there’s a relatively short timeframe in which to deliver.

In an interesting piece in PR Week, a number of communication experts have criticised the mainstream political parties for failing to enter into a public debate with the British National Party, arguing that the policy of ignoring the far-right organisation helped them win two seats in the European Parliament.

Most mainstream politicians have previously refused to take part in public or media debates with campaigners from the far right, fearing that doing so gives parties like the BNP, and their more controversial policies, an air of credibility, and possibly making said parties seem like they have more support than they really do.

Even after BNP leader Nick Griffin and his colleague Andrew Brons had won their seats in last week’s European elections, Channel 4 News chiefs admitted on their Twitter feed that they were struggling to find a representative from one of the mainstream political parties to take part in an on-air debate with the BNP’s top man.

But the problem with that policy, some argue, is that it means the BNP’s often sweeping statements and more controversial policies go undebated and therefore unquestioned. And with public trust in mainstream politicians at an all time low, that gives those on the fringes of the political spectrum the opportunity to make bold promises without being challenged. Mainstream political types, some argue, would be better advised to take the BNP on, and to engage with voters on the far right’s hot topic areas of race and immigration so to win the debate and divert public support from the far-right.

PR Week quote Simon Francis, who heads up the public sector division at communications consultancy Band & Brown, who says: “Politicians have refused to comment and give the BNP credence, but doing this has created a vacuum that the BNP has filled by campaigning locally”.

Meanwhile, Nick Lowles of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight added: “Ignoring the BNP does not work. Politicians need to stop talking banal nonsense and address the public policy issues”.

As anti-racist groups step up their campaigning against the BNP in the wake of the party’s Euro win, it will be interesting to see how Labour, Conservative et al deal with the increasingly prominent far right as we move towards a General Election at some point in the next year.

While the first-past-the-post system means the BNP would never replicate their success in the European elections in a race to Westminster, the next election will likely be the most covered in British history, which provides an opportunity for the BNP to get more exposure, but also for the other political parties to take the far right on, by employing some good old fashion debate and issue based communications.

Despite continued trouble on the high street, the UK’s flagship high street retailer, good old Marks & Spencer, retains its position as the “most reputable” company in the eyes of British consumers.

M&S is the highest scoring UK company in the 2009 Global Reputation Pulse Study, conducted by a thing called the Reputation Institute. These guys surveyed 5000 British consumers, asking them to assess each of the country’s biggest 140 companies on to ‘trust, esteem, admiration, and good feeling”. Based on those criteria each company gets a ‘global pulse score’ out of a hundred – M&S leads with 78.23.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the financial services industry scored particularly badly this time round, with only Nationwide – who often make much of their status as a building society as opposed to a true bank – appearing in the top fifty.

Making up the rest of the top five this year were long-standing high profile British brands (British in terms of tradition if not current ownership) like Rolls-Royce, Morrisons and Cadbury, though surprisingly London-based medical firm Smith & Nephew came second, just behind M&S with a score of 77.58.

Corporate reputation is generally seen as being an important issue for big companies these days. Partly because public perception of a company will subconsciously influence a customer’s buying decisions, and partly because a good reputation will ensure a firm more favourable outcomes if and when it finds itself relying on government – local or national – for a licence to trade or expand.

Many corporate communicators now point to the importance of corporate reputation when justifying their budgets, the communication function playing an important role in managing the public’s perception of a company.

Commenting on the latest survey, Seamus Gillen, UK MD of the Reputation Institute, told reporters: “The most telling finding is that, next to delivering strong products and services, consumers want companies to act transparently and ethically, and to prove that they care about society. We are clearly seeing the reaction to the way in which banks in particular have let people down, and destroyed public trust”.

The full UK top 50 for 2009 is as follows (with ‘global pulse score’ in brackets):

1. Marks & Spencer (78.23)
2. Smith & Nephew(77.58)
3. Cadbury (77.58)
4. William Morrison Supermarkets (77.16)
5. Rolls-Royce (77.09)
6. Tate & Lyle (76.84)
7. Sainsbury (76.43)
8. Intercontinental Hotels (76.16)
9. Thomas Cook (75.99)
10. Inmarsat (75.31)
11. PZ Cussons (74.66)
12. SAB Miller (74.25)
13. Next (73.77)
14. Travis Perkins (73.75)
15. BHP Billiton (73.69)
16. Unilever (73.6)
17. Dairy Crest (73.57)
18. GlaxoSmithKline (73.16)
19. Associated British Foods (72.81)
20. The Game Group (72.69)
21. WHSmith (72.43)
22. Tesco (72.29)
23. AstraZeneca (71.39)
24. Diageo (71.33)
25. WPP Group (71.29)
26. Wood Group (71.14)
27. GKN (71.04)
28. Weir Group (71.02)
29. Wolseley (70.72)
30. Babcock International Group (70.67)
31. Rentokil Initial (70.38)
32. Debenhams (70.31)
33. Elsevier (70.09)
34. Home Retail Group (70.04)
35. Go-Ahead Group (70.03)
36. Reckitt Benckiser (69.95)
37. Xstrata (69.61)
38. Johnson Matthey (69.49)
39. Sage (69.47)
40. Jardine Lloyd Thompson (69.45)
41. Vodafone (69.45)
42. Taylor Nelson Sofres (69.38)
43. Nationwide Building Society (69.35)
44. Yell Group (69.2)
45. British Airways (68.98)
46. Inchcape (68.78)
47. BAE Systems (68.66)
48. Pearson (68.55)
49. Tomkins (68.46)
50. Avis Europe (68.41)

An interesting story from the advertising sector, where major agency group Publicis has admitted that it could lose 55 million euros from the collapse of car giant General Motors.

That said, the French owned agency network has ask the US bankruptcy court to allow it to have “essential vendor” status in GM’s bankruptcy, which means it could continue to work for and receive payments from the car firm while it us under so called Chapter 11 protection.

The hope is that the company can successfully restructure itself to avoid complete collapse (such a restructure will almost certainly involve selling off none core products and divisions), and in doing so the advertising company can reduce any losses it might incur as a result of General Motor’s woes.

According to its bankruptcy filing, GM owes Publicis $146 million, however a big chunk of that is owed to the group’s media buying business Starcom MediaVest, who will in turn owe monies to media who carried the car firm’s advertising. Because of the principle of ‘sequential liability’ the media buyer only has to pay the media owner once it has been paid by its client.

Publicis said in a statement yesterday: “The agencies of Publicis Groupe which work with GM have been asked to continue to work with GM through the bankruptcy and we expect our relationships to continue with the new company”.

US advertising major Interpublic Group is also affected by GM’s Chapter 11 application, as will be the consumer and corporate PR companies retained by the firm.

A Labour backbencher has criticised the Downing Street media operation which, he says, falsely informed the press that he was part of a plot by Labour MPs to oust Gordon Brown as party leader and Prime Minister.

Newcastle-Under-Lyme MP Paul Farrelly denies having any involvement in a campaign being run by some Labour backbenchers to force a change of leadership in their party before the next General Election, but claims that the media machine at Number 10 told journalists he was leading efforts to replace the leader. It’s also alleged Labour’s Chief Whip Nick Brown pesonally accused Farrelly of a key role.

The MP says that the allegations were made simply because he hadn’t managed to personally speak to the Whip or the PM himself to confirm his support.

He argues that the fact he was subsequently briefed against by Brown aides means nothing has been learned at Number 10 from the fallout of the Damian McBride affair, when the Brown advisor was caught planning online smear campaigns against opposition politicians. According to Farrelly, Downing Street still operates a policy of briefing against any politician who may oppose Brown’s leadership

According to PR Week, Farrelly told the BBC: “I was furious… it raises some serious questions about Gordon’s style of politics. The Chief Whip hadn’t spoken to me. Gordon Brown was calling around backbenchers on Wednesday afternoon [but] I was out travelling and campaigning. I called Downing Street twice but didn’t manage to speak to the Prime Minister. [As a result] they decided to sanction feeding my name to the media as the ringleader of a coup. It was reminiscent of last year [when] names [were] fed to sympathetic journalists before conference… It’s as if Damian McBride and his emails never happened”.

Although not part of any backbench rebellion, Farrelly has now thrown his support behind Alan Johnson as a new party leader and Prime Minister though, of course, the new Home Secretary remains loyal to Gordon Brown for the time being.

The publicity boost enjoyed by the Telegraph as a result of its long drawn out expenses story has been worth millions, or so reckons one unnamed media executive at a rival newspaper.

The media exec made the comment as the newspaper industry expects to see both the Daily and Sunday Telegraph perform particularly well in the next round of ABC circulation figures, which cover the weeks when the broadsheet led with a new set of parliamentary expense scandals each day. It’s thought overall the paper has shifted a million more copies than normal during the publication of the expenses stories.

Just the extra revenue from the cover price of the additional copies sold has probably covered the fee the paper paid for the expenses data, thought to be somewhere between £70K and £150K. In addition to that, the boosted circulation of the paper, not to mention the extra traffic the story will have generated for the Telegraph’s website, will lead to an increase in advertising revenues.

But it’s the PR value of the story that has possibly been most valuable, given the Telegraph’s numerous revelations about different MP’s expense claims led the news agenda for days on end, making the Telegraph’s scoop headline news across the broadcast news media, and in most of the broadsheet’s rival newspapers.

Pre-empting tomorrow’s ABC figures, The Guardian quote the aforementioned exec from a rival newspaper group as follows: “The Telegraph has had between £5m to £6m worth of publicity out of this. It has been the best investment of modern times”.

As well as the shrewd move to buy the confidential data behind the story – other papers had knocked back former SAS soldier John Wick when he offered to sell it to them – media commentators are also commending the paper’s Deputy Political Editor Robert Winnett. He has coordinated the story, from identifying what aspects of the mounds of tedious accounting information had the potential to be mini political scandals, to deciding which particular discrepancies to run on which days to ensure public, media and political interest in the story could be maintained as long as possible.

Companies need to better communicate with employees as the stresses and cutbacks of the recession impact on workers’ confidence and trust in their employers. Not my words, but the conclusion of a new survey conducted by YouGov for financial comms agency FD.

In a poll of 524 white-collar workers, less than half said they felt their CEO had shown strong, decisive leadership as the economy collapsed, while only 28% now trusted messages coming from their top man more than “a little”. Only 15% said their employers had been communicating news on job security “very well”, while 37% claimed communication had been poor or non-existent. Not good statistics given the growth of the internal and change communication disciplines in recent years.

FD CEO Charles Watson says that while senior executives may have been previously occupied restructuring their companies to survive the recession, they now needed to invest time into reconnecting with their staff, and successfully engaging employees means being honest with them.

According to PR Week, Watson says: “Businesses are now expecting people to work harder, often for less money – that is as tough a challenge as a CEO is ever going to face. Bosses have rightly been focused on the priority of making sure businesses are still viable, but the focus now must be on engaging the people who work for them in a meaningful and proactive way. Employees need to be told the truth – however bad it is. Hiding behind the media to engage employees is just not good enough these days”.

Comms giant Ogilvy & Mather have launched a new division focusing on so called ‘sustainability communications’.

The new company is called OgilvyEarth, and is primarily concerned with clients’ environmental initiatives, though they’ve gone with the ‘sustainability’ buzz word because, they say, “sustainability is the growth opportunity of the 21st century, but it’s not just about being green, it’s about rethinking how the world works and finding smarter ways to do the simple actions that make up our daily lives”.

The new business will aim to help company’s to understand relevant environmental issues and communicate their own sustainability initiatives to campaigners, government and media, and the wider world. They also offer a service to bring key executives up to date on key issues before they enter into a “sustainability conversation”.

Ogilvy make much of their involvement in BP’s “beyond petroleum” campaign in providing their credentials for “sustainability communications work, and also reference past work for Qantas airlines, Tetra Pak, DuPont and the American NGO Environmental Defense Fund.

In related news, supermarket firm Waitrose will promote one of its sustainability policies by supporting a new film that investigates the plight of the world’s fish stocks. ‘The End Of The Line’, dubbed ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ for the oceans, is based on a book by former Telegraph Environment Editor Charles Clove and is released next week. Waitrose will promote the film through its website, and offer its customers discounts on tickets to see it, in a bid to promote its “long term commitment to fish sustainability”.

Waitrose MD Mark Price told reporters: “[YouGov research says] 70% of people want to buy sustainable fish – so it is our responsibility to make that possible. We’re supporting ‘The End Of The Line’ as it is essential this issue is brought to the fore. We want everyone to ask where their fish is coming from – to make sure we’re not stealing fish from future generations”.

Colleagues of Neil Warrior, a British PR professional aboard the Air France plane that disappeared on Monday morning as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, have been paying tribute to a “perfect English gentleman” and a “brilliant operator in the motor industry”.

As the first debris from Air France’s “worst ever catastrophe” were found, colleagues of Warrior at Mazda Europe, where he was a PR director, gave their first reactions to the newspapers.

The Telegraph quote Graeme Fudge, another PR director for the car firm, as saying: “He was a well-liked, well-respected guy and a very good operator in the motor industry. We found out after his sister called Mazda Europe to tell them he was on that flight. It is a tremendous shock for us all and our thoughts are with his family”.

Another colleague, Franz Tanner, added: “We are destroyed by the news. I first worked with Neil 20 years ago. He is the sort of person you would describe as a true English gentleman”.

Warrior wasn’t married and, although originally from London, lived and worked in Cologne. He was returning from a holiday in South America.

The cause of Monday’s air crash remains unknown, the search for the aircraft’s black box recorder is currently the top priority of those investigating the incident.

Entertainment PR company the Outside Organisation has confirmed that one of its most high profile publicists, Stuart Bell, has left the company. His departure seems to be quite sudden, and with Outside confirming Bell is now on “gardening leave” it’s thought the PR man is planning on launching his own rival agency.

Former record company publicist Bell was perhaps best known for heading up Paul McCartney’s PR during his high profile and nasty divorce for ex-wife Heather Mills. He is seen as a heavyweight in the celebrity PR domain, and some had tipped him as a possible future chief at the Outside company when founder and CEO Alan Edwards eventually decides to retire.

The Outside Organisation recently took on Katie Price as a client following her separation from husband Peter Andre and the end of her relationship with the Can Associates management agency, who will continue to work with Andre. The suddenness of Bell’s departure is illustrated by reports he had already started to work on the new Price account.

Anti-litter organisation Keep Britain Tidy has taken the unusual step of advertising for a new celebrity ambassador in The Guardian. The charity has invited famous faces willing to dedicate some time to persuading the public at large to not drop litter to come forward. Members of the public are also invited to propose possible celebrities who would make good anti-litter ambassadors.

The advert seems to be a genuine call for interested celebs to get in touch, though the recruitment campaign itself could lead to some useful profile boosting for the charity, which recently returned to its original name of Keep Britian Tidy after nearly a decade operating as Encams, short for Environmental Campaigns.

The organisation’s media manager, Dickie Felton, told reporters: “Lots of different celebrities, such as TV and radio presenters, regularly complain about litter. We wanted to throw down the gauntlet and get them to put their money where their mouths are”. Any celebs who volunteer to represent the charity will need to give up at least two days a year for free, and, perhaps more importantly, will need to live a green, clean, scandal free life.

Despite those demands, whoever does become the new face of the campaigning group will be joining an esteemed list of anti-litter advocates – previous celebrities who have publicly supported the body include Abba, Marc Bolan, Morecambe & Wise and the Queen Mother.

Keep Britian Tidy confirmed it was returning to its original working name, instead of the more corporate sounding Encams, earlier this week. Explaining the decision to revert to the old name, the body’s new CEO, Phil Barton, said: “I think most people always did call us Keep Britain Tidy. We did a survey and found that name got 85% recognition, and only 12% knew what Encams stood for – and, to be perfectly honest, I’m surprised it was as many as that. So we’ve gone back to basics”.

UK Black & Asian PR Networking Group in association with Taylor Bennett and Unicorn Jobs present The Art of Networking: Getting and Keeping a Job, a seminar on 8 June, 6.30–8.30pm, at Taylor Bennett, 35 Queen Anne Street, London W1G 9HZ

Aim

This event is designed to give you ideas and strategies for using networking as a career development tool, both within organisations and across the PR industry.

Intended outcome

You will come away with ideas about how to network effectively, use your time well, select your targets appropriately, and generate authentic relationships with key people – all to the benefit of your career.

Background

The credit crunch presents both challenges and opportunities for PR professionals, who are always under pressure to demonstrate value. This means PR people need to be noticed and known, so they can demonstrate the quality and creativity of their work – and ensure they can get – and keep – a job in difficult times.

Networking is fundamental to the art of being noticed and known, both within organisations and outside them, across the industry. The two presenters here will discuss different aspects of networking and how it can help diverse practitioners get and keep jobs during these challenging times.

The Presenters

Zena Martin, Acknowledge Communications
Zena founded Acknowledge Communications after a highly successful career in PR, including a board position at Hill & Knowlton. She is widely-known throughout the industry, and will share her views on how to spot networking opportunities, develop contacts, and use them effectively.

Colleen Harris, Colleen Harris Associates
Colleen’s consultancy specialises in issues-based communications. Previously she held a senior communications position at 10 Downing Street, was Press Secretary to HRH the Prince of Wales, and Communications Director at the Commission for Racial Equality. Having worked in a wide range of in-house roles, she will discuss using networking to succeed within a company.

Registering

To attend this event, email your name, and company name (if relevant), to L.Edwards@leedsmet.ac.uk. The deadline for registering is by 4th JUNE

One of the publicity campaigns that London-based Taylor Herring recently listed in their Top 50 PR Stunts Of All Time – the recruitment by the Queensland tourist board in Australia of a ‘caretaker’ for one of the paradise islands in their region – recently reached its climax with the appointment of 34 year old Brit Ben Southall to the job. He will now get paid £73,000 to ‘care’ for the Hamilton island within the Great Barrier Reef for a year, a job which will, I think, mainly involve posing for photos for the tourism body’s website.

Both PR and advertising experts have declared the paradise job concept as a huge success for Tourism Queensland. Although having to pay to run the job ads, and having to cover Southall’s £73,000 salary, the UK-focused campaign has won worldwide media coverage, both when the ads were first posted and once Southall had been recruited. And although the campaign has, in theory, reached its climax, some reckon there are more opportunities to generate press coverage for the promotion as the new caretaker begins his job on the paradise island that is now his home.

Some reckon the campaign won Queensland £50 million worth of exposure for the tourism potential of the Australian region, with coverage as far a field as Canada, China, Germany and Indonesia, not to mention the UK, where the campaign was primarily focused.

Commenting on the mega-PR value of the campaign, achieved on a relatively modest advertising budget, the editor of ad industry magazine Campaign, Claire Beale, told the Guardian: “The joy of it is that you couldn’t buy that sort of positive commercial message, especially not for the winner’s £73,000 salary”.

She continued: “This was an incredibly shrewd, multi-layered marketing campaign. Obviously they had the first bite of the cherry when the ad was placed in January, and they orchestrated a very successful campaign to seed the news in the media. Now that the candidate has been chosen, they can expect more coverage. Plus the opportunities don’t stop here – if I was in charge, I would look about making a reality TV documentary about his arrival, and take it from there”.

One of interest to anyone involved in corporate sponsorship. A very sacred media platform is taking corporate sponsors for the first time – the Vatican’s own radio station, what is dubbed “the voice of the pope”.

The Vatican were real innovators when it came to broadcast media, launching their own radio station as long ago as 1931, aided by the Italian who spearheaded the early development of radio broadcasting, Guglielmo Marconi. It now broadcasts on FM in Rome, via medium and longwave worldwide, and over the net.

It is, however, an expensive operation – some reports say the Catholic Church invests over £19 million a year into keeping the communication channel operational. Keen to find new ways to fund the service, the Vatican have employed the services of an advertising agency to help them find sponsors.

The first sponsor will be Rome-based electricity giant ENEL, whose branding will appear on air for the first time on 6 Jul. But the Catholic station is also looking for other potential commercial partners, though only those that fulfil the list of moral requirements which have been provided to the ad agency working on the project.

It’s definitely worth considering if your definition of corporate responsibility includes being perceived as a responsible organisation by a higher body than just your consumers, shareholders and the media.

Branding news, and three long established British banking brands will disappear off the high street following news that their common parent company will push its corporate brand forward to consumers over the next eighteen months.

The brands set to disappear are Abbey (formerly Abbey National of course), Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley, which are now all owned by Spanish banking giant Santander.

The Spanish parent company incorporated its own corporate logo into the Abbey brand identity a while ago, and the bank already uses the strapline “part of the Santander Group”. But the latest move will see Abbey and the Spanish firm’s two newer British banking acquisitions fully rebrand as Santander. It’s part of a move by the Spanish firm to have all its businesses around the world operating under one name.

Branches on the high street will be rebranded and refurbished over an 18 month period, while product brands in all three banks will take the Santander name from early next year. In-branch and media advertising will focus in particular on the parent company’s sponsorship of the McLaren-Mercedes Formula 1 team, with a Lewis Hamilton fronted campaign. The bank says its involvement in the sport has already helped boost the profile of the parent company’s brand name in the UK

The Public Relations Consultants Association has announced an alliance with media monitoring company Precise, which will see the PRCA officially endorse the company’s media tracking and analysis services.

Confirming the tie up, PRCA boss Francis Ingham told esPResso: “With the PRCA PR Leaders’ Panel committed to the importance of media analysis, the right partner is vital for organisations to plan campaigns effectively, respond in a timely manner to unforeseen issues and demonstrate the value of communications to their organisation’s success. Precise provides a comprehensive, efficient and quality service that will meet our members’ needs as well as addressing the challenges presented by the changing media landscape”.

Keir Fawcus, Precise MD, added: “We recognise the importance of the work undertaken by the PRCA and are delighted to be able to assist their members in establishing effective analysis programmes to demonstrate their return on investment in PR, and look forward to continuing to develop our services to meet the changing requirements of both agency and in-house teams”.

With the reputation of the political class at something of an all time low of late, thanks in the main to the Daily Telegraph’s cleverly delivered if slightly drawn out MP expenses story, now would probably be a good time for the lobbying industry to make some bold commitments regarding transparency. And the Association Of Professional Political Consultants is hoping to do just that by launching a new ‘kite-mark’ programme for the public affairs industry.

This scheme, of course, pre-dates the recent media-fuelled public outrage at the perceived misbehaviour of the political community, though with Tory leader David Cameron using the whole expenses ‘scandal’ as an excuse to criticise the alleged “sofa government” system adopted by both Blair and Brown, we can probably expect some media attention to be given in the coming months to the people, advisors and lobbyists who occasionally sit on the proverbial sofa.

The APPC and other interested PR trade bodies have been looking into ways to make the public affairs sector look less secretive and sinister to outsiders since January, mainly in response to calls from within the political community itself, both at a UK and European level, for the whole lobbying process to be more open. The trade bodies – the APPC, Chartered Institute Of Public Relations and Public Relations Consultants Association – are hoping that by introducing their own voluntary scheme to overcome any concerns, whether those concerns come from politicians or the media or the public at large, there will be no need for government regulation of the industry to be forced upon them.

They are proposing the creation of a new umbrella group, supported by all three trade bodies, and called the Public Affairs Council. Political consultancies would be encouraged to sign up to the Council, but to do so would have to agree to a certain code of conduct, and to participate in a common register in which members would list clients and projects. All consultancies in the Council would be able to use the ‘kite-mark’ as a way of demonstrating their commitment to transparency in the sector.

