public relations

books: one for the reading list

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

My old boss at Weber Shandwick, now CEO at Edelman – David Brain has a new book coming out. Here’s the official blurb…looks like it will be a good read. Buy it here:

“Welcome to the world of the crowd surfer: a world in which a new generation of business and political leaders have learned how to harness the energy, ideas and enthusiasm of today’s empowered consumers. Crowd surfers have been smart enough to recognise that people all over the world – emboldened by a new spirit of enquiry and self expression, and powered by the internet – have changed the rules of the game. They realise that surrendering complete control, by giving their customer, partners and employees a greater say in the way that their organisation’s operate, is actually the most effective way to manage their destiny.

In Crowd Surfing, Martin Thomas and David Brain explore the lessons we can all learn from the corporate and political surfers, including Barack Obama’s campaign for the Democratic Party nomination in the US presidential election, why Dell went to hell and back before learning how to embrace the crowd, and why a Blue Monster has come to symbolise Microsoft’s new spirit of openness. They also analyse the leadership skills required in this new era of participation and dialogue and ask what these changes mean for marketers and managers everywhere.”

communicators….who inspires me?

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

Thank you kindly to Stephen for tagging me in the personal communicators meme started here by Andrew Wake.

“The idea’s simple. We’re asking you to list the three communicators living or dead who have most influenced your way of thinking professionally and perhaps personally too. Who do you think the real innovators are? Who’s been most responsible for kicking the industry forward? And just who are the communication PRunks?”

Here goes my top three…

Anita Roddick for managing to adhere to and communicate such strong brand vales whilst achieving commercial success for such a long time. Roddick was a trailblazer for ethical supply chains way before CSR was even on the fashion radar. A leader, a mother and an inspirational businesswoman.

My absolute favourite teacher of all time Mr Mumford. A slightly batty but immensely passionate history teacher, who regularly popped out of lessons for a crafty fag. Mr Mumford persuaded me to study the subject for far longer than I planned due to his infectious passion and amazing narrative around the topic. The single most important thing I remember he taught me was about how to identify bias and value your information source. He tried for years to persuade me to become an archivist but I opted for PR instead…not sure quite what he’d make of that really!

My Dad. Dad was a teacher (and now tutors privately) so my upbringing was highly educational (*example* the one and only game I was bought for my first ever computer, aged about 10, was a grammar game where you had to shoot words with different weapons based on whether they were nouns, adjectives or verbs…no wonder I spent the rest of the time programming code out of massive thick books and screaming in distress at the masses of syntax error line 54 messages I used to get….and all that to get HELLO scrolling across the page…hardly worth it really!) Anyway, I digress, Dad taught me the most important skill of all…how to conduct a well researched argument backed up with facts and how to use what you know to help you with what you don’t. Basically, how to win a (verbal) fight and how to blag your way out of anything…..two skills which have got me out of many a situation so thanks Dad.

So Steve Earl, Drew Benvie, Colin Byrne and David Brain – here are your tags….what you think?

forget product placement…

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

…why not just suggest your client produces a musical about its product and puts it on at Edinburgh festy, getting the audience to pay £11 a pop to watch what is essentially an ad. Oh, and then you sit back and watch the pretty impressive PR about the project roll out too….

….the product? Pot Noodle!

Here it is covered by Mark Sweney in today’s Media Guardian…

Now it’s Pot Noodle: The Musical

The world of Pot Noodle, a brand that made a virtue of the catch phrase “Slag of all snacks”, is to be turned into a musical comedy at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Pot Noodle’s ad agency Mother London has been developing a stage production – Pot Noodle: The Musical – based on some of the creative concepts used in advertising the snack in recent years and aims to dish up a “smorgasbord of comedy”.

The show is set in the “idyllic all-singing, all-dancing Pot Noodle factory”, where workers “pluck Pot Noodles fresh from trees, bottle feed and show them a whole heap of tender loving care”.

It follows the story of the hero Steve, who tries to woo Sandie and overthrow the “bloated overlord” of the Pot Noodle factory, Allan Little, who has killed his brother in a bid to siphon off money to “spend on fast cars and loose women of virtue”.

Little has a “beastly asthma suffering henchman” called Flick Ferdinando.

The show, which will run at the Assembly in Edinburgh from July 31 to August 25, has drawn creatively on the songs and themes that have run through Mother’s recent un-PC Pot Noodle TV campaigns.

In the musical Digger, who has just fled from his wedding, and the hero Steve walk down the street singing the “Pact song” from the Pot Noodle ad about never putting a woman before mates.

“We can stay up late till dawn, watching classic vintage porn,” the duo sing. “We can scratch our balls with pride, our man breasts don’t need to hide.”

The idea of a benevolent Pot Noodle world first appeared with a TV campaign featuring a fictitious Welsh town of noodle miners.

And the irreverent songs that will feature in the Fringe production have come from the recent “Pot Noodle says” ad campaign.

The campaign also featured two crooners spoofing Meatloaf’s Bat out of Hell and a 1980s power ballad with lines praying for women to be “easy, simple and hassle-free” like the snack.

The film, entitled Somers Town, is named after an area near King’s Cross in north London and tells of the friendship between two teenagers, one of whom is the son of an immigrant working on the new Eurostar terminal.

Mother is no stranger to extending brands beyond traditional TV advertising. Earlier this year the agency produced a feature film funded by Eurostar with Shane Meadows, the award-winning director of This Is England, which won top prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

the twitlist – analysts

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

Thanks to Wadds for drawing attention to this post by SageCircle: a really useful list of analysts on Twitter….some I follow but many I don’t but will be checking out in future.

I am sure it is only a matter of time before someone does publish a list of journalists too as Wadds discusses and if/when that happens, I just hope (PR) people have the intelligence and the nous not to abuse the data.

As a PR person, the better I know someone, be it journalist, analyst, blogger or whoever, the more accurate/relevant I can be when approaching them with a story or meeting invitation etc and the less time of theirs (and mine) I will waste.

Abusing people’s Twitterfeeds with worthless pitches or inaccurately targeted comments is about as sensible a move as phoning Charles Arthur to see if he got your press release… I really value being able to follow journalists/analysts on Twitter and I’d hate to see the current conversation format ruined.