'Crunch-washing'*: 2008's laziest excuse?

It seems data centres have become the latest victims of the credit crunch.

But how much that is being blamed on the 'credit crunch' is really just a case of a convenient and topical excuse being used and abused for the purposes of PR?

In the data centre example, real estate advisor CB Richard Ellis claims the 'credit crunch' has led to a marked decrease in the amount of data centre space being taken up in the capital because of the high number of financial services companies in the City.

It's an easy conclusion to draw and the good people at CB Richard Ellis will be as aware as anybody that finding a 'credit crunch' angle plays well to the current media agenda. Whether it's the case or not. It seems likely banks will be reining in spend but unlikely they would compromise on business continuity.

Similarly, it seems likely financial services companies would also be looking further-a-field for back-up and hosting services – Iceland being a popular location.

A further issue is the limited availability of data centre space within the M25. If it's not available then little wonder it's not being bought up.

There is an interesting issue here but I suspect the credit crunch is the least influential but most 'newsworthy' factor.

Tim Weber, business editor at the BBC confirmed as much last week during a meeting with a team here at LEWIS PR. Tim told us he is far from bored of the credit crunch and suggests it would be a "a bad journalist" who is. This owes much to the fact, Tim assures us, that there remains a keen interest among the public in the coverage given to the ailing economy.

I wonder whether that's a self-fulfilling prophecy to a degree given just how much coverage is being given to the 'credit crunch'.

After all, if all they sold in supermarkets was sausages, you wouldn't question their claims that sausages are proving popular with the public.

(* Crunch-washing – the tendency to shoe-horn in a credit crunch angle in order to make a story newsworthy, resulting in blanket coverage of the issue. You heard it here first.)

Know your customers...

... it's a basic principal of any good business - understand who your customers are and what they want from you.

This means if you work, say, in a computer game shop, such as GAME, then you should realise not every 31-year-old, say, who buys a game from you wants to be engaged in conversation about games. Because while they may be shopping for your product they possibly don't want to be associated with the gaming community.

There's a huge divide between playing console games occasionally and wanting to be a fully-signed up member of the 'Halo 3 is my religion' set and being associated with, or mistaken for, the latter can be a touch embarrassing. This is how I felt when buying a GAME at the weekend and getting a blow by blow account of the bits I'll enjoy most, what other games I might enjoy and a Q&A session about what other games I own and which bits of said games I enjoyed the most and how my opinions fit in the historical context of gaming through the ages.

I'm sure newsagents selling pornographic magazines understand this. You wouldn't get a similar situation there, would you, while the shopper just wants to slip out of the shop unnoticed.

"Ah, Razzle... an excellent selection. But if you like that there is a centre spread in this month's Club International that you will really love and I'm sure you've already got a copy but this month's Big Jugs is not to be missed!"

The anti-Viacom vitriole begins...

The backlash against Viacom following the recent US court ruling/ alarming privacy breach that states Google must hand over user logs for all YouTube users is well under way... on YouTube of course.

It is a frightening ruling, not least of all because it shows the extent to which individuals in such cases - such as the judge, or the meatheads at Viacom pushing for this - can so woefully fail to understand the potential long-term implications of the precedent they are setting.

With campaigns to boycott Viacom and the products advertised on its shows growing in stature, the message would appear to be 'be careful when pissing off social networks' (...and when using fireworks, as this chap in the below clip advises before you get to his bit about Viacom vs Google).

"Remember lads, you've won, there's cameras out there, so make sure you conduct yourself with dignity and respect for the opposition..."

Going... going... gone!

So, the Great British public have, for another year, been brought back to earth with a bump by events at Wimbledon. Hopeless optimism has once again been thwarted by obvious and inevitable fact.

The inevitability and unequivocal nature of Andy Murray's defeat causes a problem for the media who remain desperate to make it all sound more interesting than it really was (though hats off to the columnist who said "this wasn't tennis, it was 'fetch'."

Take for example the photo story in the Daily Mail today. This is priceless:

Picture One: Now, in this picture Andy Murray's girlfriend on the right is apparently stifling "a gasp". Sure, why not. Either that or we could admit she's quite clearly yawning.

Picture Two: This apparently shows "that sinking feeling". Assuming 'that sinking feeling' is short hand for boredom, then bingo!

And this one is the best...

Picture Three: Apparently she can't bring herself to watch. Yeah, that's 'cause she's asleep.

Journalists 'creative with the truth': shocker!

A lot has been written in recent months about falling standards of journalism. If you believe the likes of Nick Davies (and many do), there are journalists out there who'll print any old toot they are told or that lands in their inbox as long as it fills space and gets them out of the office on time. Doesn't matter if it's true, because if nothing arrives, they'll simply make it up anyway.