The working group of APPC, CIPR and PRCA members published their proposals for the Council and kite-mark scheme earlier this month and are now undertaking a consultation of interested parties, which should be completed by the end of next week.

The proposals have had a mixed response from within the public affairs sector. PR Week reported comments from some senior players at consultancies not affiliated to the APPC who were critical. Eben Black of DLA Piper said “We don’t think it is a satisfactory response. It is anti-competitive and looks like regulation on the cheap”, while Bell Pottinger’s Public Affairs chair Peter Bingle added: “At a time when the government has its own problems, the public affairs industry would do well to keep its counsel to itself and focus on long-term solutions”.

But one of the practitioners involved in the Council proposals, Foresight Consulting MD Mark Adams, told the trade magazine he welcomed constructive criticism, as that was the point of the consultation. He said: “If anyone has a good reason why it’s not the way forward we’d be keen to hear it. The last thing we want to do is put up barriers to peoples’ democratic right to lobby”.

One newspaper hoping to turn round its fortunes is the London Evening Standard, which relaunched earlier this month, of course, following the arrival earlier this year of its new owner, Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, and his long term friend, Geordie Greig, who is now editor of the London daily.

The relaunch was preceded, of course, by a very interesting publicity campaign based around the word ‘sorry’ – the paper was basically apologising for the editorial slant and attitude it had adopted over the last few years in a bid to win new readers. It was an interesting idea, if somewhat humiliating for Veronica Wadley, the paper’s former editor. And she argued that the ‘sorry’ ads were also humiliating for the paper’s existing readership, which Lebedev and Greig are presumably keen to keep.

Speaking to the Media Guardian as the paper relaunched, the former editor was dismissive of the ‘sorry’ campaign and the paper’s new management, saying: “London is laughing at this ludicrous campaign. Saying ‘sorry’ for the past smacks of a Soviet courtroom ‘confession’. ‘Sorry’ has all the hallmarks of a KGB-style smear campaign. It denigrates the judgement of 500,000 loyal readers. The new management seems to think that a paper should be edited by self serving market research – and the Pravda-style promise of good news is an insult to the intelligence of its readers”.

It remains to be seen if she’s right, and whether, once the hype of the relaunch has died down, the Standard really can turn round its fortunes long term, and compete with the plethora of online sources of afternoon and evening news, and the prevalent London freesheets.

As the advertising recession really starts to bite, a feeling of doom and gloom really seems to have taken hold over the media, where TV, radio, newspaper and magazine firms are all restructuring and downsizing, not just to accommodate falling ad revenues, but also in a bid to find media business models that will work on the internet, where there are more competitors, and where consumers generally expect content to be free.

For media relations people, most of whom traditionally focus on newspaper and magazines, the perceived decline of the traditional press is something to watch closely. In the newspaper industry, it’s the regional press who are facing the most hardships, though an increasing number of commentators are predicting at least two high profile national daily titles will also disappear from our newsstands in the next five years.

Nevertheless, nearly 60% of UK publishers reportedly reckon their fortunes will improve in the next year, according to a survey commissioned by InPublishing magazine. Despite slumping advertising revenues, only 9% of the publishers surveyed admitted to making a loss, while 79% said they were still profitable. 57%, meanwhile, said they expected the sector to recover, albeit slowly, through 2010. Three quarters said they hoped no more job cuts would be necessary.

Despite the relative optimism for their own companies, many publishers surveyed seem to think more titles – newspapers, magazines and websites – would still disappear in the next 18 months. That, though, would provide an opportunity for those that stay in busines, given that many seemed to think one issue for their sector is that the advertising boom that preceded this recession led to a glut of print and online media.

The report concluded: “The recession is forcing most companies to take a hard look at the way they do things. The repeated hope running through the survey is that recession will force weaker competition out of a market which is simply over-supplied in terms of the number of magazines, newspapers and websites available to both readers and advertisers”.

One from the advertising sector, though an important lesson about celebrity endorsement.

The Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that those slightly scary Iggy Pop ads for insurance firm Swiftcover were officially “misleading” when they first aired because they imply the rocker himself has cover from the insurer when, in fact, they didn’t offer packages for musicians at the time.
Shortly after the ads started to air there were a number of media reports of musicians who applied for insurance from the company only to be knocked back because of their profession. Musicians, you see, smash up too many hotel rooms to be worth insuring.

The insurer has since introduced a package for musicians, but when the ad campaign began they did not offer such a product. Following twelve complaints, possibly from musicians who had been knocked back by the insurer, the ASA investigated and ruled this week that the advert would lead “some viewers to believe the policy covered those who worked in entertainment, when it did not”. Pop, the Authority confirmed, is not himself insured by the AXA Group owned online insurer.

The ruling is perhaps a little too late given that, as we said, and presumably because of the negative coverage that followed the launch of the Pop campaign, Swiftcover have now introduced a package for music types. Something which, it says, few of its competitors currently offer.

A spokesman for the insurer added that their choice of Iggy Pop for the campaign wasn’t influenced by his rock star status, but more his reputation for having a “fast-living lifestyle”. The company claims that it’s online service provides faster insurance cover than that offered by traditional insurers.

A recent survey reckons that financal PR people are increasingly failing to engage the media because of their failure to embrace new digital communication tools.

The survey, by financial PR firm Broadgate, questioned 76 journalists about the way companies communicate their business and financial messages, and 85% of those surveyed said that a lack of digital engagement lost firms key media coverage.

PR Week quote Broadgate director Roland Cross as follows: “Financial services firms operate in a highly regulated sector and have to deal with many compliance issues, so they have tended not to sell directly through the internet. But that does not mean they should not embrace the ability to communicate with [stakeholders] via digital channels”.

Among the weaknesses identified by journalists were a failure to update online press releases, a lack of contact information on company websites, and an excessive use of passwords protecting non-sensitive data that prevented media people from accessing required information.

Into the City, and an interesting report on eFinancialCareers considering the state of the finanical PR sector in the current economic climate. With few flotations to be communicated, and with budgets being cut across the City, they wondered if those agencies who specialise in financial communications were themselves suffering. And whether individual financial PR specialists were finding that there were not only less jobs, but more competition, as unemployed bankers consider a switch to comms.

The boss of one financial PR firm, however, said that a recession in itself posed a number of communication challenges that would occupy agencies like his while flotation and merger projects were few and far between. Angus Maitland of Maitland Communications, told the website: “The IPO [flotation] side of the business has all but disappeared, and M&A work is well down, but there have been a number of rights issues and restructurings, plus there’s a need for PR associated with companies in difficult situations. In this sense, this kind of market does produce opportunities for financial PR firms”.

Nevertheless, headcount is down at a number of the bigger financial comms companies, making competition for investor relations and financial PR jobs that bit fiercer. As a result, it is not necessarily an easy area for those previously employed elsewhere in the City to break into just at the moment. Leila Reuter of UnicornJobs.com’s sister company Taylor Bennett told eFinancialCareers that she gets up to 30 CVs a week from former City people looking to move into communications, but that many will find there are few jobs available, and that many employers may consider former bankers over priced.

She concluded: “Senior financial communications people don’t necessarily move jobs every two minutes and a lot of IR people are recruited from within the business”.

Back to America, and Team Obama had a tricky political PR challenge to deal with earlier this week, after the people who look after the President’s fleet of planes organised a publicity stunt that backfired.

For reasons no one is clear on, the Federal Aviation Administration decided they needed a picture of an Air Force One plane flying past the Statue Of Liberty for use in publicity materials. Rather than Photoshop such an image, they got one of the Boeing 747s in the Presidential fleet and two jet fighters to fly at a low height over Manhatten, photographing it as it went by, at a cost to the taxpayer of $328,835.

Rather than turning the photoshoot into an albeit expensive PR event in itself, they informed the relevant authorities about their plans in advance, but requested no one go public about them, possibly for security reasons. That decision, though, predictably back fired because the people of New York are, understandably, nervous of any large aircraft flying over their city at a low height.

As emergency phone lines became blocked as panicked New Yorkers saw the planes approach, the city’s media was quick to question who was behind the photo stunt, and why the public had not been warned of the plans. Media criticism became even more intense once the cost of the photo shoot was revealed.

Local and national political leaders were quick to respond, both going with a “we didn’t know, it shouldn’t have happened, we’re sorry” strategy, which looks like it might just have worked.

Obama’s people were quick to release a statement telling reporters the president had not himself been informed about the fly over before it happened, while a spokesman for New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said that his office had been told about the FAA‘s plans but that because of an oversight the mayor himself was not informed.

Obama said “It was a mistake… and it will not happen again”, while a spokesman for the Pentagon told reporters: “I think this is one of those rare cases where we can all agree it was a mistake”.

Whether New York’s media will let this one lie as “an expensive mistake” remains to be seen. Let’s just hope the FAA got some great pictures.

It’s not often we report on articles from the pork trade press in esPResso, but the global pork industry is bracing itself for the PR challenge that has been unleashed by the fact the world at large has decided to call the flu epidemic that kicked off in Mexico recently “swine flu” or, more colloquially, “pig flu”.

American-based Pork magazine points out that the new strand of the flu virus is actually “a multiple reassortant” combining “genetic material from human influenza, avian influenza as well as swine influenza viruses”. But it recognises that, because the virus is being widely reported as “swine flu”, it will be the pig industry that could suffer, even though, as the magazine points out, the US Center For Disease Control And Prevention has officially said: “Swine influenza viruses are not spread by food. You cannot get swine influenza from eating pork or pork products. Eating properly handled and cooked pork products is safe”.

All of which means that, as well as trying to stop the spread of the disease among pigs, the pork industry also needs to instigate a communications inititiative to safeguard the consumer end of their industry, to ensure supermarket customers don’t steer clear of pig meats because of a negative association with the flu outbreak.

In Australia, the pork industry’s trade body has already issued a ‘pork is safe’ media release, which states: “The global concern with so-called swine flu has been declared as not being a food-borne safety issue. Consumers should also realise that swine flu is a disease that does not exist in Australian pigs”. The release presents data from the country’s own Veterinary Association and the World Health Organisation backing up its claims, and the body says it will add a special swine flu section on its website to reassure consumers.

In America, though, some commentators think the pig industry there needs to do more as panic about the disease dominates the headlines. One PR strategist writing for the StarTribune in Minneapolis, Matt Burns, says that the aforementioned statement from the Center For Disease Control is not getting heard amid all the media hype around the Mexican outbreak and the chances, or not, of it spreading North of the border.

Burns observes: “The US pork industry produces more than $21 billion in personal income and adds $34.5 billion to our country’s gross national product. That’s some serious bacon, which is why pork producers need to take a much more aggressive approach than we’re seeing to combat the public relations crisis they have on their hands – and pigs feet”.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen what impact the pig flu story has on the European pork industry, where the story continues to dominate the headlines despite the flu outbreak being, as yet, predominantly confined to the other side of the world. Certainly few of those headlines have, so far, been used to encourage British meat eaters to continue buying pork.

As 10 Downing Street copes with the communication challenge created by the fall from grace of Damian McBride last weekend, PR Week has been wondering what the next career move might be for Gordon Brown’s former political adviser.

As a former Head Of Comms at the UK Treasury you’d normally expect McBride to find a senior PR job quite quickly, and given his high level links in government a well paid advisor role at one of the bigger public affairs agencies would usually make most sense.

However, it comes as no surprise that, given the circumstances of his departure – being caught planning a dirty tricks campaign to discredit senior Tories, mainly through the publication of scurrilous rumours on a new website – few consultancies are lining up to negotiate terms.

PR Week report that the public affairs agency bosses they spoke to “laughed off” the idea of hiring McBride, with the response of Hanover Communications MD Charles Lewington being typical: “I am loathed to kick a man when he is down but he demonstrated a clear lack of judgment and professionalism. I fear his reputation is so badly damaged that only a long period building churches in Rwanda will restore it”.

Of course, despite the PR challenge of being seen to employ someone at the centre of a political scandal, McBride remains very well connected, and some cynics might say that while agency chiefs laugh at the suggestion of hiring the disgraced number ten man now, some job offers may come forward once the media coverage of his emails dies down.

Though some insiders also point out that while the result of next year’s General Election remains too close to call, few will be willing to buy into McBride’s contacts network, which may not be so useful if the very politicians he tried to discredit are in power come next summer.

So here’s an interesting communications challenge for you: convincing consumers who have bought into the anti-corporate values of a brand like Innocent smoothies that those values will remain despite the recent news that Coke has taken a 10–20% stake in the company who make the drinks, for a neat £30 million. Some media commentators last week wondered if the investment, while only giving Coke a minority stake, was a sign that the founders of the fashionably independent Innocent company were selling out.

Of course Innocent wouldn’t be the first brand conceived as a more ethical, more organic or more rebellious ‘antidote’ to established corporate-owned rivals to then be bought and consumed by one of those corporates. And with all the best will in the world, the more ethical, organic or rebellious practices of the ‘antidote brand’ are often watered down once affiliated to a bigger parent firm, even though it is those practices that make the antidote brand worth acquiring in the first place.

The degree to which that happens depends a lot on the investment deal, of course, and the level of influence the investor gains. But even if the investor has a minority stake and takes a hands-off approach, when you have any investment from a company like Coke the creators of the antidote brand need to be aware of the PR implications the simple presence of their new backers may have on public perception.

Innocent co-founder Richard Reed told the Guardian last week that the financial boost Coke’s investment will bring will actually let his company do all the things that the Innocent brand has become associated with on a grander scale. He told the paper: “Every promise that Innocent has made, about making only natural healthy products, pioneering the use of better, socially and environmentally aware ingredients, packaging and production techniques, donating money to charity and having a point of view on the world will remain. We’ll just get to do them even more. The founders will continue to lead and run the company, we will be the same people in the same offices making the same products in the same way”.

Some Innocent fans may fear that the drinks range they love may go the way of PJ Smoothies, a former market leader in the British smoothies market which fell some way behind newer rivals after they were bought by PepsiCo in 2005, before finally being scrapped late last year. Though, of course, Coke have only invested in Innocent, they haven’t actually bought it, so the comparison is possibly not valid.

Craig Sams, the founder of the Green & Black’s organic chocolate brand, which has continued to enjoy both credibility and success in the organic market despite Cadbury acquiring it in 2005, says that antidote brands can succeed within major corporations, benefiting from bigger budgets while hanging on to their independent firm values. However, on a communications point, he advises Coke to avoid the temptation to stamp its brand all over Innocent products, or to integrate the UK drink’s marketing with that of its US smoothie range Odwalla. If they do, he says, they will be in danger of destroying the independent brand they have paid so much to be part of.

The good news for Innocent fans is that Reed assures the Guardian that his new investors have no intention, for the time being at least, to ‘Coke-ify’ his smoothie brand which, he says, will continue to be operated by a standalone company.

While it is undeniably the web phenomenon of the moment, perhaps PR people shouldn’t be rushing to sign their companies or clients up to Twitter. Or at least not without first considering if it’s really right for them.

One US marketing expert, BL Ochman, has cautioned corporates about rushing into the new social networking fad, providing the Advertising Age website with “10 Reasons Not To Tweet”. The list includes various reasons a company might be thinking about communicating via Twitter, or the processes they plan to employ when Tweeting, and explains why those reasons or processes won’t work.

The list includes:

1. You think using Twitter is a social-media strategy. It’s a tactic, a tool, not a strategy. It works if you already have an online following who’ll view your Tweets as a way to interact with your company on a human level.
2. You are not going to respond when people direct tweets at you. Twitter is like the new water cooler. If you walked out to the water fountain and talked nonstop to people gathered there, they’d certainly be happy when you left. Ditto for Twitter.
3. Every tweet has to be approved by legal. Twitter is a social network where conversation is fast and interconnected. If you have to wait a day, or even a few hours for your 140 character Tweet to gain legal approval, Twitter will be the wrong platform for you.
4. You think all that matters on Twitter is getting a lot of people to follow you. Quality trumps quantity.

If all this is making you think twice, you should check out the full top ten on the Advertising Age website here.

Following on from that recent PR Week report on growing concerns in the PR agency sector about ideas being stolen by potential clients at pitching stage, the PR Consultants Association has revealed that 90% of the agency bosses on its PR Leaders’ Panel believe companies have used ideas they have presented in unsuccessful pitches without compensation.

Sara Render, CEO of Kinross & Render, called on the PRCA to act on idea theft in the comms sector in a recent PR Week interview, and will now lead an investigation on behalf of the trade body to assess how widespread the practice has become, and what can be done to combat it.

Of course, it’s a common fear for any creative agency pitching for work that there is always a risk a potential client may knock back their proposal, but then use the ideas included in it for an in-house campaign, or even hand those ideas over to a rival agency. On the flip side, it’s not uncommon for different agencies to pitch similar ideas to the same client for the same brief, so it can be hard to know what ideas are truly original, and whether or not a company really did steal any intellectural property from unsuccessfull potential suppliers. Agencies are paranoid their work will go unrewarded, clients are concerned they may be falsely accused of idea theft. But how big a problem is it, and can anything be done about it?

The PRCA included questions on the topic in its most recent Leaders’ Panel survey, and 90% said they were sure ideas they had pitched had subsequently been used by a client without their agency receiving any compensation. About half said that the problem arose with about 5% of pitches, while 35% reckoned it was a more common issue than that. Most didn’t feel the problem had worsened since the economic downturn – though just under 35% said they thought it had, while just under 10% said idea theft was definitely becoming more common.

Responding to the survey results, and confirming his organsiation was planning to investigate the issue further, PRCA Director General Francis Ingham told reporters: “The majority of clients recognise that intellectual property belongs to the agency. [But] the frequency with which a minority of clients abuse the trust agencies put in them when pitching is unacceptable. I’m delighted to announce that Sara Render of Kinross+Render and Gerry Hopkinson of Unity have agreed to lead a group examining how we can ensure that agencies are fairly rewarded for their effort and creativity”.

Proving, I think, that cyberspace has finally gone properly mainstream, the latest official readership figures for the online editions of UK newspapers show that the Sun’s website was the most popular in February.

The red top’s website has leapfrogged over those of The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Mail and The Times to become the most read newspaper site in the UK, possibly aided by its extra online coverage of the Alfie Patten story and Jade Goody’s cancer struggle.

Commenting on the online readership figures, Sun Online Editor Pete Picton told reporters: “Lots of things came together last month. We have been rewarded by work that [search and development manager] Chris Chivrall has been doing around social media, adding Digg buttons to our story pages, and we’ve also benefited from the site redesign before Christmas that is starting to pay off”.

The Guardian, previously the most read website according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic figures, fell to third place last month, putting it behind the Telegraph as well as the Sun.

Telegraph.co.uk Digital Editor Edward Roussel said his website was benefiting from a revamp based on the realisation that good ‘curation’ and story classification is as important as speed and quantity.

He told the Guardian: “The mistake we all made early on was thinking it was all about speed and volume, and really that’s wrong. Speed does matter, [but] it’s also the quality of your curation of content that makes you a good news organisation. Twelve or 18 months ago it was all about getting stories out but now it’s about how we tag, organise and curate those stories, how you combine them with info-graphics or SEO”.

Richard Houghton, Vice-Chairman of the PR Consultants Association, and a partner at B2B consultancy Carrot Communications, has made some interesting observations about the efforts of various political types to justify their more questionable expenses claims.

Writing on his personal blog, A Close Second, Houghton considers the PR challenge for those who have been caught up in the media’s recent onslaught of dodgy expense claim stories (dodgy in the sense, of course, that they normally comply with parliamentary rules, but seem like an excessive use of tax payer’s money nonetheless).

He first refers to Tory MP Eric Pickles and his attempts to justify claiming expenses for a second home in London despite the fact his constituency home is only 40 miles from Westminister. Houghton: “Pickles’ laughable defence on ‘Question Time’ last week was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. Apparently the audience didn’t understand that Westminster works like clockwork so he has to be there on time; public transport is unreliable and as a result he had to work really long days! The audience, with good reason, simply laughed at him”.

Houghton was more impressed with the way the husband of Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – Richard Timney – dealt with the embarrassing revelations that he had charged the rental of two ‘adult films’ to an internet account paid for by his wife’s expenses. Houghton observes: “He handled the situation as best he could. He stepped outside the gate of his house, read a short statement, accepted the anger his actions will have created, said sorry repeatedly and then stepped back through the gate. Short, to the point and direct. I do not think that it will save his wife’s job but if you had to advise him this is what you’d suggest”.

With reports claiming that there are numerous other embarrassing expenses revelations still to come out in the media, it will be interesting to see how other MPs and ministers deal with the personal PR challenge of justifying claims which, while possibly by the book, or by mistake, nevertheless open politicians up to potentially career-destroying misconduct charges.

You can read Richard Houghton’s blog here

Google has denied allegations that it has been conducting “an unsavoury and defamatory smear campaign” against pressure group Privacy International, who have been busy raising concerns about the web firm’s recently launched (in the UK) and much talked about Street View service which provides online photos of streets all over the country.

Privacy International director Simon Davies wrote an open letter to Google boss Eric Schmidt last week, accusing the web firm of feeding journalists misinformation to discredit his lobbying group after he spoke to the press about the privacy issues of the Street View service. In particular, Davies says that he’s been told by journalists that Google’s reps have been secretly suggesting there are links between Davies, and his company 80/20 Thinking, and the web firm’s rivals Microsoft; the suggestion being that link causes Privacy International to be biased against Google services.

In his open letter, Davis writes: “Neither Microsoft nor [Microsoft PR agency] Burson-Marsteller has ever paid money to either Privacy International or 80/20 Thinking, nor has any benefit in kind been given”. He adds that Privacy International had previously criticised Facebook for a change it made in its terms and conditions, and Microsoft have an albeit tiny stake in the social networking firm.

He concludes: “We are quite frankly stunned that a company such as Google would take steps… to peddle groundless conspiracy theories in an attempt to besmirch a critic. You should be ashamed of your actions. Google is coming across as a desperate company resorting to desperate measures”.

A spokesman for Google denied Davies’ allegations of any secret briefings, adding that they quite openly accuse their adversary of being biased against them because of his commercial affiliations, and that they have done so for some time.

According to the Guardian, a spokesman said: “Simon Davies regularly attacks Google on privacy grounds. It’s no secret that we believe the credibility of his criticisms is undermined by the fact that, alongside his work for Privacy International, he acts as a consultant to a number of technology companies who are direct rivals to, and in some cases vocal critics of, Google – a fact that he rarely seems to disclose in his press releases or comments to the media”.

Digital PR firm Immediate Future have published a guide to micro-blogging sensation Twitter for PR professionals, aiming to guide public relations people through the opportunities and possible pitfalls in using the latest social media phenomenon as a communication tool.

It includes advice for new users, some case studies of how Twitter has been used by PRs, some useful tweeting jargon and details of some journalists they recommend people ‘follow’ on the social networking website.

Immediate Future MD Katy Howell told PR Week: “Diving head-first into the social media space is risky, if you don’t take the time to understand the environment and its nuances, you risk getting things badly wrong and damaging your brand reputation”.

To get a copy you need to email Immediate Future – details here

As publicity stunts go, it presumably involved an awful lot of effort, but it was certainly a talking point in London today.

Anti-capitalism campaigners this morning preceded this weekend’s G20 summit, being held at the ExCel Centre in East London, by distributing a spoof edition of the Financial Times to commuters at Waterloo, which contained headlines like “This year’s Nobel peace prize has been awarded to former head of the CBI, Nigel Feasting-Piranha”, “Civilisation is ‘more or less unlikely to collapse this century’, world leaders warn” and “BBC swear quota gets star journalists cursing”.

