Blog posts
Smoke and Mirrors
In PR Week’s Agency Doctor column, Richard Houghton questions ethics in the public relations industry. It struck a chord with me, as one of my friends often refers to my job as ‘smoke and mirrors’, and the first paragraph of Richard’s column refers to peoples’ perception of PR consultancies as being a ‘black art’, ‘spin […]
Phone phobia
I’ve just read a PR Week article which looks at phone pitching to journalists, and it seems that things are getting worse in the media relations business. I’ve run my own company for five years now, but before I left my last agency I had noticed that junior staff were becoming increasingly reluctant to pick […]
Throwing the lamb to the lions
In the latest issue of PR Week, its editor (Ruth Wyatt) makes a very good point about agencies that rely too heavily on junior staff. Poorly briefed and with little or no experience, juniors are often thrown to the lions when they are asked to call journalists. Ruth gives an example of what she says […]
Making PR writing authentic
The 6th September copy of PR Week has been languishing on my desk since I returned from holiday. However, it includes a great article which looks at the lack of authenticity in public relations messaging. The article has a ‘top ten’ taxonomy of bullshit: 1. Use of adjectives and adverbs This is bullshit 101. If […]
Body Talk
I read recently an article in PR Week that covered five tips to engage audiences. The first tip was ‘use your body to make a first impression’ and this reminded me of my old boss and his mantra that “the first few minutes of a meeting are what counts”. A few years ago, Carol Kinsey […]
The Old Ones are Always the Best
A recent article by Sir Richard Evans in PR Week ow.ly/m8EK0 looked at how Basil Clarke’s (a pioneer of British PR in the late 1920s) five principles for effective communications still hold strong today. They are: Claims in press releases should be sourced – Clarke said that all press materials issued by his public relations […]
Slave Labour
Apparently the Public Relations industry is one of the worst offenders for employing unpaid workers, despite the existence of the PRCA’s Intern Programme, which commits members to paying interns working for longer than a month at least the national minimum wage. A PR Week article in April stated that ten per cent of the 100 […]
Dedication’s what you need
I recently read an article in PR Week which looked at what the PR industry can do to support a struggling high street. Ed Watson, director of Public Relations for Debenhams, told PR Week that “retail brands should not just jump into action around the time of the quarterly trading statement”. The article immediately struck […]
PR Week reports that APPC, CIPR and PRCA act on lobbying register
PR Week today reports that these three industry bodies have sent a joint definition of ‘professional lobbying’ to the government minister overseeing plans to legislate for a statutory lobbying register. http://bit.ly/Wc7Jwx
Once the horse has bolted…….
I have finally read through last week’s copy of PR Week and an article about the horse meat scandal caught my eye. The article reviews how Findus UK’s response to the crisis has been lambasted as ‘not fit for purpose’, describing the company as ‘a rabbit in the headlights’. One commentator said that the company […]