Surely not?

Well, in recent weeks a number of the AE team here at LEWIS have sought out their own national newspaper coverage to get a better understanding of how journalists work.

The way to do this has been by responding to Response Source, a tool used by journos to solicit comment on all manner of stories. Response Source is behind many of the 'real life' stories you see in the papers – particularly the likes of the Daily Mail. (You may have spotted a lot of people quoted in the tabloids work in PR... likes it's the dominant profession in the UK.)

Today one of the team was left in no doubt – if any had existed previously – that journalists will gladly make up quotes and apply more than a literal creative licence to their pieces if they didn't prove what they wanted to prove or get the story they were after.

One of the team spoke to a Daily Mail reporter about whether women should feel bad about one night stands. She shared no real-life experience, she hastens to add but spoke in more general terms about how she felt society was changing, yet she believes it's negative stereotypes and the attitudes of other women who make things appear worse, while men get a comparatively easy ride (no pun intended).

Clearly that wasn't interesting enough for a journalist up against deadline, which is fair enough.

But while chatting to the journalist our AE did mention that after university she had (actually) been to China to teach. However, realising she was straying into fact, she quickly added that she 'had a boyfriend at the time and there was no gossip there I'm afraid'.

Here's how the Daily Mail described that: "I had one one-night stand with a guy I had known in university, who came to stay with me when I was teaching English in China, two years ago. He stayed in my flat, we had a few drinks and one thing led to another and we ended up in bed."

So, just a little different to the truth.

The clue is probably in the fact that only lazy journalists making up quotes would use cliches such as "we had a few drinks and one thing led to another".

Point proven. Now my colleague just needs to get to her mother, before her mother gets to the Daily Mail to explain it was all in the name of research.

Facebook: Can do no right for doing wrong?

If "ravers" threaten to destroy the West Country by organising a party using Facebook, the social networking site is villified and named and shamed in the headline.

If teenagers take to the streets, having organised an anti-knife crime march on Facebook, their coming together is described as a spontaneous outpouring of grief and Facebook gets no mention.

Could the media be relying upon Facebook purely as a source of negative stories? Surely not.

Which Twitter tribe are you?

Media and PR people alike all love the old 'which tribe are you?' story – wheeled out to dissect the population by everything from personality to fashion sense.

Stephen Waddington has applied this approach to a great post about Twitter.

A recent convert to Twitter, but never the conformist, I think I fall across three camps: 'Random Scarborough', 'Blog promoter' and... dare I say (a slightly watered down) 'Lewd bloke'.

Trying to get away with throwing a sickie?

....might help if you're not the winner of a major reality TV show, and it's your first day working as The Apprentice.

Skills crisis or lack of perspective?

Interesting article on silicon.com which cites a drop in the number of people applying to do PGCEs to teach IT subjects at school.

But I wonder if the real issue here is the number of people doing PGCEs?

After all that isn't a definite guide to what subjects a teacher will actually teach nor does it tell us what facilities will be available in the classroom or how 'techie' the teacher is.

A teacher who is crazy about technology but teaches politics armed with an enthusiasm for digital lobbying, wikipedia, blogging and a whole spectrum of web 2.0 applications will do more to drive mainstream IT adoption in an area where it is much needed than an IT teacher interested in technology for technology's sake.

It's a little like saying the UK is becoming unhealthier because sales of a particular brand of crisp are up. While that hints at some circumstantial evidence and may be a barometer of change it ignores too many other factors.

The silicon.com article quotes a spokeswoman from e-Skills UK saying: "IT is fundamentally important to business and society, and IT is recognised as a subject of strategic importance to the nation...we should all be very concerned about this decline in students applying to teach IT."

I'm not convinced the two parts of her statement marry.

The worry about e-Skills' apparent contradiction is that while they see the importance of IT they clearly still regard IT as a silo - IT people for IT jobs. That's in fact not a very healthy approach. It's time to break out of the mindset that IT is just about IT skills – especially in an age where basic developing, programming and testing is often done overseas.

Of course we need more people enthusing children about technology but my point is that shouldn't start or stop at the door to the computer lab.

The use of technology is now woven into every aspect of life to the point where it would be far more interesting to find out how many people doing PGCEs in Art, English, Geography, History or Maths are evangelists for technology. This is especially interesting as I know from conversations in the past the best 'techies' often come from a non-technical academic background and have developed analytic, critical and even creative skills before they start working with technology.

Hats off to McAfee's PR team

I admit, I was quite critical at the time but McAfee's 'Super Spam Me' PR campaign has netted some great coverage - not least of all on the BBC.