The spoof paper was designed very much to look like the business daily, printed on the title’s distinctive pink paper, and carrying the strapline “we live on Financial Crimes”, a play on the newspaper’s “we live in Financial Times” line.

The first of various stunts and protests expected in London as the G20 leaders meet, the man who edited the spoof paper after teaching himself to use DTP packages InDesign and Photoshop, Raoul Djukanovic, told reporters: “Journalists frame public debate, and the City frames public policy. If they reframed their thinking, they could help build a different world instead of conning us with lifestyle porn and bubbles. I think [the spoof paper] is to encourage journalists to think about what they can do to promote constructive solutions. It’s their job to support facts and not opinions, but a lot of what’s reported as facts are actually the opinions of powerful people. If the prime minister says something, it’s news. If I say something, it’s not news”.

Djukanovic’s paper, though, is news. Aside from the thousands of commuters who were handed a copy, the stunt has got coverage elsewhere, not least on the real ft.com, where a blog described the spoof paper the “sincerest form of flattery”, while adding: “It is a mix of jokes and arguments, of varying quality, but the production is superb. They have reproduced the look of the FT very impressively”.

The blog also notes that the spoof’s leader column observes: “Frankly, the Financial Times is more honest than most, both about its bias and the state of the world. Investors tend to want their news less filtered, even if they still like it framed to serve their interests”. The FT’s blogger adds “Perhaps we should use that in our advertising”. And in a weird slightly perverse kind of way, I suspect the spoof paper might prove to be as good an advert for the FT as for the anti-capitalism campaign.

You can read the online edition of the spoof paper at www.ft2020.com

PR firm Borkowski has acquired London-based youth and event marketing agency Beatwax in a bid to extend the range of PR and marketing services it is able to offer.

Beatwax is a long established youth PR firm. In the early days it was very active in the music PR sector, often using the impressive roster of artists it represented to demonstrate to brands who wanted to engage with young consumers that they had a direct link to the ‘in crowd’. In more recent years the firm moved more into working with consumer brands looking for youth or event-based campaigns, though they remain active in the film PR space.

Borkowski have bought the agency off its current owners PPC Group in a cash deal. Confirming the purchase, the company’s founder, Mark Borkowski, told reporters: “There is a similar culture fit and we do what they can’t and they do what we can’t. This will strengthen our ability to do measurable ground-breaking work and deliver what clients need now and into the future”.

Moving forward, Beatwax will be branded as Beatwax@Borkowski.

An Oxford-based radio station got some press coverage from a rival’s rebrand this week by staging a funeral march for the other station’s now axed call sign.

Radio company Global Radio has been busy rebranding many of the local radio stations it acquired when it bought rivals GCap last year under the Heart FM banner, essentially turning Heart, previously a London and Birmingham based operation, into a quasi national station. As a result some of the UK local radio industry’s oldest brand names, including Fox FM in Oxford, have been disappearing from the dial.

When Fox FM rebranded as Heart on Monday, JACK fm, a relatively young rival that broadcasts to the same market, sent some of its staff down the city’s high street with a coffin, and a banner that read “JACK FM, 100% Oxfordshire, Fox fm, 100% dead”.

The implication, presumably, is that by becoming part of the Heart FM network the former Fox FM will no longer be a truly Oxfordshire-based radio station. How many people saw the mini-fake funeral march I don’t know, but the cheap stunt got a few column inches in the local press and some commentary online, so job done I say.

Pictured courtesy of JACKfm via Radio Today

There was quite a bit of doom and an extra helping of gloom at the commercial radio session of the Guardian’s Changing Media Summit in London town yesterday.

The doomy gloomy feel was initially initiated by Claire Enders of media analysts Enders Analysis who told the conference that advertisers were going off radio as a medium through which to flog their wares, and that as a result the commercial radio sector was ceasing to be commercially viable. The sector would probably be dead within two decades, she implied, saying that outside the BBC only “hobbyist” radio services would exist.

According to the Guardian, Enders told the event: “There is a next generation of people in agencies who are not that keen on radio. There has been a dramatic change in the position of radio in the last ten years, dramatic even though consumption has not been affected as much as newspaper consumption”.

Enders wasn’t the only pessimist in the room. Matt Wells, podcast supremo for the Guardian’s website, observed: “We are witnessing the slow death of commercial radio in this country due to a number of factors, [including] the complete failure [of the radio industry] to grasp the digital nettle. The proposition for consumers of digital TV is completely transformative compared to analogue TV. The same cannot be said of digital radio. And now the worst advertising recession we have ever seen means that commercial radio is on its last legs. If people running commercial radio do not recognise that, we are in worse trouble than I thought”.

Fortunately for the commercial radio sector, they did have on of their own in the room to offer a little albeit cautious optimism. Absolute Radio boss Clive Dickens, while admitting “there are a significant number of radio stations in our business that are not profitable and are not going to make it through the next two years”, argued that that didn’t mean all radio stations were doomed. He added: “The investment in the relationship you have with the audience will define whether you stay in business. It’s not about the sector or structure of business, it’s about the audience’s relationship with those brands and that content”.

Dickens said that radio firms needed to explore new methods to ensure longevity – in particular expanding content choice and finding revenue streams other than spot advertising sales.

Scotland’s ITV franchise, STV, is launching a new programming initiative which doubles up as a PR campaign to communicate the broadcaster’s key message of the moment – that STV is very much a TV station for Scotland.

Unlike in England and Wales where all of the once independent regional ‘ITV’ stations are now owned by ITV plc, in Scotland the third channel continues to be operated by an independent company, STV Group Plc (formerly Scottish Media Group, but corporately known by its on-air name since it offloaded its newspaper and radio businesses).

Most of STV’s output is the same as ITV in England and Wales, but bosses there have decided that, while ITV south of the border reduces the amount of local content it broadcasts, in Scotland STV will start opting out of the national network more and more and air instead programmes made in Scotland for Scotland and often about Scotland.

As part of that move, the TV firm have announced they will launch a viewer poll similar to the one undertaken by the BBC in 2002 to find the nation’s favourite country man, though while the BBC’s poll was to find the best Briton, the STV poll will seek to name the greatest ever Scot.

STV presumably hope the survey will, like the BBC poll, generate many column inches, and in doing so communicate that the TV channel is more Scottish than ever.

Commenting on the poll, and the channel’s accompanying rebrand, STV’s David Brook, who has both programming and marketing within his remit, told reporters: “We wanted to introduce a new look for the station that would not only reflect Scotland’s strong heritage but also its vibrant, contemporary culture. Our new look ties in perfectly with our strategy to opt out of the network schedule more often, and bring viewers more Scottish-produced programmes”.

PR Week has reported on that old paranoia of any creative agency, that potential clients will steal ideas you propose in a pitch and then implement them in-house, or give them to a rival agency.

And the trade magazine says that levels of paranoia among some agencies are higher than ever because some clients, presumably wary of being wrongly accused of stealing a pitching firm’s ideas (after all, in many pitch processes multiple agencies will often propose similar ideas), are now asking agencies to sign pre-pitch agreements that stop them for taking action if they believe their original ideas have been nabbed. These agreements may go as far as to give a client rights in any ideas put forward in a pitch, even from agencies who don’t win the account.

PR Week quote various agency chiefs who want the PR Consultants Association to review the issue of idea protection during the pitching process, and to come up with some sort of industry-wide policy on the issue, in a bid to protect agencies from idea theft, and clients from false allegations.

Kinross + Render CEO Sara Render, a PRCA member, told the magazine: “The PRCA will be letting all of its members down if it does not address the issue. I think it is outrageous to ask agencies to sign away their right to any remuneration for their creative and intellectual property unless you are paying for the time they spent putting the creative content together”.

The PRCA, though, is keen to stress that while it is aware of this issue, and takes genuine cases of ideas theft seriously, such pitch-time idea stealing is the exception rather than the norm. The trade body seems to prefer getting involved in specific isolated cases, rather than trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. A spokesman said: “Where an idea is used the consultancy should be rewarded for it. Problems are the exception, not the rule, but in these isolated incidences the PRCA is very happy to represent members’ interests with clients”.

The five PR agencies owned by marketing services group Loewy relaunch under one brand today, creating a consultancy with an annual fee income in the region of £5 million.

BMA Communications, Custard PR, Lighthouse PR, Mantra PR and Rainer PR – all acquired by Loewy in the last three years – will merge to create Speed Communications, a Leicester Square-based agency that will have a head count of fifty and a combined client list that includes the likes of Tesco, Toshiba, Wickes, The Economist and the ntl:Telewest bit of Virgin Media.

The new company will be headed up by Rainer PR’s Steve Earl and Stephen Waddington, with Lexis co-founder Bill Jones as its chairman.

Confirming the revamp, Waddington told esPResso: “The PR industry has reached a watershed moment. The fragmentation of media, rise of social networks, increasingly savvy purchasers and the recession are combining to challenge the established PR industry hierarchy. Speed is a modern consultancy that is seeking to tackle this head on in delivering assured impact for its clients. We have combined five strong teams to create a much stronger PR consultancy with multi-sector expertise. It is now a very able challenger for the UK’s most exciting PR accounts”.

Commenting on the rebrand of its PR division, Loewy CEO Iain Johnston added: “We strongly encourage collaborative working and the PR staff in particular have been brainstorming, pitching and managing clients in cross-agency teams over the last six months. This structural change and rebrand further cements the team as one entity and is a strong statement of our intentions in the UK PR market”.

The new company has a website at www.speedcommunications.com.

The PR Consultants Association has submitted a response to the government’s recent Digital Britain report, urging political types to involve the PR profession in any future consultation exercises relating to the growth and development of digital communication.

A first draft of Digital Britain was published earlier this year. Spearheaded by Lord Carter, Minister for Communications, Technology and Broadcasting, it looks at the future expansion of digital content and communication networks – and the impact that expansion will have on the owners and users of more traditional media.

Interested parties, including all the major media, telecommunication and entertainment companies, were invited to submit their responses to Carter’s original report last week. Those submissions will be considered before a final report is completed later this year. The report will propose more cross-sector collaboration, will discuss the education and outreach requirements of ensuring less web-savvy people have access to new digital media, and may propose new legislation, particularly regarding the policing of online copyright.

Among the organisations to make a submission was the PRCA, who don’t seem to have any specific comments on the issues raised by or proposals made in the first draft of Carter’s report, but who do want to make sure they have a seat of the metaphorical table for any future cross-industry debates on the digital world.

The submission takes the form of a letter from PRCA chief Francis Ingham which welcomes the report, and adds: “Public relations has a crucial role to play in ensuring [the development of digital communication]. The industry exists to improve communications between organisations, businesses and individuals. It is hugely innovative, and members of the Public Relations Consultants Association have been quick to integrate digital technology into their services generating growth for those clients and innovation that benefits us all”.

He continues by outlining the various efforts of the PRCA and its Digital Group to promote the adoption of digital communication tools in the PR sector, in particular the training courses and events it has staged in this domain. He concludes: “The PRCA would welcome the opportunity to represent PR consultancies in future discussions about Digital Britain, reinforcing the need for this adoption, extending the PR industry’s remit, and protecting our interests against new kinds of competition that we must inevitably meet”.

While the PR sector’s role in this digital debate is possibly not quite as obvious as that of the tel cos who provide the digital networks, nor the media and entertainment firms who use them to distribute their content, one would assume that former Brunswick chief Carter will remember to include Ingham and other PR chiefs in any future government reviews of the way Britain communicates in the digital domain.

Here’s a story that might interest those of you in the publicity world who spend as much time keeping your clients out of the papers as in. Legal firm Carter-Ruck have secured two injunctions from the High Court under the Protection From Harassment Act in a bid to stop the paparazzi from following Lily Allen.

The legal types went to court last week after one pap’s car collided with Lily’s own car as she left her London home. Having bumped into her car, the charming photographers then continued to pursue Allen by road.

Arguing that that activity amounted to harassment under the law, Carter-Ruck got two photo agencies, Big Pictures and Matrix Photos, and one specific photographer to make undertakings in court to not harass Allen in the future. Mr Justice Eady also issued an injunction “restraining further harassment” by other paparazzi photographers, which basically means that anyone considered a pap cannot approach Allen within 100 metres of her home, photograph her at her home or the houses of her family and friends, or pursue her by road.

Confirming the legal action against the paps, lawyer Mark Thomson told reporters: “My client, Lily Allen, has faced constant harassment over the last few months from the paparazzi. As a result of this and various incidents of harassment that took place in London on Thursday, my client has now been forced to take legal action. In a court hearing that took place on Friday afternoon, my client, Lily Allen, has resolved issues with two picture agencies and a photographer. She has also obtained from the high Court an injunction restraining further harassment of her by other unnamed paparazzi photographers. My client is delighted with the outcome of the hearing on Friday”.

Vanilla Ice is very very very sorry. For everything. Well, mainly for the global smash hit that was ‘Ice Ice Baby’ and all the packaging that went around the 1990 song. And if you don’t believe me, check out this video confessional that is doing the rounds of the internet.

But why this sudden apology from the 41 year old Robert Van Winkle? Is the rapper, who recently staged a co-headline show with MC Hammer in Utah (I kid thee not), planning a comeback?

Well may be, though the apology is actually a clever bit of viral marketing by Virgin Mobile Australia, though you’d never know from the clip itself. The clue is the URL given at the end – www.rightmusicwrongs.com – which takes you to a Virgin Mobile website in Australia which announces its mission as follows: “In a world awash with silicone and botox, where lip-syncing is normal and real singing is a special event, it’s time to take a stand, it’s time to right music”.

The site invites music fans to vote on whether Vanilla Ice should be forgiven for his music crimes, and on what have been the biggest music wrongs in history (the Fast Food rockers are currently ahead of Timmy Mallett’s ‘Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny’ cover). We hear that other pop stars willing to make fun of themselves in return for a cheque from Virgin Mobile may also go on trial.

This interesting variation on the common brand-music partnership strategy, devised by the Sydney office of marketing agency Droga5, has certainly delivered for Virgin mobile, with the Vanilla Ice video attracting hundreds of thousands of views, comments and blog mentions across Australia and, of course, this being a viral campaign, the world at large.

We here at Unicorn Jobs are always going into universities to talk about careers in PR – on account of our graduate careers website – and one of the questions we’re always asked is whether or not a degree in public relations gives you any advantage when applying for a first job in the sector. Given there are often PR students in the room, our diplomatic answer is “not necessarily”. We then follow it up with something along the same lines as this Ask The Unicorn piece here.

But at future events we might have to be less diplomatic, given that a survey of PR agency chiefs by the Public Relations Consultants Association has just reported that 34% of those questioned not only don’t look for a PR degree when recruiting grads, the fact a candidate specialised in the subject at a degree level might even put them off.

The good news for those PR hopefuls currently at university is that most of their future employers do consider a degree of some kind as important, with 70% saying having a degree was more important for new recruits now than fifteen years ago. 23% said a PR degree made a candidate more attractive.

Responding to the findings, PRCA Director General, Francis Ingham told reporters: “PR Leaders increasingly see our profession as a graduate-led one. That’s good for the industry, and shows how we have matured. The industry of 2009 is vastly different to the industry of fifteen years ago, when the UK was emerging from the last recession”.

On the less than enthusiastic response to PR degrees by the members of his PR Leaders’ Panel, Ingham continued: “What is intriguing is how agency heads view PR degrees. There is clearly concern that some of the courses out there do not equip graduates with the necessary skills to do their jobs. As an industry, we need to take a long hard look at the quality of courses available – some universities offer excellent PR Degrees, but now is the time to be honest with ourselves, and to recognise that others do not. That’s a hard fact to swallow, but it’s a fact nonetheless. Equally, we need to recognise the importance of on-the-job training and post-graduate education. That is why we have launched our own PR Diplomas aimed at equipping PR professionals with the tools they will need in their agency careers”.

Speaking up for the academic sector, Trevor Morris, Visiting Professor of Public Relations at the University of Westminster said: “As more and more people with PR degrees become senior players I am sure that the prejudice of the minority will reduce. Having said that I would expect and hope that there will always be room in the industry for people with a broad range of educational backgrounds. PR isn’t and never will be an exact science”.

To be fair to Morris and his fellow PR lecturers, it is true that media degrees – once frowned upon by many employers in the media – are now enjoying increased credibility as students of the eighties and nineties, who studied on some of the earlier media courses, rise to senior positions in media organisations. Most PR courses are even more recent innovations, and Morris could be right that as the PR grads of yesterday start to become the PR Leaders of tomorrow the answers to the ‘merit of a PR degree’ question will probably change.

ITV boss Michael Grade has hit out at the previously reported news that the government will not lift the ban on product placement in British television programmes.

After a three month consultation, Culture Minister Andy Burnham announced yesterday that he felt the economic benefits of product placement – allowing brands to pay for their products to appear in TV shows – did not outweigh concerns about blurring the line between editorial and advertising.

Grade has responded by calling for a judicial review of the decision, telling reporters: “Given the extraordinary economic pressures ITV, and others, face, we can’t let a decision like this simply go through without trying to fight it. We are considering our next steps and I am consulting my legal team as to whether we have a strong case for judicial review”.

On the government’s claims that they were protecting the public from excessive placement, and confusing messages, Grade added: “Our audiences are savvier than the government thinks. It is simply not in our interest to ‘contaminate’ programmes with product placement which would irritate them and prompt them to switch over. We believe that considered product placement would [actually] bring more realism to programming, portraying a world that is recognisable and relevant”.

Grade also criticised the government’s existing policy on product placement – which will now stay in place – which allows UK TV networks to screen movies and imported shows which feature product placement, but not home grown programmes. He continued: “I shall also be writing to the chief executive of Ofcom to ask what measures he intends to introduce to ‘protect’ viewers from those programmes and films that already contain product placement and which have been broadcast on British television for many years. The government should at least be taking a consistent position”.

But ITV’s rivals Channel 4 spoke out in favour of the government’s ruling on this matter, despite them too suffering from the decline in traditional advertising revenues. Their top man, Andy Duncan, said in a statement: “Channel 4 supports the decision on product placement. We have consistently taken the view that confusing the lines between editorial and advertising raises serious issues of trust for viewers. Relaxing the rules would deliver a marginal commercial benefit and do little to redress the growing funding imbalance between state and advertising funded broadcasting”.

I think we already knew this, but in case there was any doubt 84% of PR agency chiefs have said that evaluation is crucial in ensuring the credibility of public relations as a discipline.

Up to three quarters of those agency bosses questioned by the Public Relations Consultants Association said that they spend up to 5% of a PR budget on measurement programmes that assess the success of any comms initiative. 11% said they would allocate up to 10% of budget on evaluation.

The same survey asked whether evaluation spend was likely to be cut as agencies and their clients look to reduce the cost of PR campaigns in light of the recession. 28% admitted there would be cuts.

Commenting on the findings, PRCA Director General, Francis Ingham told reporters: “Evaluation is crucial to the credibility of PR. In spite of the challenging economic conditions less than a third are reducing the proportion of budgets spent on evaluation, this is welcome news but still too many. The best way to fight budget cuts is to demonstrate the value you are adding”.

Barry Leggetter, Executive Director of Association Of Measurement And Evaluation In Communication, and also head of Bite Communications, added: “In a recession, evaluation is already playing a more important part in PR campaigns as clients demand proof that the programme is working. We can improve the client appreciation of the need for and value of evaluation if PRCA and AMEC members work together”.

However, speaking for those that believe spending too much time and money on evaluation is not a good use of resources, Diana Soltmann of Flagship Consulting Ltd observed that: “Clients want evaluation but don’t expect to pay for it. Hence evaluation is not objective and does not help either the consultancy or the client”.

So this is an interesting publicity stunt. Kerrang! Radio in Birmingham is planning on burying its listeners. Literally.

The latest headline grabbing promotional stunt being staged by the rock station is called The Grave Danger and will see listeners put into specially made coffins and buried in the grounds of Warwick Castle. Whoever stays underground the longest will win a prize. Five listeners will be buried, though apparently more than 350 have applied to take part. Nutters.

Kerrang! Programme Director Gordon Davidson says this: “Our listeners are fantastic, in the last year they’ve stripped off in public, been shot at and now they are getting buried! We keep coming up with the weirdest, craziest challenges we can think of and they keep matching us, they really are what make this station very special”.

Bad news for advocates of product placement. Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said the government will not support a change in the TV advertising rules to allow brands to pay for their products to appear in British television programmes.

Some in the television sector had been lobbying for a change in the rules governing the periphery promotion of products on popular TV shows like soap operas and sitcoms, seeing product placement as a possible new revenue stream to help fill the gap left by declining advertising sales. Product placement is also advocated by some in the marketing sector who recognise that in the multi-channel, Sky Plus, telly-on-demand age viewers are increasingly channel hopping or skipping through the adverts.

But after a three month consultation, Burnham says that he does not believe the economic benefits of product placement are sufficient to justify blurring the line between editorial-based programming and advertising. Protecting the clarity of that distinction is, of course, something that media regulator OfCom takes very seriously, keen to ensure that TV viewers and radio listeners won’t confuse paid-for commercial messages for editorial.

Burnham says: “My priority has always been to make sure we maintain levels of trust between audiences and broadcasters, and protect the standards of broadcasting for which Britain is known worldwide. I have listened carefully to the arguments on both sides around product placement, and concluded that it should not be permitted in programmes made for this country. There is a lack of evidence of economic benefits, along with very serious concerns about blurring the boundaries between advertising and editorial. Britain is known around the world for the high quality of its broadcasting output. We need to continue to preserve editorial integrity as technology advances”.

Recognising that the push by some for product placement comes as commercial TV companies struggle to make ends meet through traditional advertising and sponsorship sales, he added: “I am well aware that a number of commercial broadcasters are facing difficult economic times and I will continue to work with the industry to explore ways we can support them, but my preference is to consider all other avenues before allowing product placement”.

As with the existing system, British broadcasters will be able to air movies and imported TV programmes where there has been product placement, ie where a brand has paid the original film studio or programme maker to use their products on screen. The government will also allow product placement on programmes distributed via on-demand and web-TV platforms, mainly because a recent European directive says they have too.

Well, here’s something a little bit heartening for everyone in PR after all the doom and gloom filled credit crunch stories that have appeared of late. A new research report reckons a quarter of a company’s ‘brand value’ is tied to the success of its PR initiatives. I’m never quite sure how they really measure these things, but there’s a useful stat to have on hand if a CFO asks you to justify your comms budget.

That top line figure comes from the Media Prominence Study conducted by Text 100’s Context Analytics division, who investigated the link between media coverage and a company’s brand value as stated by the Best Global Brands report (which is in turn produced by branding agency Interbrand). It reckons that editorial exposure is as important as ever in boosting the value of a brand, and even more so in industries where business customers are important, such as IT. Given the PR function’s role in boosting and informing press coverage, the report concludes public relations is important for companies who want to boost the value of their brand or brands.

Commenting on the report, Text 100’s Aedhmar Hynes told reporters: “Our findings reinforce that PR and communications are important and cost-effective tools that deliver real business value – often at fractions of the cost of advertising”.

Text 100 have now started a new research project which will look into what impact the tone of media coverage can have on brand value, the results of which should make for interesting reading putting to the test, as it does, the old adage “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”.

Techie website TechCrunch has published a memo that has been circulated by Sky News to their staff and which demonstrates that Twitter, the micro-blogging service that has been around for ages but which has really gained momentum in the last few months, is becoming an important source for news gatherers.

Noting the increasing number of major news stories that have been broken via eye-witnesses ‘twittering’ from the scene, the Sky memo tells its journalists: “The Twitter phenomenon continues to explode. A phono with an eyewitness in Lahore yesterday came to us through Twitter. Last night’s breaking story on the death of a Briton in the Alps came to us from Twitter. The first phone on the Buffalo plane crash came from Twitter. The first photo of the Hudson River rescue came from Twitter. Convinced?”

The memo reports that one of Sky’s online team, Ruth Barnett, has been given responsibility for scouring the Twitter network for any breaking stories, meaning anyone posting timely updates about newsworthy events to their personal Twitter feeds could be getting a quick response from a journalist looking for a more formal comment.

With Channel 4 News already using its Twitter feed as a way of interacting with its audience, and getting viewers to input on breaking news stories before they air, an increasing number of media are likely to embrace the micro-blogging service as both an audience engagement tool and a newsgathering resource.

Which poses an interesting challenge for those in PR.

Twitter potentially provides two opportunities for communicators – both a platform through which to connect with consumers directly, and a new forum where to seed news stories which may then be picked up by editors, journalists and bloggers. The challenge is how to do this without carelessly gatecrashing the personal networks of existing Twitterers and annoying media contacts or vocal consumers.

Meanwhile, if it’s PR news you’re looking for on Twitter, well, may we suggest you start with the esPResso feed at www.twitter.com/espresso_prnews?

Bauer Media’s c’leb title Heat has launched a new offshoot called Heatworld, which will come as a supplement to its parent title several times a year.

The new supplement will be celebrity free – it’s strapline is “because there’s more to life than Celebrity (who knew?!)” – though from what I can see the celebs will be replaced with the publishing equivalent of a freak show, so I’m not sure it’s going to do any more to the average reader’s intellect that the latest embarrassing photos of some Big Brother contestant of old.

Explaining the motivation for the new magazine, Heat Editorial Director Julian Linley told reporters: “Heatworld magazine will be unlike anything else on UK newsstands. The idea came from us realising that the daft and the downright hilarious stuff we find ourselves obsessing about in the office isn’t always to do with celebrities. And there’s nothing more valuable to our audience than laughing out loud”.

The first issue of Heatworld is in the current edition of Heat. Somewhat confusingly, Heatworld is also the name of Heat mag’s website, though that is mainly celebrity focused like the main magazine.

ITV has released details of its much expected cost cutting programme.

There has been much speculation as to how ITV boss Michael Grade would make his books balance in light of the major shortfall caused in part by the advertising recession, and most of what is included in Grade’s official cost cutting plan, released today, was already known. The cost cutting plans were revealed as ITV admitted its profits had slumped in 2007, and that it was being forced to reduce the perceived value of its assets.

600 jobs will go, mainly in Leeds where the broadcaster plans to close its studios, what was once the home of ITV franchise Yorkshire TV. The network’s £1 billion programme budget will be cut by £65 million this year, online businesses Friends Reunited and Scoot will be sold, and it’s network of ITV local web services will be scaled back. The board is also recommending holding back one dividend payment to shareholders.

The big cut in the programme budget may mean ITV will look to renegotiate its costly deals with big names like Ant & Dec and Simon Cowell, possibly reducing fees in return for releasing them from ‘golden handcuff’ arrangements which stop them working for rival broadcasters.

The telly firm also confirmed it is considered its options regarding its bit of the Freeview network – its SDN company – which is profitable but which could bring in some useful extra cash if sold (such as deal would not effect ITV‘s channels on Freeview, which aren’t even broadcast on ITV‘s bit of the Freeview network).

Announcing the cost saving programme, Grade told reporters: “Current conditions in the advertising market are the most challenging I have experienced in over 30 years in UK broadcasting. Our priorities have to be aligned to the changed economic context. The [ITV] board therefore recognises that the 2012 revenue targets set in 2007 are no longer appropriate and we are focusing on our core business as a producer-broadcaster, on reducing our costs and on cash generation”.

The Communication Workers’ Union is planning on using online PR as well as more traditional union techniques for voicing its disapproval of government plans to part-privatise the Post Office. To that end they have hired the services of the same company who managed Barack Obama’s acclaimed viral communications activity during last year’s presidential elections in the US.

Blue State Digital, a technology company who specialise in providing both tools and guidance for online communication campaigns, mainly for political and pressure groups, got quite a bit of coverage in the US when they provided the backend to Obama’s online activity, and in doing so won him both on-the-street advocates from outside the typical political community and over $3 million in grass-roots contributions.

The CWU hope that they can use Blue Stage Digital’s web tools and methodology to rally opposition to the 30% Post Office sell-off proposals, presumably by transforming isolated supporters of their campaign into one coordinated group.

A CWU spokesperson confirmed their intent to use BSD’s services, telling the Guardian: “People do appreciate getting information direct from source through online contact. It does personalise it and it does mean we are able to reach more people. We recognise that online campaigning has a huge part to play in reaching the British public”.

So, this is another interesting example of the ever decreasing gap between paid-for advertising and PR-generated exposure. Absolute Radio, the national radio station until last year known as Virgin Radio, has been giving a lot of airplay and editorial coverage to the new U2 album of late. But some of that editorial exposure, no doubt in part achieved by the publicity efforts of their record company Universal Music, has been closely integrated with a new kind of radio advertising that Absolute are experimenting with – a short form radio ad that at least one person has called a “blipvert”.

This blipvert is a ten second audio sting which is aired by Absolute immediately after any plays of U2’s recent single ‘Get On Your Boots’ encouraging listeners to download the track from iTunes. With the revenues to be generated from traditional radio advertising in decline, and some in the commercial radio sector of the opinion that the length of ad breaks need to be cut in order to compete with new ad-lite online music services, the blipvert could become a mainstay of radio broadcasts.

They work best, though, when the ad is linked in someway to the editorial, or song, immediately before it, and it’s the link between the U2 song and their blipvert on Absolute which is especially interesting – other UK stations have been dabbling with the short ad concept, but not linked to songs being played. Such a link, though, will obviously concern media regulator OfCom who like there to be a clear distinction between editorial-based programming and advertising.

A spokesman for the regulator told the Guardian that they were aware of the U2 blipverts on Absolute, and that they had advised the radio station that they must ensure listeners are in no doubt that those ten seconds are ad time not editorial recommendation. Another concern presumably would be that radio stations selling blipverts to record companies that follow an artist’s record aren’t tempted to increase the airplay of said record in order to air more ads and earn more money – what would basically constitute pay-for-play, or ‘payola’.

But Absolute Radio boss Clive Dickens is confident they have overcome both those concerns with their U2 promotion. He told the Guardian: “The song was already in the highest rotation it could have on Absolute Radio – 27 to 30 times a week – so they [the regulator] were confident any commercial relationship between us and Universal was not influencing the number of times we play it. And they wanted to be confident that the consumer would know when they were being advertised to. We felt we came up with a creative that made it clear this was an advert. U2 typically don’t market their stuff on the radio, and we sold it at a significant premium over normal spot advertising”.

Microsoft is reportedly reconsidering its global policies regarding social media as it tries to build stronger relationships directly with consumers.

Insiders say that Microsoft chiefs have become increasingly sensitive of late to the fact that, with the exception of their gaming brand X-box, few consumers feel much love towards the IT firm’s corporate brand nor any of their product brands – certainly not when compared to rivals like Apple and Google.

In the past Microsoft has prioritised its B2B relationships with PC manufacturers and business customers. It was a strategy that worked, of course, ensuring that nearly all businesses rely on Microsoft technology to some extent, and that most consumers buy the Microsoft operating system by default because it is preinstalled on most PCs.

In the early days of the internet, while Microsoft did own direct-to-consumer ventures like MSN and Hotmail, it still put much effort into B2B communication, selling its multimedia technology to the new online content providers who offered music, video or radio services on the net, meaning that consumers again started using Microsoft systems by default.

But with market leader multi-media services like Apple’s iTunes and Google’s YouTube shunning Microsoft technology, and the MP3 becoming the dominant music file format, instead of Microsoft’s WMA system, this strategy hasn’t delivered the same kind of market dominance as it once did.

Which presumably explains Microsoft’s interest in building more direct-to-consumer relationships. The change in emphasis will see the IT giant launch its own high street shops, similar to the popular Apple Stores, but a lot of the new B2C communications activity will happen online, hence the renewed interest in the potential of social media – blogs, social networks and the like – as a comms channel.

According to PR Week three global PR agencies – Weber Shandwick, Edelman and Waggener Edstrom – have been asked to ‘present credentials’ with a view to one of them devising the IT giant’s new social media programme. They quote one agency source as saying: “They want to find direction and set strategy. They are basically figuring out how they can tap into the power of social media and make specific impact for product groups”.

Another said: “The [new] digital aspiration is heavily consumer-oriented. Microsoft is pretty obsessed with developing a consumer franchise for the brand. Historically, it has had great b2b and government relations”.

The new social media agenda is a global initiative, but shouldn’t directly impact on Microsoft’s existing PR activity in the UK.

One from the celebrity PR files now, and US publicist Alan Nierob has denied reports he has been hired by US R&B star Chris Brown to rescue the singer’s career following a violent altercation with his superstar girlfriend Rihanna.

While news that Brown had been accused of assaulting his pop star girlfriend after a pre-Grammy party in LA earlier this month got some coverage in the UK tabloids and music press (especially after a picture of a bruised Rihanna appeared on the net), it was a seriously big news story in the US, where Brown and Rihanna were, until the incident, the big pop couple of the moment – think Posh n Becks level media interest. There the assault allegations got in-depth coverage across all the news networks, leading some to speculate that even if Brown avoids serious charges from the incident, his own pop career could be over.

That speculation was followed by news Brown had hired publicist Nierob, best known for representing Mel Gibson after his 2006 drink driving arrest and reports the actor made anti-semetic remarks. Nierob certainly knows a thing or two about communicating on behalf of superstars in crisis, but he told Access Hollywood he had not be engaged by the singer.

New reports suggest US PR firm Sitrick & Company, who have represented R Kelly and Paris Hilton during their brushes with the law, may be representing Brown.

Media news, and ITV is set to sell the Friends Reunited website it acquired in 2005 in a bid to raise new funds to help overcome budget shortfalls.

Although one of the first social networking phenomenons in the UK, many questioned the logic of ITV buying the Reunited site when it was well past its prime four years ago. The commercial broadcaster hoped acquiring a site with an existing sizable membership would boost its own online ambitions, but many of those who had signed up to the service in its early days had already moved on to other social networks, and the TV company struggled to integrate the site with its other online operations, or to make significant ad revenues for the networking service itself.

ITV top man Michael Grade, who joined the broadcaster after the Reunited acquisition, is reportedly planning on selling the site, probably for substantially less than the company paid for it, in a bid to raise much needed funds. Insiders say programme budgets will also be slashed and up to 500 jobs could go in the next few weeks as ITV try to make the sums add up.

The cuts are needed as ITV, like most commercial broadcasters, come to terms with a major slump in the TV advertising market, coupled with rising competition from newer digital channels and online media.

If you’re of the opinion that a key aim of television commercials in these ad-break-skipping days of Sky Plus and TV-on-demand is for the promo to generate column inches and viral chatter in addition to direct-to-consumer promotion, then Cadbury’s follow up to their popular drumming gorilla ad has been a success.

The latest TV advert from the chocolate maker, the one where two children in a photographer’s studio perform a part-impressive-part-creepy eyebrow dance to what is being described as an “electro-funk” soundtrack, has been getting much media coverage, some impressive celebrity endorsement, and, lots of online exposure. The ad has reportedly been watched some 4 million times on YouTube, both via Cadbury’s official page on the video site and from other pages where punters have uploaded it themselves.

Kanye West, celeb blogger Perez Hilton and famed Twitterer Stephen Fry are among the high profile names to have talked up the ad on their blogs, while Lily Allen and Alan Carr kept the phenomenon at the front of everyone’s minds by performing a spoof of the ad on a recent edition of the Channel 4 show ‘Sunday Night Project’.

Aiding the organic viral chatter relating to the ad, Cadburys teamed up with Orange to make the soundtrack from the advert available as a mobile ringtone. Apparently 125,000 people downloaded it in 11 days. Whether the owners of the ringtone are thinking about eyebrow dancing or chocolate whenever their phone rings I’m not sure, perhaps both.

Blogging is the future people. We’ve been telling you for ages that the growth in blogging and other social networks provides valuable new tools for PR professionals, and now marketing guru and WPP Group chief Martin Sorrell has jumped on our bandwagon. He says that, far from threatening traditional communication and advertising agencies like those owned by his organisation, social networks provide an opportunity for communicators and marketers.

Sorrell was questioned about blogging by, well, a blog, obviously. Advertising blog Agency Spy asked Sorrell what the growth of social media meant for the bigger and more traditional communications agencies like those owned by WPP, and he replied: “New media and social networks have been and will be an opportunity, not a threat. They’ve enabled us to become closer to the consumer and learn more about their media habits and the changing media market place. Interactive dialogues have enhanced our understanding of the consumer and have enabled us and will enable us to target more and more effectively”.

He added that the growth of social media, and its incorporation into the marketing mix, meant that agencies increasingly needed to find clever ways to use technology and data as well as focussing on messages and creative concepts. He also implied that he thinks the increasing importance of social media means there is a need for more PR-style activity over traditional advertising, observing: “We’ve seen major new ways of growing our public relations campaigns through social networks and communities and polling… editorial publicity has yet again been highlighted as even more important than paid-for publicity”

If you thought you might need to be a PR consultant to join the PR Consultants Association, well, consider yourself misguided. Because the PRCA has just announced that it is now welcoming in-house PR and corporate communication professionals as associate members.

The new offer, which arguably sees the trade body for PR agencies moving more into CIPR territory, means that comms people working in-house can now benefit from the events, training, information and other resources the PRCA offers its members.

Announcing the expansion of associate membership to cover in-house communicators, PRCA DG Francis Ingham told esPResso: “Our decision to welcome in-house teams as associate members was driven by the requests of both in-house teams and member agencies, both wanting to see closer links between the two sectors. The board was delighted by the enthusiastic endorsement members gave to this proposal”.

He continued: “The benefits to PRCA members are clear – in-house involvement will drive up recognition of CMS [the PRCA‘s ‘Consultancy Management Standard’] and of FAPRA, the business matching service we provide. In-house teams will achieve better access to the agency world, and to a whole host of thought leadership and supplier benefits. For the community as a whole, the more we work with one another, develop best practice together, and address jointly the common challenges we all face, the better”.

The boss of the PR Consultants Association says that a gloomy review of the state of the marketing and communication agency sector is overly pessimistic.

PRCA Director General Francis Ingham was responding to research on how smaller PR and marketing agencies are fairing in the current economic climate, conducted, for reasons I’m not clear on, by an IT company called AlphaZulu Software.

They say that they spoke to people at 125 independent comms agencies in January, and that bosses at 11% of them said they were already considering exit strategies such was the gloomy outlook for smaller agencies in the coming year. 65% reportedly admitted they were not currently making a profit month on month, while over three quarters said late payment from clients, including major companies, were making trading extra difficult.

But Ingham says that, while times are obviously harder than normal for everyone, the AlphaZulu research exaggerates the doom and gloom for dramatic effect. PR Week quote him as saying: “Like the rest of the UK economy, PR is not immune to the laws of economics. But this report is ill-informed and makes a sad attempt to exploit people’s anxieties”.

This is an interesting media tie up. National rock radio station Absolute Radio recently ran its programmes the wrong way round, so the breakfast show appeared in the drive time slot and vice versa, to mark the UK release of the Brad Pitt movie ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, in which Pitt’s character is born in his eighties and ages backwards. Opinion my in stunt publicity little great a.

If one brand name has become synonymous with the credit crunch and the subsequent recession it’s the Newcastle-based and now state-owned Northern Rock bank. Following the generally negative media coverage that surrounded the recent decision to give their workforce a bonus, the company is now planning a review of stakeholder perceptions with a view to rebuilding its corporate reputation.

City communications firm Brunswick has been engaged to do the review and, according to PR Week, they will meet with senior journalists, politicians and finance professionals to assess what key opinion formers make of the post-nationalisation Northern Rock and their awareness of and viewpoint of the firm’s key messages.

The results of the project could result in a complete revamp of the bank’s communication strategy, though the company says that won’t necessarily change its relationship with its currently retained financial PR firm, Brunswick’s competitors Financial Dynamics.

As expected, Tatler editor Geordie Greig has been announced as the new editor of the London Evening Standard, replacing Veronica Wadley, who had been expected to stand down ever since it became obvious the previously reported deal between Associated Newspapers and Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, giving the latter 75% ownership of the title, would go ahead.

Greig has been touted as new editor for the Lebedev-owned Standard throughout the takeover, and some reckon it was him who persuaded Lebedev to buy the paper in the first place.

Confirming her departure, Wadley, said: “I am very proud to have edited this great London newspaper and, with the huge support of the staff, to have built it up into a prize-winning newspaper. The Evening Standard is an important London institution held in equal measures of respect and affection. I sincerely hope it will have a secure future”.

Elsewhere in music star endorsements, Bob Dylan has given The Co-operative Group permission to use his famous song ‘Blowin In The Wind’ in a new marketing campaign. Dylan is more careful than most in licensing his music for use by corporations, but was seemingly persuaded by the Co-op’s reputation for spearheading ethical trading in both the supermarket and certainly the banking sectors.

Commenting on Dylan’s decision to let the Co-op use his song, the MD of the singer songwriter’s UK record company, Columbia Records’ Mike Smith, told reporters: “It is rare for Bob Dylan to license his recordings to TV ads, the decision to do so with the Co-operative and ‘Blowin In The Wind’ shows a willingness to embrace fresh ways of reaching a new audience through an ethical and fair trade organisation”.

The Co-op’s marketing boss Patrick Allen added: “When we put the ad together we were astounded that no-one had ever used ‘Blowin In The Wind’ in this context before. We felt the sentiments expressed in Dylan’s masterpiece summed up the optimism we have for the Co-operative, so when Columbia Records told us Dylan had agreed we were delighted”.

And to think, we all mocked John Lydon becoming the face of Country Life butter. I’m not sure what the TV ad campaign did for Lydon’s rep, but the spread’s maker, Dairy Crest, say the promotion helped boost their butter sales by 85% in the last quarter.

The food company says the ongoing decline in its doorstep milk delivery business and the rising costs of milk could have had a negative impact on their financials, but a boost in sales of their ‘spreadable’ products, led by promotions like the Lydon tie in, have helped them achieve a 4% growth in sales overall.

Whether the even more bizarre tie-up between Iggy Pop and insurance firm Swiftcover will have the same positive impact on their sales I’m not sure. Though the sale of cushions is probably up, given the natural response to the slightly scary Pop ads is to want to hide away from the telly.

If you’re ever looking for evidence to convince a client that trying to hide bad news is never a great idea, look no further than the West Somerset Railway.

Bosses at the tourist attraction, which provides steam train rides through the Somerset countryside, have admitted they were wrong to try and keep secret the fact that a technical problem meant its steam trains were out of service and that less romantic diesel engines were being used in their place.

Problems began last Spring when a borrowed rail-grinding machine affected the rails which in turn damaged the wheels of the tourist attraction’s steam trains. According to the Somerset County Gazette, bosses decided to not announce the lack of steam trains to “protect the reputation of the railway and to protect revenue during a difficult year”. However, the reputation of the set up was quickly damaged when “angry and disappointed” visitors arrived for their day of steam to find they’d be pulled along by diesel engines.

An independent report into the affair said that “disastrous” public relations led to numerous angry customers, while badly informed staff were left to “confront angry and disappointed visitors without the benefit of proper briefing”. Local media then started to report on the angry visitors, but with no official statement on what was happening more misleading information began to circulate.

The report said that management at the railway did eventually gain control of the situation and that, with the steam trains working again by July, the West Somerset Railway had a very good 2008 overall. But not without first providing us all with an example of why it’s not always best to try and bury bad news. Especially when a lack of steam in the air makes it obvious for all that something’s not right.

And talking of the CIPR, the Institute has updated its guidelines on utilising so called social media (blogs, social networking etc) in PR campaigns, in response to the rapid changes and constant innovations in the social media space, and to provide better industry standards for measuring the effectiveness of social media PR work.

CIPR Director General Colin Farrington explained: “As the professional body for the PR industry the CIPR has a responsibility to provide best practice advice on all areas of communications. It was always our intention to revisit, and if necessary update, the guidelines to remain up to speed with emerging issues and trends in this fast moving area”.

He continued: “New social media measurement techniques are just one of the emerging topics incorporated in the newly updated version of our guidelines. The relevance of including this at a time when PR professionals are having to demonstrate their value and justify their budgets goes without saying”.

You can check the updated guidelines at www.cipr.co.uk/socialmedia.

One for PR professionals on the other side of the governmental wall now, and the Chartered Institute Of Public Relations has announced it is launching a new training programme for those working in local government communications. Called Second Steps, it is aimed at those who already have two or more years experience in PR, and takes over where the Institute’s introductory First Steps course for government communicators finishes. Staged in association with Manchester Metropolitan University the first course will take place this June. More details at www.mmu.ac.uk/secondsteps.

Moves to force UK-based lobbyists to register themselves and their interests have gained new momentum following the recent Sunday Times story which claimed four Labour Lords had said they would table amendments to legislation on behalf of business clients for substantial cash payments.

Although really a story about the apparent (alleged) corruptibility of some members of the unelected upper house of parliament, it led to a wider discussion about those with privileged access to MPs, and comments from Justice Secretary Jack Straw that lobbyists play too large a part in British politics, and that “we need more explicit control… first of all, total transparency”. That, presumably, means Straw is in favour of the previously mooted lobbyist register – certainly an increasing number of his colleagues in Parliament are, 46 MPs have put their name to an early day motion calling for the register.

The lobbying industry at large remains generally opposed to the register proposals. PR Week quote Bell Pottinger’s Public Affairs boss Peter Bingle thus: “For the first time in many years, I am worried regulation of lobbyists is going to become a reality. [The early day motion] in itself is not a worry. What concerns me much more is the mood at Westminster. Jack Straw’s comments are scary. Our politicians seem to have forgotten our system of government is still the best in the world”.

However, some of Bingle’s counterparts at other consultancies seem less concerned, with some actually supporting albeit minimal regulation. Weber Shandwick’s Jon McLeod told the trade magazine: “Light-touch regulation that is properly framed should hold no fear for the lobbying industry. You just need to know who is a lobbyist and for whom they are acting”.

It remains to be seen whether the increased talk of the need for a lobbying register actually speeds up the introduction of any such regulation system, or whether many of the proposed new rules get forgotten as the political world starts to move towards General Election.

Meanwhile, surely if the lobbying industry fail to successfully lobby politicians to not introduce a lobbying register to overcome the excessive influence of lobbyists in British politics, it proves no such excessive influence exists and therefore the lobbying register is not required, no? If so, the lobbying industry would be best advised making a mess of their lobbying efforts on this one.

The London council at the centre of the Baby P case is refusing to name one of the PR agencies who gave some of its senior executives media training as the trial unfolded last year, saying doing so “would damage the commercial reputation” of the company involved.

It was revealed last month that Haringey Council spent £19,000 on media training for its top staff at the height of the Baby P trial, to help them deal with the probing media enquiries that came amid the backlash against those at the local authority who arguably failed to protect the abused child from his mother and her boyfriend.

A Freedom Of Information Act request quickly followed to try and find out more about the PR expenditure, presumably from people outraged at such an expense, or perhaps keen to know who coached council executives widely perceived to have handled the media interest in their story very badly.

The council have revealed that journalist and comms trainer Scarlett MccGwire was one of two consultants brought in to help, but have said they don’t feel it appropriate to name the other expert or their company because the negativity that surrounds this story could impact on them commercially.

A spokesman for the council told reporters: “We have taken account of the fact that the Baby P case has attracted considerable media interest, and adverse publicity. The climate is such that at present any party associated with Haringey or the handling of the Baby P case is themselves likely to attract media interest and adverse publicity. This is considered likely to damage the commercial reputation of the provider involved and their current and future relationships”.

As previously reported, there has been widespread criticism for the way Haringey communicated its side of the story regarding the handling of the Baby P case, and in particular the unwillingness of officials to publicly apologise for their failings. That was a statement that, while possibly tricky for legal reasons, many PR professionals feel was the necessary starting point to begin repairing the authority’s damaged reputation.

Burger King’s US marketing department have been doing a good job of grabbing newspaper headlines of late.

As previously reported, late last year there was global media coverage of the fast food chain’s decision to launch a fragrance for men that smelled like meat, and subsequently more reports after animal rights group PETA launched a rival spray that smelled of rotting carcases (reports which, while in theory promoting the vegetarianism cause, won BK some column inches too).

The latest BK publicity campaign centered on dumping rather than winning new friends (not that I’m convinced the ‘Flame by BK’ meat perfume would win you many new friends). Burger King encouraged customers to drop friends from their Facebook profiles in return for free Whopper burgers. Whereas the dropping of friends on Facebook doesn’t usually get publically announced via either the dropper or droppee’s Facebook profiles, when people were ‘defriended’ via this promotion those people being dumped were alerted on their Facebook pages that they had been “sacrificed for a free Whopper”.

While Facebook encourages developers and even brands to add new functionality to their social network, this one wasn’t welcomed by the social media firm, who said it breached users’ privacy expectations. A spokesman for the company said: “We encourage creativity from developers and brands using Facebook Platform, but we also must ensure that applications follow users’ expectations of privacy. This application facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend. We have reached out to the developer with suggested solutions”.

Despite Facebook coming forward with solutions, and presumably having scored the media coverage the whole campaign was aiming for, Burger King decided to close down rather than adapt the promotion. Having posted the message “Whopper Sacrifice has been sacrificed” on the promotion’s website, a spokesman for the fast food chain told reporters: “While Facebook was a great sport, they did ask for changes that would have resulted in a different approach to our application, counter to what we developed. Ultimately, based on philosophical differences, we decided to conclude the campaign and chose to ‘sacrifice’ the application”.

The same OfCom report is expected to suggest giving ITV plc complete ownership of the breakfast TV franchise on the terrestrial channel otherwise occupied by the broadcaster’s flagship station ITV1.

Breakfast television on the third terrestrial TV channel has always been operated by a separate company to the rest of its ouput – since 1993 that’s been GMTV. As one of the channel’s most lucrative time slots in terms of advertising revenue, and with ITV boss Michael Grade demanding OfCom act to help his company better compete in the increasingly competitive TV advertising market, it’s thought OfCom will propose that the breakfast slot franchise be merged with the franchise for the rest of the channel’s air-time and then be awarded to ITV.

ITV plc already owns 75% of GMTV, with Disney owning the other 25%. But the merged franchise arrangement would allow ITV to not only take complete ownership of the lucrative breakfast time advertising revenues, but also to reduce operating costs because the breakfast programme producer (and its sales house) would no longer have to be run as a separate company.

It’s not clear how the proposals would work, whether Disney would have to be compensated, nor what would happen in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where GMTV currently broadcasts, but ITV do not own the main third channel licence (they are owned by STV and UTV respectively). It’s also not clear what the arrangement would mean for the programmes currently broadcast in the GMTV slot, though the current female-orientated programming is popular with both audience and advertisers so is unlikely to change, and its thought ITV would have to continue GMTV‘s commitments to news programming in the week and children’s programming at the weekend.

As if to prove that point regarding the greater need for evaluation in public sector PR, the Taxpayers’ Alliance has criticised the amount of money being spent on communication activity by government funded bodies like the Office Of Fair Trading, English Heritage, The Passport Service and The National Institute For Health And Clinical Excellence.

The have just published a report on PR expenditure at 32 public bodies in the financial year 2007/2008, ie before the recession really began to take hold. They report that the collective comms spend at those bodies was up by £10 million to £52.7 million. Contributing more than most to the rise was the Passport Service, who expanded their in-house PR team from 17 to 56 in that financial year, and the National Institute For Health, who added 40 new comms staff and increased its PR budgets by 14% to £4.4 million.

The Tax Payers Alliance reckon that if you take the PR spend trends of the 32 organisations they managed to get figures for and apply them to all 1,162 public bodies currently operating in the UK, that the combined PR spend of the quango sector could top £1 billion.

Needless to say, the Alliance is not impressed. Their Policy Analyst Ben Farrugia told reporters: “Quangos should spend less time talking about what they are doing and more time doing the job that they are paid to do. Some quangos have legitimate reasons to spend on communication, but far too much goes on expensive public relations and spin. Given the size of the quango state, the UK taxpayer is footing an enormous and unnecessary bill for PR”.

While it’s not clear whether PR budgets have grown, shrunk or stayed the same at government-funded bodies in the current financial year, ie since the impact of the credit crunch on the wider economy has become more apparent, it seems certain organisations like the Taxpayer’s Alliance are going to be scrutinising such bodies’ communication spend more closely as the recession progresses. Agencies working for those bodies may need to justify their fees not only to their clients, but to the world at large as well.

Next, public sector PR, an area of the industry some reckon will be safest given the government’s seeming intent to spend its way out of recession.

That said, there is a consensus that while government agencies and their like may continue to spend as much on communication campaigns as before the credit crunch, the need to demonstrate success will be greater as taxpayers – and opposition politicians – more closely scrutinise expenditure. This, the experts say, means agencies must get better at building measurement methods into their original pitches, and at following up campaigns with some serious evaluation.

PR Week quotes the boss of Geronimo Communications, Laura Oliphant, who agrees with this viewpoint, saying: “The pressure will be on agencies to be accountable, demonstrate the impact of their campaigns and to ensure best value for money”. Amanda Duncan of the Red Consultancy agrees, but doesn’t see the increasing importance of evaluation as either a bad or tricky thing, saying: “There is real scrutiny with regard to how public money is spent on communications, but this simply means targets, measures and evaluation must be built into a campaign from the outset to demonstrate return on investment”.

There’s been a lot more chatter in media circles over the future of public service broadcasters like ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

As previously reported, the UK media regulator OfCom is currently reconsidering the ‘public service obligations’ of the terrestrial commercial broadcasters because said broadcasters claim it is increasingly difficult to fund public service programming through advertising and sponsorship. ITV simply want to reduce their public service obligations, while Channel 4 want help with finding new sources of income, to supplement revenue from advertising and sponsorship.

One proposal that has been suggested by some for making Channel 4 more commercially sound is for it to merge with rival Channel Five. It wouldn’t be the easiest merger in the world, because Channel 4 is state-owned while Five is in private ownership (it’s owned by Bertelsmann’s RTL Group). But those that advocate the merger do so on the basis that if C4 shunted its mainstream shows onto Five it would create a hugely profitable commercial channel that could subsidise C4’s public service programming. There would also be economies of scale on overheads.

One supporter of the proposal is BBC chief Mark Thompson, which isn’t too surprising given he seems to be supporting all proposals other than the one preferred by Channel 4 bosses – giving C4 a cut of the licence fee. Writing in the FT, Thompson said: “Consolidation [of Channel 4 and Five] could offer the prospect of both short and long-term benefits: immediate cost savings and an increase in scale in key markets from advertising sales to programme acquisition, but also the chance for a smaller number of larger players to focus on credible and affordable digital plans. If the goal is sustainable PSB [public service broadcasting] beyond the BBC in the long term, consolidation may be part of the solution”.

But Channel 4 boss Andy Duncan is opposed to the proposal, possibly even more so now Thompson has given it his support. Speaking at an event organised by the National Endowment for Science, Technology And The Arts, Duncan said such a proposal was “trying to fix the problems of the future with the solutions of the past”, adding, “It makes no sense whatsoever to imagine that merging a not-for-profit publicly owned broadcast business with a for-profit, privately owned broadcaster is going to solve the fundamental structural problems we are all facing. Mixing oil and water doesn’t work. It just makes a mess”.

OfCom is expected to give its initial thoughts on the various proposals put forward by interested parties regarding the future of public service broadcasting this week.

More Mystic Meg style predictions, and PR Week has also been busy asking various agency chiefs for their views on the year ahead.

First up, agency types from the financial PR sector who, echoing views expressed by PR Week’s own editor in his previously reported opinion piece for the Guardian, admit the first half of 2009 is going to be difficult, but predict that later in the year things should improve as the City starts to recover from the collapse that preceded and caused the wider recession.

They quote Alex Sandberg of business communications agency College Hill, who reckons difficult trading conditions, especially in the retail and financial services sectors, will impact on clients and their PR agencies alike, creating a climate that will “sort out the men from the boys”. However, more optimistically, he adds: “The markets will get stronger at some point during the year. The FTSE looks to have bottomed out and some UK funds are starting to buy again now. Once the equity market starts moving, it will allow good companies a little more flexibility to start using the markets again”.

That, of course, should lead to new corporate transactions, and probably a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, all of which are good news for the financial PR sector.

So, how about a little more speculation about what 2009 – recession and all – holds for the world of public relations? Well, despite reports of recruitment freezes and possible job cuts at marketing and comms agencies around the world, the Public Relations Consultants’ Association, who have questioned their PR Leaders Panel on this topic, is generally upbeat about the year to come.

They report that over 60% of the PR consultancy chiefs they spoke to reckon their turnover will grow or remain the same in the next year, while 50% are confident their profit margins will be unaffected or improve because of the recession.

Commenting on the results, published last week, PRCA director Francis Ingham told reporters: “Many clients have become more cautious about committing budget in the current climate. We are seeing the lag from pitch to conversion to commencement increasing and a shift from retainers to project work. However all of this should be put in context and the PR industry has performed fantastically over the last five years in spite of inconveniences such as [new employment legislation like] TUPE”.

Obviously keen to encourage those contolling budgets in-house to continue to invest in PR, the PRCA‘s press release also quoted Nexus PR’s Jonathan Choat who warned clients at large that: “Excessive caution is the death of spontaneity and robust marketing, both of which are as important now as when the economy was growing. Companies who invest in their reputation and profile will see it pay dividends”.

Ingham, meanwhile, warned clients against using the recession to try and negotiate cheaper fees out of the consultants and agencies they employ. He said: “Clients who find agencies are willing to drop their rates should question why the agency is willing to do so and whether the quality of work will be affected. Before taking on a consultancy you should request confirmation that it is a well run and viable business. PRCA members have to go through the Consultancy Management Standard, for example, ensuring that their business models are sustainable”.

A former KGB agent who became a billionaire after the collapse of communism in Russia is set to buy a controlling stake in the London Evening Standard. After intitial reports in the Media Guardian, it’s now been widely reported that Alexander Lebedev will buy 76% of the paper, with current owners Associated Newspapers retaining the other 24%.

It is not clear what affect the acquisition would have on the capital’s only news-stand evening title. Lebedev has said he has no interest in controlling the editorial position of the paper – and even if he did it is unlikely that would mean any bias towards the increasingly controversial Russian government, as Lebedev is widely regarded as a “semi-opposition” figure in his home country. He also has a stake in Novaya Gazeta, one of the few Russian newspapers that is critical of the country’s political leaders. However, it is thought the new ownership could see the Standard move away from the political influence of sister title the Daily Mail, and become less right wing. Though it is likely to continue to be supportive of Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson.

Commercially speaking, the deal could give the Standard just the boost it needs in an increasingly competitive market. The Standard has been hurt by the growth of the internet – which gives office workers an alternative source of daytime news – and the free newspapers available to evening commuters. Associated, of course, have their own free evening title in the capital, London Lite, launched in response to rivals News International entering the freesheet market with The London Paper in 2006. The relationship between sister titles London Lite and The Standard has always been interesting because it means Associated is competing with itself in what is already a difficult market in terms of ad revenues.

Assuming Lebedev is sitting on as much cash as is thought, and he is willing to throw a bucket of it at the Standard (and it looks like he is, he’s quoted as saying “as far as I’m concerned this has nothing to do with making money, there are lots of other ways… this is a good way to waste money”), the new owners could try and drive the London Paper out of business. It’s not clear if Lebedev gets London Lite as part of his Standard deal – though an obvious tactic to take on the London Paper is to merger Lite and Standard and make the more weighty evening paper a freesheet.
Whatever, if this deal goes ahead there’s some interesting times ahead in the London newspaper market.

Animal rights campaigners PETA have responded to Burger King’s previously reported meat-scented fragrance marketing campaign by launching its own anti-meat perfume.

As previously reported, the fast food chain recently launched a fragrance for men in the US called Flame which, apparently, gives those who spray it on themselves a lovely, erm, meat smell. While the product is really on sale, presumably it’s all an elaborate ruse to get BK in the press – and with global coverage for the scent, it worked.

PETA, presumably hoping to get similar media coverage for its pro-vegetarianism campaign, has said it is launching a similar rival perfume – or ‘eau de mort’ as they prefer to call it – to be called Gore by Murder King. Complete with a picture of a cow’s intestines on the box, the charity says their fragrance should “awaken the senses, including the conscience”.

PETA Exec VP Tracy Reiman told reporters: “PETA’s Gore perfume is so intense that it might open people’s eyes to the suffering of animals – and even bring a tear to them. If the picture of a dead cow on the packaging doesn’t jolt someone into remembering what dead meat is all about, maybe the stench of guts will”.

Personally I think I’ll give both perfumes a miss. Now, time for a burger I think. A veggie-burger, obviously.

More from the Conservative’s increasingly vocal culture spokesman, this time taking us into media news. Jeremy Hunt has joined the Channel 4 funding debate.
In case you didn’t know it, UK media regulator OfCom is currently reconsidering the ‘public service obligations’ of the terrestrial commercial broadcasters – ITV, C4 and Five – because said broadcasters claim it is increasingly difficult to fund public service programming through advertising and sponsorship.

ITV simply want to reduce their public service obligations, while Channel 4 want help finding new sources of income, to supplement revenue from advertising and sponsorship. C4 bosses would most like a cut of the licence fee income, though the BBC are very very against that, and it’s not a proposal favoured by OfCom either. The Beeb have suggested ways it could use its licence-fee-funded resources to help commercial public service broadcasters reduce their costs, and has also reluctantly suggested C4 could, perhaps, have a stake in its commercial division BBC Worldwide.

But the Conservative culture man, asked about the issue on Radio 4’s ‘The Media Show’, said he thought Channel 4 should be allowed to make its own programmes, or take a stake in the programme concepts it premieres, in order to bring in new revenues. Unlike the BBC and ITV, Channel 4 doesn’t make any of its own programming, buying everything in from independent TV production firms. That means that it has never built up its own programme archive that it could now be using to generate new revenues, nor do Channel 4 automatically benefit from any brand extensions of TV shows it airs (eg the book, the song, the t-shirt, the ringtone).

Hunt admitted his proposals would be unpopular with the indie TV producers, for some of whom Channel 4 is an important client, but he said getting involved in the programme making business would help C4 find new income to fill the gap left by declining advertising and sponsorship revenues.

Hunt: “Channel 4 have a model whereby when they have a success, like ‘Secret Millionaire’, they get no benefit even if that programme is sold throughout the world and makes millions of pounds. Channel 4 needs to find a model whereby they can benefit financially when they have a success, I think we need to look at the terms of trade in as far as they affect Channel 4”.

Following the news last year that those in healthcare PR are considering communicating new prescription-only products directly to consumers rather than just healthcare professionals, as would traditionally have been the case, mainly because an increasing number of people are turning to the internet to self-diagnose their illnesses, there is an interesting story this week from the advertising sector.

The rather grand sounding Advanced Medical Institute is in dispute with the Advertising Standards Authority over a recent billboard campaign – one poster from which was stuck up just across the road from Unicorn HQ – which asked the passing public ‘Want Longer Lasting Sex?’ in rather large letters. The posters are promoting a nasal spray product manufactured by the AMI which, I’m assuming given the poster, provides longer lasting sex.

The ASA has received 458 complaints about the ads – most, I think, from people who have taken offence at the fact that kind of headline is appearing in an outdoor advertising campaign (“think of the children” and all that). It’s true it’s the sort of ad you’d more commonly expect to find in the classifieds section of a lad’s mag, or among the 400 spam emails you receive each day.

The ASA, though, is actually more concerned that the AMI nasal spray is a prescription-only medicine, and under current UK advertising codes prescription-only drugs cannot be directly advertised to the public. The Authority is investigating the ads, but in the meantime has taken the unusually severe decision that the posters should be removed.

AMI have refused, arguing that their posters are [a] providing a public service (to men who’d like longer lasting sex, by letting them know there is a prescription drug that can help, in case you wondered), and [b] that their ads are no more offensive than other posters that refer to sex that are currently doing the rounds.

AMI Europe’s Medical Director Michael Spira told reporters: “We are happy to co-operate with the ASA‘s investigation process, but it’s important for all parties concerned that it [the ad campaign] is able to run its course. We must not overreact: this isn’t the first time sex has been used in an advertising campaign. Even as we speak posters for [the movie] ‘Sex Drive’ are appearing all over London”.

The ASA says that if AMI do not respond to their demands they will speak to the billboard site owners about having the ads removed. Though, as I write this, AMI‘s poster is still up on the wall opposite Unicorn House.

Political communications from the other side now, and the Conservatives claim that the government has spent over £16 million in the last three years on media monitoring.

According to the Tories, Whitehall departments and tax-payer funded bodies like the Arts Council and Equality And Human Rights Commission spent £13 million between them hiring agencies to monitor what is said about them in the media. That’s in addition to the million pounds a year spent on the government’s in-house media monitoring department.

Not only that, but the £16 million figure is likely to be quite a bit less than the overall media monitoring spend because two of the biggest government departments, Health and Work & Pensions, said they couldn’t reveal their expenditure sums because of good old “commercial sensitivity”.

Needless to say, the Tories, who presumably don’t care what people say about them, think the government’s media monitoring spend is way too high. The party’s culture spokesman Jeremy Hunt told reporters: “This is a colossal waste of money, and taxpayers will be furious that when everyone else is tightening their belts the last thing to get cut is the government’s own PR”.

The never dull House Of Commons Public Administration Select Committee has published a report that proposes a statutory register of lobbyists in the UK which lobbying agencies and in-house lobbyists would be obliged to sign. Moreover, agencies and consultancies would also have to reveal a full list of their clients, and document all meetings and social engagements between their consultants and MPs or government officials.

The proposals are in response to concerns raised by some that the growth of the lobbying industry, and the cosy and sometimes hidden relationships between leading public affairs consultants and MPs and government, are a bad thing for society at large – and, at worst, run contrary to some core principles of our democracy. Or something like that.

The report has been some time in development, and along the way the committee spoke to a number of leading lobbyists, most of whom are known to have spoken against further regulation of their industry – obviously. But the committee seemingly feels the case against such regulation has been “overstated” by those in the industry.

The report also proposes that the public affairs sector set up a new regulator to maintain standards and address some of those aforementioned public concerns. The new body would be funded by the industry but staffed by people with no direct affiliation with any consultancy or in house lobbying team.

The politicians added that current trade bodies to which public affairs professionals are affiliated, including the Chartered Institute Of Public Relations, the Public Relations Consultants Association and the Association Of Professional Political Consultants, have too great an obligation to represent those practitioners’ interests to also act as an independent regulator.

It remains to be seen what now happens to the proposals put forward by the committee. Though presumably the lobbying industry is busy, well, lobbying the powers that be to ensure as little of the proposed new regulation as possible is actually put in place.

As previously reported, in a bid to improve transparency in the government relations industry at a European level, the European Commission last year launched a voluntary register and encouraged both companies and their public affairs representatives to declare their lobbying activity.

Following much speculation in the latter half of 2008 regarding how hard hit the PR industry will be by the recession into which we have been spiralling for some time now, and with news of job cuts at some leading PR, marketing and advertising agencies now beginning to circulate (there are reports marketing services conglomerate Omnicom could shed up to 3500 jobs worldwide), PR Week editor Danny Rogers has been giving his take on what the year ahead might mean for the corporate communications industry. And while he admits the sector won’t be immune to job losses, he finds more than a few reasons to be cheerful, especially in certain specific areas of the PR industry.

Writing in the Guardian, Rogers says that, despite budget cuts, the recession should actually expand the influence of PR in most major companies, and continue the recent trend whereby senior management have begun to appreciate the value of corporate communication activity alongside or even above more traditional marketing and advertising campaigns. This, Rogers says, is because PR exists to communicate both good and bad news, whereas marketing and advertising tends to concentrate on just the good. In an economic climate where bad news is around in abundance, those with the skills to deliver it in the least damaging way will be in high demand. “At last”, Rogers writes, “PR’s biggest advantage over advertising as a communications discipline is paying off. Rather than simply broadcasting positive messages, PR helps organisations create ongoing dialogue with their audiences”.

He admits those parts of PR that form and deliver promotional messages, normally working in tandem with (and sometimes reporting into) their marketing department, are likely to be hit by the same cutbacks as the advertising and marketing sectors. Though there will be some exceptions – Rogers predicts those working on government projects will continue to get work (the government seemingly keen to continue to communicate its messages at the same level as before), while the entertainment industry should also fare better than most, because during darker economic times consumers may choose usually cheaper entertainment products over luxury items in a bid to cheer themselves up.

But more than that, Rogers also reckons certain parts of the PR sector could thrive in this recession. In particular public affairs and financial PR.

The former because: “As well as financial turmoil, we have a transforming political scene. With a new administration coming into the White House and a UK election within 18 months, there is demand from firms to get close to the new power-brokers”.

The latter because, while the City is still recovering from the turmoil that preceded the wider recession, Rodgers reckons it could start to pick up this year, resulting in new mergers, acquisitions and the like, all of which will demand financial PR expertise. Rodgers writes: “If the stock-market – which fell 18 months ahead of the economy – starts to recover towards the end of 2009, as some believe it will, we may see a new wave of aggressive acquisitions and large-scale mergers, and a bonanza for PR consultants”.

You can read Rodgers full Mystic Meg piece on the Guardian website here.

I’m not sure if this is a brand extension too far, or an elaborate hoax, but Burger King in the US have launched their own brand of cologne that offers the scent of, erm, meat. Yes, for four dollars burger fans can buy the scent called Flame, and smell like their favourite fast food all day.

The website set up to promote the fragrance, FireMeetsDesire.com, explains: “The Whopper sandwich is America’s favourite burger. Flame by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you”.

Whether American men (or women) will be rushing to buy the new scent remains to be seen – a survey in the Boston Herald last week did suggest some men would consider wearing it. Either way, one would assume Flame has already achieved its main objective – gaining BK plenty of column inches all over the world.

Virgin Mobile recently got together a group of London bloggers and asked them to vote on their favourite viral video of recent months, all part of the mobile firm’s campaign to promote their ‘mobile web access for 30p a day’ promotion.

The bloggers voted for a video by New York based comedy team Lonely Island, sometimes seen on US TV show ‘Saturday Night Live’, but more commonly consumed via their website or YouTube.

You can check the winning video here – though be warned, if you’re easily offended you may prefer Virgin Mobile’s own pun-tastic ad for the 30p web access promotion here.

ITV is rebranding its online catch-up TV service, currently just a section of ITV.com, as the ITV Player, which will make it look and sound more like the BBC‘s incredibly successful iPlayer.

The rebrand at ITV comes as the commercial broadcaster announced it would be making its on-demand service available via BT Vision’s TV-on-demand platform as well as online. It’s the first time the ITV Player has been available via a third party.

Commenting on the rebrand, ITV‘s Director Of Online, Ben McOwen Wilson, told reporters: “The new logo is part of our aim to create a recognisable and consistent brand for video-on-demand content across the web and TV. It is part of our overall ambition to make our content as widely available for audiences through whichever platform suits them best”.

As well as the ITV Player, the commercial broadcaster is also involved in a joint venture with the BBC‘s commercial division BBC Worldwide and Channel 4 to launch a joint on-demand service taking programmes from all three companies. That proposal, though, is currently subject to a Competition Commission review and regulators are unlikely to give it the go-ahead without conditions to ensure rival on-demand services are not disadvantaged because of the size of a combined BBC/ITV/C4 programme archive.

A survey by PR firm Edelman says brands shouldn’t be too quick to cut their support of good causes as the recession bites, because such corporate social responsibility can result in competitive advantage just as companies most need it.

The survey was done by Edelman’s cross-country, cross-practice Goodpurpose consultancy, which specialises in connecting brands with suitable good causes. They interviewed 6,000 people in 10 different countries and found that 68% of those interviewed said they would be more likely to stay loyal to a brand that supports good causes during a recession.

Mitch Markson, president of Edelman’s Global Consumer Brands practice and founder of Goodpurpose, told reporters: “Marrying profits and purpose may prove to be a powerful strategy during these harsh economic times”.

Ivor Gaber of City University has been considering the PR dimension of the recent traumatic Baby P case in an article for The Guardian, and reckons that Haringey Council made a terrible situation much worse by ignoring some obvious communication requirements.

He writes: “From a PR perspective there is no doubt that Haringey and its director of children’s services, Sharon Shoesmith, have handled the situation badly. [At the post-verdict press conference] she failed to apologise for what had happened to Baby P while in the borough’s care, despite obvious failings; second, she bombarded the media with graphs showing just how “good” Haringey’s child services were”.

Gaber argues that in a story like this the best strategy is ‘apology before anything else’, even if doing so opens your organisation up to legal liabilities. Trying to combat media outrage with positive spin, he adds, won’t work and will just fan the fire.

Gaber speaks from experience, having advised Haringey Council after the Laming Report into the death of another abused child in the district – eight year old Victoria Climbie, who died in 2000.

Gaber writes: “The first thing I said was that I would only be able to work with the council if it agreed our two priorities were to accept the report’s findings and to apologise. I was horrified to hear the council’s solicitor explain that if Haringey did either, its public liability insurers might withdraw cover and the borough could be liable for significant damages in any subsequent legal proceedings. I argued strongly that the damage being done by refusing to apologise was far greater than any compensation they would face as a result of court action. After a not inconsiderable battle, George Meehan – who then, as now (until his resignation yesterday), was council leader – accepted my argument”.

That decision, Gaber argues, meant that media coverage of the report, while negative about Haringey’s failings, “focused on what was to be done in the future to try and avoid such situations recurring”.

You can read Gaber’s full comment piece in The Guardian here.

The Brunswick Internship Programme, which has been hosted and managed by Unicorn Jobs, reached its conclusion last week as our six aspiring PR professionals completed their 10 weeks of hands-on training.

This programme, run by Unicorn Jobs on behalf of both Brunswick and our sister company Taylor Bennett, was established to address diversity issues in the PR and corporate communications industry. The starting point was our belief that people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds are under-represented in this industry, especially on the agency side. The programme is a proactive step to address this problem – it actively encourages people from these communities to consider working in this sector, and then provides them with the skills and knowledge required to launch a PR career.

The programme was developed in association with the University Of East London, through which the six interns were recruited via an intensive selection process.

The six successful candidates were Michael Omudu, Avani Patel, Miriam Wachira, Zubair Ahmed, Olayinka Olagunju and Elaina Ifill. For the last 10 weeks they have received formal and informal training from the Unicorn team, as well as experts at both Brunswick and Taylor Bennett, providing them with a comprehensive and practical introduction to, among other things:

- The PR and communications industry, and the many roles within it.
– The fundamentals of a PR campaign, crafting messages and choosing channels.
– The media, how it works and the way PR and media people work together.
– The City, how it works and the importance of financial and investor PR.
– Communication, presentation, networking and office skills.

They have also met numerous PR professionals and media people along the way (some of whom they have interviewed for “esPResso” – look out for those interviews), received one-to-one careers coaching, and worked on two practical PR projects.

We hope that this will be the first of many such internship programmes. If you’d like to support such work, drop us a line and we’ll tell you more. And if you’re looking to recruit some brilliant new PR talent for your company, we know six of the best! Again, drop us a line.

After Daily Mail Editor In Chief Paul Dacre had shared his views on the BBC‘s regional media ambitions at that Society Of Editors conference he then turned his attention to British privacy laws – and it was those comments that caught most of the headlines.

Any publicists charged with keeping their clients out of the news should note the Mail chief’s disdain for the recent use of the Human Rights Act by notable public figures to stop newspapers from reporting on their private lives. Dacre took aim in particular at Justice David Eady who, the editor claims, is interpreting human rights laws in such a way as to infringe the long guarded freedom of the British press.

According to The Guardian, Dacre said: “The British press is having a privacy law imposed on it, which apart from allowing the corrupt and the crooked to sleep easily in their beds is, I would argue, undermining the ability of mass-circulation newspapers to sell newspapers in an ever more difficult market. This law is not coming from parliament, but from the arrogant and amoral judgments, words I use very deliberately, of one man. I am referring, of course, to Justice David Eady who has, again and again, under the privacy clause of the Human Rights Act, found against newspapers and their age-old freedom to expose the moral shortcomings of those in high places”.

Dacre focused in particular on one of Eady’s most high profile recent rulings, in the case Formula One chief Max Mosley brought against the News Of The World. That, in Dacre’s mind, was an entirely legitimate story for the tabloid to follow, and Eady was wrong to suggest otherwise. He added: ”[Eady] found for Max Mosley because he had not engaged in a ‘sick Nazi orgy’ as the News of the World claimed, though for the life of me that seems an almost surreally pedantic logic as some of the participants were dressed in military-style uniform”.

Dacre did admit, sort of, that there was a commercial motive as to why such privacy laws should not be allowed to develop – stories like that of Mosley sell newspapers after all – but he stressed his concerns had an ethical dimension.

He continued: “If mass-circulation newspapers, which, of course, also devote considerable space to reporting and analysis of public affairs, don’t have the freedom to write about scandal, I doubt whether they will retain their mass circulations with the obvious worrying implications for the democratic process. Now some revile a moralising media. Others, such as myself, believe it is the duty of the media to take an ethical stand. Either way it is a choice, but Justice Eady, with his awesome powers, has taken away our freedom of expression to make that choice”.

Bad news for regional PRs hoping for a whole load of new websites to target. The BBC Trust has rejected proposals by Beeb managers to launch a network of local news websites based around locally produced video content and funded with £68 million of licence fee money.

The proposals have been much criticised by regional newspapers who argue the BBC is using its unique funding and resources to unfairly compete on their territory – just when they are trying to overcome declines in readership and advertising revenues on their print titles by expanding their online efforts. Daily Mail Editor In Chief Paul Dacre, whose parent company owns a number of regional newspapers, recently spoke out against the proposals, telling the Society Of Editors conference: “With its preposterous proposal for 65 ultralocal websites, [the BBC] is going for the jugular of the local newspaper industry. Lines must be drawn in the sand”.

The plans needed approval of BBC regulator the BBC Trust to go ahead, and they announced on Friday that no such approval would be given. Trust chair Michael Lyons said in a statement that while licence fee payers wanted better regional and local services from the BBC, the website proposal was “unlikely to achieve what they want”. He added: “We also recognise the negative impact that the local video proposition could have on commercial media services which are valued by the public and are already under pressure”.

Perhaps Mr Holland and Mr Barrett could have a story line on Coronation Street – though they’d probably have to wear ‘product placement’ hats, so I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.

ITV has signed up to a new code of conduct governing product placement on its TV shows. The new self-regulation agreement, regarding the often controversial practice of brands paying to have their products featured within TV shows, has been put together by TV producers’ trade body Pact. It seemingly aims to give the practice some legitimacy as broadcasters desperately look for new revenue streams to compensate for declines in traditional advertising income. Channel 4 are also thought to be planning to sign up to the agreement.

The agreement recommends a “generic symbol” be shown when product placement takes place, as well as requesting a commitment from broadcasters that the inclusion of branded products in programmes will always be editorially justified, and that producers, editors and writers will not be pressured by a broadcaster’s sales team to skew a programme to allow placement.

The agreement crucially sees a clear distinction between brands having a ‘periphery presence’ in a programme – so the washing up liquid used in the Coronation Street café Roy’s Rolls is Fairy Liquid – and all out advertorial, where Roy Cropper turns to camera and remarks on how clean his plates are thanks to Fairy.

The agreement comes as the Department For Culture, Media And Sport considers whether to put any legislative restrictions in place regarding this growing practice in commercial television. Despite some expressing concerns, Pact argue that “product placement should be permitted in the UK, providing there is a clear and robust regulatory framework in place”.

Will the Great British Public still be willing to spend their pound on natural health foods in the recession, or will they be looking for cheaper ways to stay healthy? Well, high street health food chain Holland & Barrett are hoping to ensure it’s the former with a new multi-million pound marketing campaign which will include new TV adverts, in-store merchandise and online activity.

At the heart of the campaign will be two new characters, Mr Holland and Mr Barrett, neither of whom will be former 80s pop stars as far as I’m aware (Holland & Barrett’s most famous TV ad campaign was fronted by Kim Wilde, of course).

The new marketing push will include plenty of PR activity, with Brighton-based health specialists Pegasus PR retained to head up the media relations.

We are in the middle of the regional awards season for the PR sector, with the Chartered Institute Of PR’s PRide award dinners taking place all over the UK.

With separate awards dinners for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire & Lincolnshire, the Midlands, East Anglia, Wessex, the West, Thames & Chiltern and the Home Counties, these celebrate PR talent in their respective regions. Just the Northern Ireland and East Anglia dinners remain, on 27 November and 3 December respectively.

The biggest news story from the PRide awards this year, though, has been less about celebration and more about the shaky economy, with the news that the winner of the Outstanding PR Consultancy Award at the North West awards last week went into administration almost as soon as it had picked up its gong (in fact two employees had been made redundant the previous week).

Manchester-based Koan PR is seemingly the victim of some bad debts which, coupled with the loss of a key client in the construction sector, has left the firm’s owners with no choice but to put the business into administration, despite the PRide award. The company’s MD, Elaine Mitchell Hill, plans to launch a new ‘virtual agency’ which she hopes will be better able to cope with uncertain economic times.

Commenting on the irony of Koan going into administration as it picked up the PRide award, CIPR PRide Awards Convenor Colin Farrington told PR Week: ”‘We are sorry to hear that Koan as a company may now have been hit by the economic downturn. This is an unfortunate sign of the times. It should not, however, detract from the success of Koan’s team, who submitted earlier this year a three-year record of exemplary achievements to justify the CIPR North West Outstanding PR Consultancy Award”.

Earlier in the year we had Russia and Georgia hiring rival European communication agencies to help them fight the PR dimension of their fortunately short-lived military conflict. Now The Times reports that Palestine and Israel are employing more corporate-style communication techniques in order to fight the PR element of their never-ending dispute.

First, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is of the opinion that his government’s peace proposals have not been properly communicated to the Israeli people, took out a series of full page adverts in Israel’s biggest daily newspapers, outlining the details of an Arab peace initiative. They basically outline proposals first made in 2002 that the Arab world will formally recognise Israel if they withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and parts of Jerusalem.

The Times quotes an aide to Abbas, Saeb Erekat, confirming that the President’s advertising campaign was launched because of his belief that “Israelis were not properly educated about the deal on offer”.

Meanwhile, Israel are trying to circumvent what they see as Palestinian-biased media, especially in the Middle East, by launching their own YouTube channel in Arabic. Ophir Gendelman of Israel’s Foreign Ministry told reporters: “We have a problem reaching out to the Arab audience, and we need to take additional measures to maximise our exposure. The internet scene in Arabic is buzzing, and we wish to establish another communication channel for dialogue. We see it as complementing our current activity in the Arab media”.

One area where PR spend may be about to increase is higher education. Or at least that’s one interpretation of new stats from Universities UK, which warns higher education institutions that a decline in the teenage population will heighten competition in the sector.

The report from the representative body for British universities says that the 18–20 year old demographic, where the vast majority of students in higher education come from, is set to fall by more than 100,000 between 2009 and 2020. With fewer students available, and universities dependent on students to receive funding, institutions will have to employ better marketing and communication skills to ensure they continue to recruit sufficient numbers of students each year.

Justin Shaw, who heads up the education PR division at comms agency Communications Management, told PR Week: “It’s going to make competition even more intense. You have to stand out from the crowd. Universities need to think about what they say about themselves and how they differentiate themselves”.

Of course universities would probably also be well advised to invest some time in other areas of the communications mix in a bid to compete. Higher education institutions are notoriously bad at communicating with their existing students, and some better internal comms with the student body could, in turn, make a university a more desirable place to study while helping reduce drop out rates.

At last, some good news related to the credit crunch and pending recession. One bit of research reckons businesses will increase their spend on marketing and PR in response to the economic crisis. Well, it could happen.

In the survey of 1,492 companies by research firm Shape The Future, 45.7% of respondents said that marketing and PR spend would not fall in the next year, while 36.4% said they planned to increase expenditure, in particular in their PR and online activity.

All of which is good news for those in the PR sector, though if you want the negative spin on this story, the survey was done at the end of September when recession seemed likely but total economic meltdown not a certainty. So pessimists might argue there’d be a slightly less positive result if Shape The Future repeated the survey this week.

More c’leb PR, and the other big story that has the power to push economic gloom off the front pages, the Madonna/Guy Ritchie divorce. Despite initial indications the Ritchies might part without any Macca/Mills style drama, gossipers say things could get nasty, particularly given Madonna’s rumoured wish to take her children back to America.

The comms angle to this is a PR Week report that Freud Communications chief Matthew Freud will himself represent Ritchie as the divorce goes through the motions. Freud’s company has worked with Ritchie before, but will step up its activity in a bid to ensure he’s not presented as the bad guy in the split. PR Week quotes Freud Communications’ director Patrick Keegan thus: “We’re trying to help the media report accurately, but we are not responding bespoke to each allegation and speculation”.

Madonna’s long-term press reps, Barbara Charone and Liz Rosenberg, will represent her in the divorce. Private Eye recently reported that Rosenberg has a good relationship with the Sun, which is why they broke news of the divorce last month, but also why they had reported previous rebuttals that the marriage was on the rocks as if they were fact.

US Drinks firm Dr Pepper is going to have to give away a free drink to every single American, unless something goes horribly wrong with plans to release the new album by Guns N Roses this month.

Fans of rock band Guns N Roses have been waiting 17 years for the follow up to 1991’s ‘Use Your Illusion 2’. Along the way frontman Axl Rose has promised an imminent release of follow up ‘Chinese Democracy’ on more than one occasion, and the album even had a release date published at one point in early 2007.

With the album seemingly finished but still not released, Dr Pepper issued a press release earlier this year saying it would give every American a free can of their drink if Rose actually managed to release the new long player before the end of 2008. It was a successful stunt in that it won coverage for the drinks firm in both the news and music press across the US and beyond.

Whether Dr Pepper’s PR team and management really expected to have to make good on their promise isn’t clear, but with Geffen Records now set to release ‘Chinese Democracy’ in the US on 23 November, they are going to have to give away an awful lot of product.

That said, they will win quite a bit more press in the process, maybe even stealing the news agenda on the day the album comes out. Plus the system in place by which US citizens can claim their free drink probably means that only the really committed will actually bother. Those wanting to take up the offer will have to log on to the Dr Pepper website at some point on 23 November and apply for a coupon. They have until the end of February to redeem it.

Confirming they would make good on their promise, Dr Pepper marketing chief Tony Jacobs told reporters last month: “We never thought this day would come. But now that it’s here all we can say is: The Dr Pepper’s on us”.

HMV have announced ‘Chinese Democracy’ will be released here in the UK the next day on 24 November, though they’ll be no free fizzy drinks for us, which doesn’t seem fair.

One for those communicators who have to keep their eye on the web. Facebook has overtaken bbc.co.uk in the chart of most popular UK net destinations.

The social networking site has moved into fifth place in the most-viewed-websites list from web measurement firm comScore following an 80% rise in traffic in the last 12 months. Traffic to the Beeb’s websites fell slightly, by 2.7%, in the same period, despite the launch of the popular iPlayer.

The four websites ahead of both Facebook and the Beeb are Yahoo, Microsoft, eBay and, unsurprisingly, out in the lead is Google, which, of course, also boasts YouTube within its family of web services.

With internal comms now widely regarded as an essential part of the corporate communications pie, as it were, the Chartered Institute Of Public Relations has announced a new qualification in the discipline.

The Internal Communication Certificate is aimed at those in their first few years working in the area, or at people interested in knowing more about it. Gaining the qualification will involve participating in a six-month course.

Announcing the new initiative, CIPR Director General Colin Farrington told esPResso: “The internal communication sector has in recent years grown in stature and strength as its contribution to business success has been recognised. It is only right that it should have its own qualification, one that is awarded by its Chartered professional body, to help drive standards. And what better time to introduce this award than when businesses are having to rely even more heavily on fully skilled and effective internal communication professionals to help them inform, educate and engage their people to enable them to achieve their objectives”.

Lee Smith, chair of ClPR Inside, the Institute’s specialist group for internal communicators, added: “This qualification is great news for our maturing profession and means that now, for the first time, communicators who choose to specialise in this important discipline will have the opportunity to study for a robust qualification backed by the CIPR. This is an important first step towards raising standards and ensuring new entrants to the profession have the knowledge and skills they need to approach their task strategically and to add real value to their organisations”.

The first CIPR Internal Communication Certificate course will kick off in January at the PR Academy in London. For more information check www.cipr.co.uk/qualifications.

And so on to the one story that managed to kick the credit crunch off the front pages: what the media have insisted on calling ‘Sachsgate’. What has the PR impact been for the BBC as a result of all the media and public outrage to the lewd messages left by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross on the answer machine of actor Andrew Sachs during an edition of Brand’s Radio 2 show last month?

Certainly last week was bad for the British Broadcasting Corporation. Should, as some commentators suggested, the BBC and, in particular, Director General Mark Thompson, have done the news studio circuit earlier and, had he done so, could the story have been resolved without the resignation of generally popular Radio 2 chief Lesley Douglas?

Or were high profile resignations inevitable, however good a response the Corporation issued, given how many journalists love to hate the BBC as well as Jonathan Ross?

And, with the BBC-haters of the world using this scandal to put the boot in, will this story have an impact on the BBC‘s long term reputation, on its ability to command a licence fee, and on its ability to pay six and seven figure salaries to top executives and on-air talent?

Questions, questions. Former BBC chairman and current ITV boss Michael Grade has said he thought the BBC responded as best it could to the scandal, both in making decisions, and in communicating its position. Speaking at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch earlier this week, Grade said the BBC‘s response was actually very quick – the fastest he could remember in the Corporation’s history.

Although it took three days for senior BBC execs to go in front of the camera, in those three days management had made actual decisions regarding the future of the presenters and network controllers involved, enabling them to deliver a decisive statement. This, Grade says, is thanks to the status of BBC regulator the BBC Trust which is sufficiently independent to hold Beeb chiefs to account, but close enough to act swiftly. Of course Grade was instrumental in setting up the BBC Trust, so he would say that.

However, PR Week editor Danny Rogers disagrees. Writing in the Guardian, he says the three-day delay was a big mistake, and a sign that while the BBC Trust may be fit for purpose in forcing difficult decisions to be made quickly, the Corporation’s PR machine wasn’t ready to deal with a print media out for blood while Trust members investigated the prank calls and who was to blame.

He writes: “The biggest problem is a relatively decentralised structure, with specialist divisions running their own press teams. This can prevent localised problems – a gaffe within Radio 2’s output, for example – from being spotted by senior management quickly enough. One BBC manager describes it as a ‘federal structure; a kind of disunited nations’”.

He continues: “Another flaw is that the corporate affairs team sits within the wider marketing and audiences division that was created two years ago. Since then there has been a growth in the number of people who proactively market programmes, but a comparative decline in comms specialists who can spot, and react to, escalating crises”.

Rogers concedes that BBC Director of Communications Ed Williams, brought in after the dodgy editing and phone in scandals that rocked the Beeb last year, is already tackling some of these problems, but concludes: “The BBC needs to listen more; to be more open about its processes; and to be more collaborative in its decision-making. Moreover, it needs to be able to act appropriately and decisively, and to be seen to be doing so. Above all, it needs to do this quickly. Because – as Thompson and Williams have just discovered – even half a week can be a long time in broadcasting”.

So, another credit crunch related story for you courtesy of a new survey of communication directors by PR Week and Brands2Life. They’ve been asking top communicators whether the looming recession will impact on their PR agency spend.

The results will only please those who like to be pessimistic. The trade magazine reports that a fifth of the comms chiefs they spoke to are already preparing to scale back their use of PR agencies in 2009 predicting a cut in overall budgets. And not only that, 11 per cent said they were ready to trim their in-house communications team if necessary as companies across the board start to anticipate headcount cuts in the next year.

However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom for the PR industry. A quarter of those surveyed said they relied on their agencies more as the economy crunches, while three-quarters said their chief executives increasingly understood the importance of communicating when times were hard, so PR people may enjoy more job security than most as firms start to downsize.

Another rebrand, this one permanent, unless a vodka maker has their way. As you have no doubt noticed, from the copious amounts of bus advertising and recent TV campaign, the radio station that was known as Virgin Radio has rebranded to become Absolute.

This rebrand had nothing to do with trying to persuade consumers to re-evaluate the product, rather it was forced by a change in ownership. Virgin Radio was recently sold by Scottish media firm SMG to the Times Of India Group. Although SMG owned the station and its UK-wide AM licence, it didn’t own the name Virgin Radio, which was licenced to them by the station’s original owners the Virgin Group. Because the Times Of India Group competes with the Virgin Group in India, Richard Branson’s company refused to let them use their brand in the UK radio market. The Times Of India’s existing UK radio company was called Absolute, so they decided to go with that brand for their new station too.

But drinks firm Vin&Sprit, who own the Absolut vodka brand, aren’t impressed with that decision, even if there is an ‘e’ to differentiate the two brands. It says the Times Of India Group is infringing their trademark, and has thrown in a ‘passing off’ claim as well, just in case the trademark courts don’t rule in their favour. Key to both claims are whether or not us consumers will be confused by the launch of Absolute Radio. The vodka firm may well point to its music marketing platform Absolut Tracks as one reason why there may be confusion between the two seemingly different products.

But Absolute Radio say they disagree with the vodka firm and are confident that the courts will too. A spokeswoman for the radio station told reporters: “We absolutely believe that the two brands can exist alongside each other and that our 5 million listeners can distinguish between a vodka brand and a radio station. We hope for a swift resolution to this situation and remain 100% committed to our exciting plans for Absolute Radio.”

So, as you may have seen, Pizza Hut has changed its name to Pasta Hut, a move partly motivated by the addition of eight new pasta dishes to the restaurant chain’s menu.

But, despite some reports that the change is permanent, actually the rebrand is only temporary, though it should stay in place for the rest of the year, and some of their 700 branches have changed their signage.

The temporary rebrand is part of a marketing and PR campaign to encourage people to re-evaluate the Pizza Hut brand – and not just the firm’s pasta-as-well-as-pizza menu. The PR material to accompany the temporary rebrand talks much about the investment the firm has made in reinvigorating their restaurants – £17 million at 100 stores this year, and a planned £100 million of improvements in the next six years.

According to Brand Republic, Pizza Hut’s Marketing Director Claudia Nicholls-Magielsen admitted the temporary rebrand was a “bit of a shock tactic” designed to “get people to feel differently about Pizza Hut”, but added that the menu change was in response to customer feedback, and research that shows pasta is increasingly more popular than pizza. Nicholls-Magielsen concluded: “We want to be as famous for our pastas as we are for our pizzas”.

As part of the campaign there is a pastahut.co.uk website which includes a daily customer survey which, when I looked at it, asked the question “should we make the name change permanent?” Though I’m not sure that would happen even if the customer survey said it should.

If it did, however, the firm may have to do some dealing with cybersquatters. Although the restaurant chain owns the pastahut.co.uk domain, the IT press has been rife with stories of how the firm failed to register other URL variants of the Pasta Hut name – most importantly pastahut.com – and that now others have done so and are preparing to auction them off.

Given Pasta Hut does seem like a temporary idea, I suspect Pizza Hut won’t lose too much sleep over losing out on those domains. Though, I’m going to go and register pastaexpress.com, just in case it turns out pasta brands work better and the Hut’s rivals follow suit.

The MD of PR firm Racepoint Group Europe, Jay O’Connor, has been elected President of the Chartered Institute Of Public Relations for 2010. That may seem pretty forward thinking on the CIPR‘s part, to have their 2010 President in place already, but the idea is that she has a year as President Elect first to work alongside 2009 President Kevin Taylor and get her head around what the role entails.

O’Connor has over 14 years experience in public relations, and was co-founder of Fuse PR, which merged into Racepoint in 2006, at which point she became the US-based communication agency’s European chief. O’Connor has already taken on roles within the CIPR, and currently chairs both their Education & Professional Standards Committee and a working group on Chartered Practitioner Status.

Commenting on her election to the President role for 2010, Jay told esPResso: “I am proud to be President-Elect of the CIPR and look forward to working with Kevin, CIPR colleagues and our members. What binds us together is our commitment and desire to engage with industry, government and society to develop and promote the highest ethical and professional standards that will shape our reputation as a profession, as well as the reputations of our clients. The CIPR is the voice of the PR industry and a guiding hand that helps our members to navigate rapidly evolving, global communication challenges. There are exciting times ahead – I look forward to them!”

Consumer rights group Which? are leading a campaign to try and stop pharma firms from being able to advertise prescription drugs direct to consumers here in the UK, like they can in the US.

As previously reported in esPResso, a recent report from Ogilvy Healthworld found that an increasing number of consumers were investigating illnesses they or their families suffered on the internet, and as such would go to their doctors equipped with the names of treatments they thought should be used. The Ogilvy report concluded that those involved in the PR of prescription drugs therefore needed to start to think of how they could communicate direct to the consumer, rather than relying exclusively on communicating with the medical profession.

But meanwhile, moves are afoot at a European level to let drug firms not only step up their direct-to-consumer PR activity, but to go above the line and start advertising their treatments in consumer media, like prescription drug firms can in the US. Such ads are currently banned in Europe, but proposals are about to be considered by the European Commission to allow prescription drug adverts on TV, radio, in print and online over here.

Which? has allied with a number of medial organisations, including The British Medical Association, Family Planning Association, Picker Institute Europe, British Pharmacological Society, Mind, Royal College of Physicians, Royal College of Nursing and Diabetes UK, to call on European regulators to keep the ban in place.

Their main concern is that direct-to-consumer advertising would lead to consumers demanding brand-name drugs from their doctors when cheaper unadvertised alternatives are available, something which could but a large additional financial strain on the NHS.

Confirming the various interest groups had written a letter to the EC calling for the ban on pharma ads to stay in place, Pete Moorey, Public Affairs Manager at Which? told reporters: “We need to draw a clear line between information and advertising… we don’t want to end up in the same boat as the US, where people demand specific branded drugs from their doctor when cheaper equally effective generic drugs are available. The huge and unnecessary increase in cost that this could bring would divert much needed funds away from other areas of the NHS.”

Which? are planning their own PR campaign in addition to the lobbying activity to try and persuade British newspapers to back the continuation of the ban, though that will involve said media’s commercial divisions turning away a brand new revenue stream which could be useful given the current state of the advertising market.

Putting the challenge of surviving global economic collapse to one side for a moment, let’s spend a little time thinking about that other challenge for global brands, how to coordinate the management of your communications activity in different territories.

Starbucks, for a while one of the key targets for the anti-globalisation protest movement, is keen to communicate its corporate responsibility work in a consistent way worldwide, and they have decided that the best way to do that is to employ the same PR agency across different territories. To that end they are ending their relationships with two UK agencies, and handing a multi-country brief to a third, Edelman.

They will manage Starbucks’ corporate and consumer media relations and stakeholder management in both the US and UK. PR Week quote an insider as saying the decision to expand its relationship with Edelman is very much part of a bit to “centralise control” to ensure a “cohesive global message” crafted at the coffee chain’s US HQ.

A Starbucks spokesman said: “The focus will be on increasing awareness of Starbucks Coffee Company’s commitment to being a responsible company, be that in how we source our coffee or how we work with the communities around our stores”.

Not wishing to kick the banks while they’re down or anything, but a new survey by online corporate communications firm Investis has said that banks are not effectively using their websites as a communication tool.

The banking sector was specifically picked out as one where there was much room for improvement in online communication activity. The banks’ websites, the report said, failed to provide an industry perspective and didn’t respond to world events, something that consumers in particular might appreciate when their newspapers are full of stories of banks on the brink.

All of this comes from a new report that Investis are promising to publish on a quarterly basis which will assess the websites of companies in the FTSE 250 on just under 200 different criteria to see how well those firms are using their websites to satisfy the needs and queries of all their stakeholders. In the first survey, insurance firm Aviva came top by scoring well in all 200 categories. Food retailers also communicated well through their websites, while the mining sector performed worst overall.

Launching the new regular survey, Investis Business Development Director, Al Loehnis, told reporters: “In this volatile market environment it has never been more important for companies to establish their own websites as the go-to authority for information, news and commentary on their business and the industries in which they operate. The IQ benchmarking service gives companies a robust measure of the performance of their websites, against their peers and over time. We see this as an important addition to the value of the ongoing service we provide our clients”.

Those of you involved in PR-ing the local news media will be able to get a smaller Rolodex, because 430 jobs are to go across ITV‘s local news teams.

The job cuts follow a decision by media regulator OfCom to let ITV reduce local news programming. The cut back will see the commercial broadcaster’s 17 local news divisions reduced to nine, each with a much bigger area to cover.

Added to the 425 jobs already cut in the broadcaster’s PR, finance, commercial and global content divisions, that means ITV will have nearly 900 fewer employees by next February, when the latest cuts are expected to be completed. Which means we’re back in doom and gloom territory – sorry, I was hoping to end on a high.

ITV COO John Cresswell said this: “We are committed to a self-help, self-funding solution to securing ITV‘s future. In order to sustain our investment in UK content, we have to keep on top of our cost base”.

Away from all this credit crunch doom and gloom, British Airways has come up with an interesting new marketing initiative – it has launched its own social networking website.

Metrotwin is a new social media platform that aims to foster online community links between what it calls “the two greatest cities in the world” – London and New York – and as far as we know it makes the airline the first major brand to dabble in social networking in this way in a bid to engage consumers.

Registered users can access reviews from both experts and fellow readers on all aspects of London and New York life, and add their own opinions. Users set up their own user profiles, and are encouraged to network with others in both their own city and on the other side of the Atlantic.

Commenting on the new service, BA’s Digital Marketing Manager Chris Davies, told reporters: “British Airways is a company which connects people and social media is about connecting people. We fly more people between London and New York than anyone else. Creating a community website about the best of what’s on offer in the two cities we know best is a credible and useful tool”.

There is an interesting opinion piece in Ethical Corporation magazine this week about a conflict in interest that may be faced by those PR people who have both a corporate reputation and corporate social responsibility remit.

Chandran Nair, founder and Chief Executive of a thing called the Global Institute For Tomorrow, wonders whether, in an economic climate where some PR people may want to prioritise the ‘good news’ message over everything else, whether they might let previous CSR commitments slide and cover up the fact with ‘spin’.

He writes: “Assuming commitment to social responsibility and profit generation are generally not mutually exclusive, why do so many PR executives tend to feel the need to deliberately underplay the former to maximise the latter? Work environments that fail to encourage transparency, openness and dialogue and operate with perverse incentives in place only encourage bad behaviour. The overall result is that professionals who should know better allow short-term goals to ride roughshod over long-term interests”.

To address this problem, Nair observes: “If more effort were spent on ensuring that PR professionals understood the importance of their independence they would be able to bring much greater value to their clients and companies. PR executives should in fact have the mandate to make certain that their companies fulfil their legal obligations, and ensure that the public is not misled on issues relevant to the company’s social obligations”.

Nair, perhaps, is being a little unfair to those in the growing CSR industry, and ignores reports by the likes of the UK’s Public Relations Consultants Association who recently urged companies to not let previous socially responsible commitments fall by the way side in recession. But, still, his article makes interesting reading. You can check it out here.

Given that a big part of any PR practitioner’s job is to help boost the ‘value’ of their employer or client’s brand or brands, then corporate communicators are going to be in for a busy few months. A new survey suggests the old credit crunch has wiped billions off the value of top 100 global brands. $50 billion last month, and $67 billion between January and August, to be precise.

The figures come from a report by brand-valuation experts Brand Finance for the Media Guardian. There are few surprises in the list of companies who have seen their ‘brand value’ slump the most – with city firms like Citibank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, UBS, AIG, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse the most affected.

It’s not all doom and gloom in the financial sector though. Brand Finance says HSBC‘s brand remains strong, and that’s because the high street bank’s marketing and communications in recent years have made its corporate brand more resilient than those of some of their competitors. UK Managing Director at Brand Finance, Oliver Schmidtz, told the Guardian: “HSBC is an interesting example of a company that has really focused on its brand, it stands for something with consumers”.

With that in mind, Schmitz says that, while the credit crunch will inevitably lead to many companies streamlining non-core activity, they should continue to resource those marketing and PR professionals involved in communicating the corporate brand. Schmitz: “Some say it is time to focus on the business basics but it is also a time where customers need to rely on brands”.

More credit crunch, which is something of a theme this week I’m afraid. A number of careers experts have recently noted that, during a period of economic crisis, it’s actually quite good to work in accountancy or management consultancy, because it’s those firms who are needed to come in and sort out the mess as other companies spiral out of control, or inevitably merge and downsize. There’s an argument that another good business to be in is crisis communications – with panic all around it takes the best communications talent to help companies convince media and investors alike that they’ll be just fine.

That said, helping those involved in the biggest crises may prove costly if, despite all your best communication efforts, it all goes horribly wrong. US media are reporting that Kekst & Co, the Wall Street communications firm, is currently $400,000 out of pocket, after mounting bills for the crisis consultancy they provided Lehman Brothers remained unpaid as the US bank went into bankruptcy. Reports say the PR company will now make a claim to the court handling the bankruptcy, but it’s not clear how much they can expect to recoup as Lehman’s assets are sold off.

As you’d expect, Kekst isn’t commenting on the issue, telling reporters: “As a matter of policy, we don’t discuss current or former client matters”.

If he is the communications whiz some claim, perhaps Mandelson could have helped out his counterparts across the Atlantic in their bid to persuade US Congress to back the White House’s proposals for rescuing the collapsing financial markets at the start of last week. As you no doubt know, the American legislative body refused to back the Bush administration’s plans for ‘baling out’ the faltering Wall Street, leading to speculation the Western world would sink into an even worse recession than previously anticipated. The US Congress has since passed a modified version of the plans.

But, according to an article in American magazine Ad Age, the reason the original proposals failed to impress either the country’s Congressmen or their constituents wasn’t because of the White House’s financial proposals, but because of the way the whole thing was communicated. The problem wasn’t the maths, it was the PR. Not least, using the words “bale out” rather than something a bit more positive, perhaps “rescue”.

They quote John Marino, Managing Partner at New York-based Dan Klores Communications, who says: “They not only didn’t use the right language, they didn’t explain to the public what this was all about. They should have said, ‘This is a problem for all Americans and potentially the most devastating crisis we have faced since the Depression, and let me explain why’. Or, ‘This is going to impact you, and it’s logical that at some point it will impact you’. Banks were going to stop lending to small businesses and consumers, and they never talked about it in those terms. It was laid out as a Wall Street bale out”.

You can read the full Ad Age article here.

So, Peter Mandelson is set to return to government for the third time, this time as Business Secretary. This is interesting to the communications industry because, while Mandelson will officially head up Gordon Brown’s wider business strategy, the chatter in Whitehall is that the former New Labour architect has been primarily brought back into the centre of British politics so he can advise on communications strategy.

The fact that the government’s chief media man Damian McBride has been moved to a new role only adds fuel to the rumours that Brown is hoping to reinvigorate his communication efforts, which have been much criticised in recent months, by utilising some of the ‘spin-chiefs’ who played a big role in reinventing the image of Labour back in the early nineties.

Another nineties Labour adviser, and former adviser for Manselson himself, Derek Draper, who has recently started working for the party again, told PR Week of his former employer’s return to government: “I think Peter will prove to be a pretty formidable secretary of state, a really brilliant contributor to the strategy of the government and the presentation of the government”.

Jack White of the White Stripes has kicked up a fuss because the Bond song he has recorded was premiered in a Coke commercial – promoting the fizzy drink company’s limited edition Coke Zero Zero Seven line (see what they did there?).

White claims he wasn’t informed that his theme for new Bond film the ‘Quantum Of Solace’, which is a duet with Alicia Keys, would be unleashed on the world via the Coke ad, and he’s not very happy about it.

A statement from the singer’s management was issued thus: “Jack White was commissioned by Sony Pictures to write a theme song for the James Bond film ‘Quantum Of Solace’, not for Coca-Cola. Any other use of the song is based on decisions made by others, not by Jack White. We are disappointed that people first heard the song in a co-promotion for Coke Zero, rather than in its entirety.”

Of course some musicians do have a policy of not associating themselves or their music with global brands, so you might be tempted to sympathise with Jack, who has seemingly found himself become the voice of Coke without consultation. Then again, White did take the drink brand’s dollar back in 2006 to write a song specifically for a Coca-Cola advert. Responding to those who had accused him of selling out at the time, he told the NME: “I’ve been offered the opportunity to write a song in a way which interests me as a songwriter”, so I’m not sure he can be too high and mighty about being associated with the drink now.

Anyway, him moaning got both ‘Quantum Of Solace’ and Coke Zero some extra column inches just as the promotional machine for the Bond film gets into action, so I don’t suppose they mind too much.

Celebrity endorsement news now, and former Sex Pistol John Lydon has been announced as the new face of Country Life butter. Yes, really. Johnny Rotten will be on our TVs selling the Dairy-Crest-owned spread this Autumn.

A spokesperson for Dairy Crest told Mad.co.uk: “We can confirm that John Lydon is the new face of the Country Life TV advertising campaign. We don’t think enough people know Country Life is the only major British butter brand and John gets the message through loud and clear. He is seen as a great British icon. His independent views are part of his consumer appeal and his tongue-in-cheek sense of humour shines through in our TV advertising.”

News of a happier kind now. The Chartered Institute Of Public Relations held its Excellence Awards in London earlier this week, celebrating, well, excellence I assume. More specifically excellence in PR and corporate communications.

Giving her congratulations to all the winners, CIPR President Elisabeth Lewis-Jones said: “Only the cream of the PR industry receives a CIPR Excellence Award, which recognises the vital contribution PR makes to business and society. With the quality of entries improving year-on-year, this year’s winning campaigns faced the stiffest competition to date to rise to the top. This is a fantastic achievement and they are to be congratulated”.

The winners, meanwhile, were as follows…

Corporate Communications Award: Citigate Dewe Rogerson for Moneyexpert.com – Making Sense of Money

Financial PR & Investor Relations Award: Lanson Communications for bringing Stobart to the Stock Market

Internal Communications Award: First Capital Connect for their Hearts and Minds Campaign

Consumer Relations Award: Dangling Carrot PR for the Trunki UK Media Launch

Public Sector Award: Hull City Council for their Wilberforce 2007: Pride, Freedom, Belief, Change programme

Business And Trade Award: Brands2Life for Micro Focus – ‘Recognising The True Value of Software Assets’

Corporate Responsibility Award: Coca-Cola Bottlers (Ulster) for their Designated Driver campaign

Public Affairs Award: The Royal British Legion for Honour the Covenant

Not-for-Profit Award: SiX PR’s ‘ilovemarrow’ campaign encouraging young men to donate bone marrow

Planning, Research And Evaluation Award: Westminster City Council for Westminster Reputation Tracker

Integrated Campaigns Award: Tyne & Wear Fire And Rescue Service for ‘Fireworks and bonfires ruin lives in a flash’

Media Relations Award: Golin Harris for Return Of The Boy King

Best Use of Social Media: COI: RAF for Afghan Diaries with Royal Air Force Careers

International Public Relations Award: The Red Consultancy for McAfee Virtual Criminology Report

Crisis Communications Award: hanover: Turning the Tide – Supporting the McCann Family between 12 & 18 September 2007

Broadcast Award: Pfizer for ‘Doctor Doctor’ and Pfizer Life

Healthcare Award: World Cancer Research Fund, Expert Report

External Newspaper or Magazine Award: Colchester Borough Council for Courier Magazine

Internal Newspaper or Magazine Award: CG Business Communications for Wolseley UK, Connections

e-Newsletters and Magazines Award: Devon County Council: Keeping Devon Intouch

Publication Award: Gloucestershire County Council for Your Essential Flood Guide

Website or Microsite Award: The Parole Board for www.paroleboard.gov.uk

Event Award: Packer Forbes Communications for The PAH and Scleroderma Mastermind Symposium

Outstanding Young Communicator: Gareth Mead at Abchurch Communications

Outstanding Small Consultancy: Voice Communications

Outstanding In-House Public Relations Team: Yorkshire Water

Outstanding Public Relations Consultancy: Blue Rubicon

There have presumably been some very busy days in the corporate communications offices of the big banks in the last week, with all the big institutions keen to assure investors and journalists alike that they “won’t be next”.

But there’ll be a totally different challenge for the marketers and communicators at what could become known as the very catchy ‘Lloyds Halifax Trustee Savings Bank Of Scotland’. Namely, which of the various banking brands in the merged company’s portfolio they should hang on to. This is a particularly sensitive issue in Scotland, where the Edinburgh press and political community are expressing concern that the prestigious Bank Of Scotland, the oldest bank in the UK, may disappear from the high street – and the wallets of Scottish consumers. Scottish banks, of course, traditionally print their own banknotes.

Perhaps with that in mind, Lloyds TSB has already let it be known that it plans to maintain HBOS‘s main brands after the takeover – in much the same way it continues to sell specific financial services using the names of previous acquisitions, such as Scottish Widows in the life insurance and pensions business, and Cheltenham & Gloucester in the mortgages market.

Though with Halifax, Bank Of Scotland and Lloyds TSB all offering such a wide range of retail banking services on the high street, it remains to be seen how the respective brands will be positioned.

When Halifax and Bank Of Scotland merged in 2001, a condition was that the Halifax brand remained. HBOS seemed to adopt an approach where Halifax has become the primary brand in England and Wales, while Bank Of Scotland dominates north of the border. This decision reflected the fact that BoS had a low profile in England, and the Halifax wasn’t so prominent in Scotland. The two shared many marketing materials though, aided by the fact that both banks’ logo revolved around an X shape. Whether such an approach will work this time I’m not sure – Lloyds TSB has a high profile all over the UK and it’s hard to see how all three brands can efficiently co-exist.

Of course the bigger communication challenge of the moment is presumably the job losses and branch closures that are sure to occur as a result of the merger, though with the Scottish press so interested in the future of their national bank, the branding issue will need to be addressed pretty soon too.

A survey by the Public Relations Consultants Association reckons that the government should be doing more to PR upcoming changes to employment legislation, not least to the PR sector, who seem to know very little about the new laws, which will govern the employment of workers from outside the EU. The changes include a new points based system for managing applications by non-EU citizens to work here. More information, of a sort, is available from the UK Borders Agency website here.

The PRCA PR Leaders Panel surveyed management at a number of PR consultancies about the changes, and found worryingly low awareness of what the new laws mean for employers, and even of the law change itself.

At agencies who did not currently have staff members affected by the law change, half of those questioned did not know what the new laws meant, while the other half weren’t aware there was any change at all. But of more concern was the discovery that of those agencies who did employ workers from outside the EU, 80% of employers were not aware of what the changes meant, and half of them were completely unaware of the new law.

PRCA Director General Francis Ingham reckons the government should be hiring one of his members to boost awareness of the new legislation. He told us: “While the panel has mixed feelings about how significant this legislation will be for the UK PR industry, the fact that 40% of those employing immigrants were unaware of the changes altogether is appalling. After the Government failed to consult properly on TUPE [the transfer of undertakings in employment protection programme], you would expect them to learn from their mistakes.”

So, no surprise here I guess. Amid news that lobbyists and business leaders galore have booked their hotel rooms in Birmingham ready for the Conservative Party conference at the end of the month, and rumours that bookings for corporate hospitality at the Labour Party’s big bash in Manchester have been decidedly slow, Public Affairs News has revealed that 85% of public affairs executives now think David Cameron will win the next General Election.

Of course Labour Party officials have denied that corporate interest in their annual conference is down, but research by ComRes for Public Affairs News found that 42% of the 150 lobbyists interviewed said they were putting more resources into the Tory conference this year, while just 6% said that about the Labour event. And 57% of those working in consultancy said they’d advised their clients to do more with the Conservatives this conference season.

Asked about how they think the two parties will fare at the next General Election, Cameron’s party got an overwhelming thumbs up – though with a good 18 months expected until the next big vote, I suspect those faithful to both Labour and Prime Minister Gordon Brown would say it’s far too early to make any reliable prediction. And they’re possibly right – which means lobbyists could be in for a busy year, maintaining favour with politicians on all sides.

The other big news story of recent weeks, of course, has been the Beijing Olympics. And look, we have a comms angle on that too. Though no politics this time, you’ll be pleased to hear.

Ad man Martin Sorrell has said the seven companies who have signed up as official sponsors of the 2012 games in London have all benefited as a result of the UK’s medal successes in Beijing, which has renewed Olympic excitement in the British psyche. Which is good news for Adidas, British Airways, BP, BT, EDF, Nortel and Lloyds TSB, who have all committed over £50 million each for their association with the London Olympics.

Speaking in Beijing where he was participating in a conference on London’s creative industries, WPP chief Sorrell told reporters: “The winners as a result of Beijing are the seven sponsors [of the London games]. The value of the local sponsorship for 2012 is much greater now than it was three or four weeks ago because of the performance of the team. The reaction has been electric. They have done a good deal.”

Out of all the 2012 sponsors, British Airways probably got the biggest boost from Team GB’s success in China. The communications industry seems in general agreement that BA chiefs scored a PR victory in the way they managed the arrival home of British athletes on one of their 747s. And all they had to do was paint the plane’s nose gold and wave some flags. Following all the bad press the airline has had following the disastrous opening of Heathrow Terminal 5, PR pundits reckon the firm’s communicators did well to engineer some positive press around the Olympic return.

PR Week quotes Susie Aust of bgb communications thus: “Through a simple paint job, BA managed to turn the sporting success of many into a reflection of the UK’s national carrier. By naming the plane ‘Pride’, BA also extended the story well, enlivening future journeys for hundreds of travellers sitting on the same plane as their Olympic heroes. At least for one afternoon, BA banished headlines of Terminal Five and oil prices, and reminded us of past glory and affection for our national carrier.”

You know capitalism has properly reached Eastern Europe when the government of a former Soviet state is being commended for its communications strategy and choice of PR agency.

There has been much comment in the business press this week about the PR dimension to the recent Russia-Georgia conflict. And while Russia may have proven its military might and got its way, the consensus is that it was Georgia and its president Mikheil Saakashvili which won the propoganda war, with the Western media, in the main, pitching the mini-war as a David and Goliath style altercation in Saakashvili-soundbite-filled news and opinion pieces.

Of course propoganda in war is nothing new, not least in the former Soviet Union, but what is new is the use of European PR agencies to plan your country’s communication, and to proactively liaise with world media to make sure they are giving your side of the story.

Both Russia and Georgia were represented by Brussels-based agencies during the recent conflict. Russia’s agency, GPLus, insist they are only engaged to provide logistical support for media looking for access to, or comment from the country’s government. Georgia’s agency, Aspect Consulting, were more proactive and, arguably, a lot more successful in getting their message across.

The Guardian consulted Moscow pundit Aleksei Arbatov for his take on the Caucasus PR battle, and he observed: “You can’t fail to notice that Russian leaders are ignoring the opportunity to convey their point of view to the world. Saakashvili is really never off American TV screens. I suspect that if [Russian president] Medvedev decided to talk to foreign journalists, they would, of course, respond.”

Aspect’s founding partner James Hunt, though, seems to play down the importance of his company’s role in Georgia’s propaganda successes, preferring instead to believe that the country got more favourable media coverage because they happened to be in the right. He told PR Week: “I’m on the side of the angels. There are agencies that work for Russia. But I don’t know how they can be comfortable about that.”

If you’re one of those people who, when feeling a little ill, is more prone to Google your symptoms than call NHS Direct or book in with your GP, well, the good news is you’re not alone.

In a pan-European survey of 1,800 people by Ogilvy Healthworld, 80% of respondents said they had consulted the internet about health issues, citing the ‘anonymity, convenience and quantity of information available’ as among the benefits of doing so.

Two-thirds of those surveyed added that they had done online research into drugs prescribed to them by doctors, after feeling the information provided by official channels was insufficient, and 10% said they had asked for their prescriptions to be changed after doing their own research.

This is all very relevant, of course, to anyone working in healthcare PR, because it means they should be considering and communicating with a whole new generation of health writers, advisors and websites, and putting more effort into communicating directly to patients in addition to healthcare professionals.

Ogilvy Healthworld’s UK Digital Business Director June Dawson told reporters: “Pharma needs to harness the power of the internet. Healthcare communicators need to review the balance of investment in patient versus healthcare comms. Although the key influencers are still important, personal networks, online and offline, are becomingly increasingly critical.”

Given that PR degrees are only just gaining the credibility they probably deserve in the industry at large, how would you feel if a graduate arrived on your doorstep with a BA in Corporate Reputation?

Well, that’s probably not likely to happen anytime soon, but Oxford University’s Said Business School has just opened a Centre For Corporate Reputation, which plans to undertake a number of research programmes into the concepts and practices of corporate reputation management, and then to offer teaching in the discipline to MBA students and specially-invited senior managers.

A cynic might say that the whole concept of ‘corporate reputation’ came about as a result of the PR industry doing a bit of PR for itself. With communication directors of years gone by often feeling that the less tangible benefits of corporate communication activity were often ignored by chief executives and CFOs, the idea of a company’s corporate reputation being a real asset gave more credibility to the PR work that went into building and defending it.

Of course we’d never be that cynical round here – though if there’s any truth in that theory, surely the fact Oxford University is now planning to teach the discipline is proof that PR efforts to boost the credibility of PR in the wider business world has been something of a success.

Explaining the reasoning behind the new centre, its director, Rupert Younger, told reporters: “Issues such as the ability to attract the best talent, perceptions of potential suppliers, the support of customers, community relations, investor relations and financial ratings, and media relations are all significantly tied to an organisation’s reputation. Yet, to date, there has been little rigorous academic research to explore these issues. Our aim is to correct that and to become one of the leading repositories of knowledge on corporate and institutional reputation globally.”

Today, Unicorn Jobs launches a brand new careers website – www.unicornjobs.com/pr – for people working in public relations, and those considering moving into the sector.

The site will include regularly updated news and features on trends and best practice in PR and corporate communications, as well as tips and advice on how to manage and develop a career in the communications business. The content, which will be free to access, will be of interest to anyone working in the industry, at any level, both in-house and on the agency side. The site will also include information on the very latest PR jobs and full details of how to apply.

The new site will provide an easy way to access and navigate all the content that has appeared here in esPResso, which means that if you read some useful advice here in your inbox one week, and need to get back to it a few weeks later, you can now check out www.unicornjobs.com/pr rather than searching through all your old emails.

Announcing the launch of the site, MD Sarah Stimson says: “Here at Unicorn Jobs we specialise in both graduate and PR recruitment. We have been offering our graduate candidates all sorts of careers advice through our grad site since the start of the year and their feedback tells us they find this information invaluable in helping them pursue their careers. We are really pleased to be able to now offer this kind of information service to our PR candidates too.”

The Unicorn Jobs grad careers website – www.unicornjobs.com/grad – which has been live in ‘beta’ since the start of the year, fully launches next week to coincide with the start of the new academic year.

Celebrity news now, and what do you do when you want to use social networking to communicate with your fans, but you find it irritating that unofficial MySpace pages set up in your name get as much traffic as your official MySpace page? Simple, you shun MySpace and its rivals altogether and set up your own social networking site.

That’s what the legend that is David Hasselhoff has done by launching HoffSpace. Writing on the new site’s homepage, the former Knight Rider and Baywatch star says: “Where it will lead, I don’t know but the world would be a better place if everyone talked a little more to each other…” Of course it would David.

More than 13,000 people have already signed up to the site which promises fans access to Hoff themed videos and photos not available anywhere else on the net. Well, until the owners of one of the unofficial MySpaces download them and post them on their pages.

Drinks brand Carlsberg has speedily withdrawn from a media promotion with The Sun after it clashed with one of their long running sponsorship deals – as a shirt sponsor of Liverpool FC.

Carlsberg had planned to run a promotion inside the red top this weekend offering every reader a free pint of beer. But an alliance between the drinks firm and the News International newspaper angered fans of the football team.

Dedicated Liverpool fans have, of course, boycotted The Sun ever since the tabloid’s infamous coverage of the Hillsborough football disaster in 1989, in which 96 Liverpool fans died. The tabloid, then edited by Kelvin MacKenzie, was critical of the behaviour of the team’s fans before and immediately after the tradgedy, running headlines like “fans picked pockets of victims”, “fans urinated on the brave cops” and “fans beat up PC giving kiss of life”.

Sales of the tabloid have never recovered on Merseyside, despite the paper issuing a full apology about the whole debacle in 2004. The Sun’s position probably isn’t helped that former editor MacKenzie has since said that he regrets nothing.

Either way, when Liverpool fans found out their team’s sponsor was working with the tabloid they quickly mounted a noisy protest, aided by local newspaper The Liverpool Echo, which is owned by News International competitors Trinity Mirror.

All of which led to Carlsberg International Marketing Director Keld Strudhal to announce that The Sun promotion had been cancelled, and to admit the company had been “naive” in not considering the emotional clash between its different communication actitivies. He told reporters: “It is difficult to explain – there is a lot of emotion in this. We have run other promotions, but they have not got a reaction like this one. This was not directed towards Liverpool FC. There was some kind of naivety. When the complaints first came in, we waited to see if it was a spontaneous thing but, as it went on, we realised it was not just a couple of fans.”

Into the lobbying domain, and Public Affairs News has reported that 200 organisations have signed up to a new ‘lobby register’ set up by the European Commission, part of an initiative to bring about more transparency regarding the role of the lobbyist in the European Union. Companies are encouraged to reveal what kind of lobbying activity they engage in, and how much they spend on public affairs.

Some of those companies who have already signed up have been keen to talk about how their quick involvement in the new scheme shows they have nothing to hide. Spanish telcoms giant Telefonica was the first major conglomerate on the register, and one of their directors, Carlos Lopez Blanco, told PAN: “Telefonica is completely committed to corporate transparency. When the Commission opened the lobbies registration, Telefonica didn’t hesitate to sign up. By coincidence, we happened to be the first European company to register, something that reflects once again our serious commitment with the issue of transparency and with the Commission’s proposal.”

Despite the 200 companies who have already signed up to the register, which opened just under two months ago, the register hasn’t been warmly welcomed by everyone in the notoriously secretive world of lobbying. PAN report that some trade associations have warned their members signing up could have an impact on their native tax bills, while legal firms involved in public affairs say that revealing their interests through the register could impact on client confidentiality.

The trade body for the European lobbying industry, EPACA, while cautiously welcoming the move to increase transparancy in their industry – an industry, I think it’s fair to say, about which there is quite a lot of suspicion – have said lobbyists should consult with their clients before revealing all. They are also concerned that if both agencies and their clients reveal what is spent on lobbying then there will be ‘double counting’ – ie expenditure is listed twice, meaning a casual look at the register would make it appear that twice as much has been spent as really has been.

PR consultants reckon that businesses should continue to invest in their Corporate Social Responsibility programmes even though consumers may become more interested in price than ethics in a tougher economic climate, or at least that’s what a survey by the Public Relations Consultants Association found out.

So-called CSR has been a hot topic in the corporate communications world for a few years now, of course, in particular as the media, and therefore business, have become obsessed with carbon footprints and what individuals and organisations are doing to reduce their impact on the environment. Not that all CSR is eco-based – companies have been investing in all sorts of ‘socially respondible’ initiatives in a bid to enhance their corporate reputation and prove to consumers, regulators and the media that they’re jolly responsible corporate citizens.

But with the economic downturn now well and truly under way some reckon CSR programmes will be among the first to go as cutbacks begin. But, while 83% of the PR experts interviewed by the PRCA admitted consumers will increasingly consider ethics as a ‘luxury’ when making buying decisions in the current economic climate, the same amount said that companies shouldn’t throw away the corporate reputations they have done so much to invest in.

Francis Ingham, Director General of the PRCA, told reporters: “The results are conclusive. Value not values should be the focus of marketers in the near future, but companies who are shown to be acting in a less than ethical way should expect a backlash nonetheless. Reputation is hard won, but easily lost and companies need to think beyond the next quarter’s profit and loss.”

Among the experts consulted by the trade body were Bell Pottinger’s David Wilson, who said on the issue: “You simply cannot ignore CSR, you have to embody it and act on it – being as good in reality as the claims you make. If businesses pay lip-service to what consumers now see as a prerequisite then those companies will eventually get found out and this will cause untold damage to their brand in the long-term. The issue is finding the business balance of saying and doing the right things in a way that is effective and within the boundaries of reality…and budgets”.

Meanwhile, Angela Podmore of Kinetic Communications said: “Although there’s no evidence to support CSR adding to your bottom line, we believe it will become the critical differentiator for a business. Ignore it at your peril.”

Another repositioning exercise, this time at the Halifax. And although this is more of an advertising story than anything else, I think it deserves a mention here because of the big news that the banks ads will no longer feature singing Howard. I’m not sure how we’ll cope – how do you sell mortgages without having some badly reworked pop cover versions in the mix? It seems that, given the current economic climate, the bank feels its cheery sing-along ads are no longer appropriate, and has asked its ad agency DLKW to come up with something more serious. One would think the current gloomy economic climate is exactly the time we could all do with some cheesy karaoke on TV screens, but what do I know?

How about some brand re-positioning? We hear that Bernard Matthews, the firm behind ‘bootiful’ meats and those infamous Turkey Twizzlers, is about to rebrand itself as Bernard Matthews Farms, presumably in a bid to make it sound like its foods come from old fashioned farmhouses.

The rebrand follows a difficult 12 months for the company, which was hit by a bird flu outbreak. The new marketing push will make much of the company’s origins in the Norfolk farming community, and will be accompanied by a cut in fat and salt in many of its products. Expect lots of healthy-eating press campaigns to come out of the company’s HQ.

Brand Republic quote the company’s CEO, Noel Bartram, thus: “This repositioning of the company is the result of extensive planning, with 2007 having been an exceptionally difficult year”.

Public relations people, of course, don’t just need to get their heads around the ever changing world of digital media – and how best to use it to reach their audience – they also need to learn how to engage whole new audiences. And as the ethnic demographics of some UK communities change, PR people should be looking for new ways to reach those new customers.

The high profile new demographic in the UK, of course, is the Polish community. Any PRs charged with the task of representing their clients to Poles living in the UK should make themselves aware of a new website for that community set up by former Guardian journalists and launched in May. It’s called Polot.co.uk

One company who presumably is already confident it understands the Polish community is Lewis PR who have just been hired to promote the website itself

Whether or not the great general public are dumping print in favour of online media, more than half of PR people still think print coverage is more important. Or at least that’s what a survey from PR firm Parker, Wayne & Kent reckons.

They found that 52.9% of PR professionals still consider offline media coverage to be more valuable than online coverage, and the same number said they thought their ‘stakeholders’ were more influenced by what they saw in print compared to what they read online, or heard on TV or radio. Some 63.8% said they thought print media was more likely to get their stakeholders talking about their clients. Said clients may be important in shaping PR people’s opinions in this regard, given that 64% said they thought the companies they worked for held print coverage in a higher regard than online exposure.

This is all despite a recent report from PR agency Fleishman-Hillard which reckoned that the internet was eight times as influential as traditional print media, and a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau that claimed consumers engaged more with brands via online advertising that other advertising channels (not that said Bureau might be a little biased in that regard).

Commenting on their survey, and the fact PR people’s perceptions differ from the findings of consumer based research, Parker, Wayne & Kent told esPResso: “The perspective of most PR professionals seems to differ greatly from research analysing the media consumer’s experience of online and offline content. We found that most PR professionals rank print, television, then online in terms of influence, while Fleishman-Hillard’s consumer research ranks online first, then television, then print. It’s also strange that so few PR professionals perceive radio coverage as influential.

“PR professionals said the most valuable qualities of online media coverage were the ability for it to be found via search engines (20 per cent) and that coverage can be achieved faster (13 per cent). Yet these were not able to stand up to the benefits PR professionals prefer from offline coverage. Nearly 30 per cent said they believe offline media coverage is more trusted by customers with another 23 per cent deeming offline coverage more ‘real’ than online coverage.”

Parker, Wayne & Kent concluded by saying that PR people possibly need to re-evaluate their view of online media, and recognise that it is increasingly a place where traditional media come together, “PR professionals must stop thinking about the internet as just web pages of text. Online media coverage is TV, radio and print”.

So, Max Clifford’s always good for a quote, yes?

The uber-publicist was on Irish TV last week where the presenters were most interested in Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood who, as you’ve probably seen, was getting up to all kinds of things in Ireland on an ‘art holiday’ with a Russian girl called Ekaterina Ivanova. The tabloids said it was an affair, his wife initially denied it was so, but then announced she was leaving him amid reports the Stone’s alcoholism was out of control.

Clifford doesn’t represent Wood, but the ‘Xpose’ show on Ireland’s TV3 wanted to know what the PR man thought the whole tabloid story would do for the rocker’s reputation. “No damage at all” was Clifford’s conclusion. His “calibre of fame” was too high for him to be negatively affected, and the whole sordid affair could “add to his rockstar status”. And with a Faces reunion on the cards that could work out well.

Clifford does represent Kerry Katona, the face of Iceland to us in the UK, the wife to former Westlife man Brian McFadden to the Irish. Asked about her various appearances in the tabloids in recent years, Clifford admitted the former Atomic Kitten was a “real handful” to represent, and that he’d had to assign one member of staff to deal with her career alone. He told the show: “It’s just non-stop with Kerry. She could ring any hour of the day or night but she is a really good person, she’s just someone who really needs some TLC”.

He didn’t reveal how the Iceland queen was responding to the credit crunch. An ‘ostrich’ I reckon. Iceland gateaux all round.

Now, us PR people are meant to know our customers, I’m sure that’s what I read somewhere. This sometimes means understanding the issues that concern and interest your audiences and working out the media where they’d most like those issues addressed. Sometimes it means idly grouping people into convenient stereotype groups. The latter is much more fun.

Ad agency M&C Saatchi have done just that in a study on how consumers are responding to this recession we seem to be sliding into, and their conclusions should interest PR people too. Saatchi chief Tim Duffy told reporters: “This study looks at the different responses to economic pressures. Companies need to understand which segments their customers are in. They can then adapt their strategies to get a greater share of wallet and win new customers”.

To cut a long story short, the study identifies eight groups of people.

The ‘crash dieters’ have abruptly cut all unnecessary expenditure out of their lives, so no muffin with the rush hour espresso. Actually, probably no espresso come to think of it – Nescafe instant only from now on.

‘Scrimpers’ are also already cost-cutting, but they are trying to do so without radically changing their lives. So, they’ll continue to pick up a coffee and muffin on the way into work, they’ll just find a cheaper coffee shop to buy it from.

Next are the ‘abstainers’, who are postponing major expenditure until the front pages stop carrying quite so much economic doom and gloom. So they’ll still be buying their coffee each morning, but may hold off buying that state of the art home espresso machine.

Then there’s ‘clothcutters’, who are budgeting more carefully, but still making some bigger purchases. They may decide the espresso machine is a goer because they’ve decided to put off buying a new oven until next year and have a little extra in the bank.

‘Treaters’ are making cuts in their lives, but still award themselves little indulgences. Such as a double shot after an especially stressful commute.

‘Justifiers’ are a bit like the ‘clothcutters’ in that they are still buying, but being a bit more careful with their planning. They’ll spend if they know they can justify it. Buy an espresso machine, have your coffee before you leave the house, save two pounds a day.

The ‘ostriches’, as you’d probably guess, are carrying on spending regardless of all the credit crunch talk on the news. Triple espressos all round.

And finally, ‘Vultures’ are those who love an economic crash. They’re holding back on spending waiting for the closing down sales, then they’ll be in there to get that state of the art espresso maker, reduced to 50p.

Make of all that what you will. And remember, however bad things get, this particular esPResso is free.

So, it would have been fun working for PR firm Edelman last week, given their London HQ became the centre for a protest by climate change campaigners.

Activists from the Oxford Climate Action group objected to Edelman’s work for energy conglom E.ON, claiming they were advising the power firm to ‘greenwash’ the public. Campaigners claim Edelman have advised their clients to make what the activists reckon are dubious claims about technology being employed to reduce the carbon footprint of new coal power stations. The spin, they argue, is designed to make a climate-change-concerned public less anti E.ON’s new coal-based ventures.

The campaigners protested outside Edelman’s offices, some gaining entrance to the building itself, and others hauling a big banner onto their roof. The boss of Edelman UK, Robert Phillips, posted an entry on his blog about the protests, claiming the activists had turned down an offer to meet and discuss their work on the E.ON account, preferring to fight with banners instead.

Meanwhile, according to PR Week, one of the protestors said: “We are here to reclaim the PR machine for normal people who want to see real action on climate change, not another dose of corporate greenwash”. I’m not really up to speed on either E.ONs carbon reducing technologies or Oxford Climate Action’s problems with it, so can’t really comment on the politics of this. But I’m not sure the PR machine was ever owned by ‘normal people’.

Talking of the breakdown between advertising and editorial, bad news for those of you with a sponsorship brief who were planning on sneakily partnering your brand with a BBC produced event hoping to score a load of free on-air exposure on the side.

The BBC has announced it will stop selling sponsorship on its events following an investigation by the BBC Trust into the sponsorship of its Sports Personality Of The Year Award by soft drinks brand Robinsons.

Although the BBC cannot sell sponsorship on its TV shows, they have had sponsorship relationships with brands for their self-produced live events. Because those events are televised the brand partnership often gained some on-air exposure – good for the brand, but bad for the BBC, who can’t be seen to have on-air sponsors.

ITV and the RadioCentre, which represents commercial radio, complained to the BBC Trust about the event brand partnerships, and the Trust this week said it shared the commercial broadcasters’ concerns.

Beeb bosses quickly responded by saying all sponsorship relationships were off. They said in a statement: “In the context of today’s findings, the management of the BBC has reviewed its sponsorship policy and has concluded that it should no longer accept sponsorship from commercial bodies for any on-air BBC event”.

Affected events will include Proms In The Park, sponsored by National Savings & Investments, the Radio 3 New Generation Artists Scheme, sponsored by Aviva, the aforementioned Sports Personality of the Year, sponsored by Robinsons, and the BBC Four World Cinema venture, previously sponsored by Pioneer. The decision will not affect sponsored third party events that the BBC screens, such as the BAFTAs and MOBOs.

You might think of Martin Sorrell, the CEO of the WPP Group, as an ad man first and foremost. Or perhaps a wire and plastic product man. But no, he’s a PR man too. Or, at least, the consensus is that it was the WPP Group’s public relations businesses –Buchanan Communications, Burson-Marsteller, Cohn & Wolfe, Finsbury, Hill & Knowlton and Ogilvy PR – which helped it’s top man Sorrell rocket up the Guardian’s list of the 100 most influential people in the media. Last year Sorrell was at 43 in the list, and this year he is at 13.

That said, in the online world, where the distinction between advertising and editorial is often harder to spot, it probably pays to have fingers in many pies when it comes to the wider world of advertising, marketing and communications. And if there’s one thing to be said about WPP, they have fingers in many pies. Perhaps it’s that fact that helped him score highly in the Guardian media list.

Other PR people in the Guardian media 100 included Alan Parker, founder and chairman of Brunswick, who moved up to 77; Trevor Beattie, another ad man with interests in the PR business, who enters the list for the first time at 87; high profile PR chief Matthew Freud down a couple of spots at 88; and former FT journalist turned Finsbury founder Roland Rudd, who is at 95.

It being a ‘media list’ you’d expect the likes of BBC Director General Mark Thompson, Daily Mail Editor Paul Dacre and two Murdochs (Rupert and James) to be in the Top 5, as they are, though the survey was topped by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders and VPs of Google. With Apple boss Steve Jobs at 6 and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at 7, it seems neither media nor PR people now control the media. It’s in the hands of the tech guys.