I never doubted it would get pick-up, because it's an interesting publicity stunt, but I am surprised people think it quite so newsworthy, having covered this space myself for some years, once upon a time.

'If you engage with spammers, you get more spam'. Welcome to 2001, surely?

I'm sure for the purposes of another article McAfee would be the first to point out that spammers have now developed far more sophisticated means of harvesting, or dictionary attacking email addresses than merely collating the details of people who reply.

What's more, given these people actively solicited spam and put no defences in place, I'm actually quite shocked at the levels - in some instances just 300 messages per day.

It's not a competition, but I used to get more than that on a work email account - albeit one with a widely distributed 'editorial@...' alias that had been in the public domain for a few years.

A simple deduction...

Going over this morning's Telegraph in our daily press briefing, and each and every morning, one thing has struck me:

Story one: There are trucks, carrying 12 million bees at one time travelling around Canada.

Story two: The rest of the world, but particularly the US, is suffering because of a shortage of bees.

Story three: Canada is hoping to recruit engineers, construction workers and management consultants to help bridge a severe skills gap.

So...?

Well it's obvious where the bees have gone isn't it? The Canadians are quite clearly bringing them in over the border in their millions because of their famous building skills and orderly approach to management.

Chalk one up for citizen journalism

Whatever the ifs and buts and whys and wherefores around Amy Winehouse's fracas at Glastonbury, the inevitable 'citizen journalism' footage has appeared. (For those of you still not in the know, citizen journalists are members of the public who capture things on mobile phones and cameras and then often provide the footage - sometimes for a fee though often free - to television or news organisations.)

Given the number of camera phones and cameras lighting the sky at gigs, like cigarette lighters used to 'back in the day', it was only a matter of time but hats off to the Beeb for tracking down the 'victim' and the footage before the festival was even over.

If you missed this...

...kudos to PR Week for some serious cap-doffing in yesterday's Observer for its political scoops.

It's credit to the work Danny Rogers and his team are doing over there.

Goodbye Mottie... hello more forward-thinking BBC?

Two themes run through this post: 1) having the right spokespeople and, 2) the BBC's own PR.

You'll see how the two themes dovetail, sometimes neatly and sometimes rather clumsily.

Firstly it's interesting to note in PR Week that the BBC may be reconsidering the way it works with PR agencies.

Time for a change? Definitely.

In terms of independent news coverage it's no exaggeration to say Britain remains the envy of the world because of the BBC. You only have to look at the quality of mainstream media in countries such as China, the US or Zimbabwe to see why so. But more broadly the BBC doesn't always do itself favours on the PR front.

The one area the BBC's internal PR doesn't struggle, where the rest of us would love to succeed, is in getting coverage on the BBC, of course. Lots of it. From BBC Breakfast News to online content, the Beeb does love to talk about itself (they even run appointments stories when it's one of their own.)

But at times that coverage can smack of anachronism; of the BBC still living in an age when its relevance and authority were questioned even less than the Royal family's.

Check out a recent selection from BBC Online: BBC stars 'are not paid too much' , End of the Motson era , BBC News website wins Webby vote.

While elsewhere critics are questioning the value of and return on their licence fee, as well as the impact it has on innovation and even jobs in the fast-paced commercial sector, the BBC could be seen to be rubbing everybody's nose in it.

From that selection of recent content though the one story I keep coming back to is, unbelievably, not the self-justification of BBC salaries but the fawning piece about football commentator John Motson.

To cross sports for just a second, I believe Auntie has long been backing the wrong horse there with Motty when perhaps the vet should have been reaching into his Land Rover for the shotgun long ago.

Because cultivating the right spokespeople or figureheads is always a tricky balancing act.

Wind the clock back to about 10pm last night, to the end of the BBC's coverage of the Euro 2008 final.

"It's a victory for football," said one of the Alans.

That most tired of cliches was of course wheeled out to describe Spain's brand of free-flowing football overcoming "The Germans" (as they still tend to be cast). But in my heart I'd like to think Alan et al (or should that be "et Al") were talking about Motson's decision to retire from international football.

Motty's longevity has been a triumph of self-publicity but the BBC appears also to have willingly projected him to centre stage, much to the Corporation's detriment. For example, somebody allowed that article to go live complete with quotes from the man himself such as: "I don't want to go on too long and [have] people say I'm past my best".

Heaven forbid.

Interestingly, the quotes that appeared in that article appear also to have been circulated to all other media for their use in stories about Motty, though thankfully other editors struck through the more self-important quotes, while other sources but the boot in somewhat.

I've honestly never actually met anybody who particularly likes Motty - despite what BBC publicity would have us believe. Nor have I heard anybody convince me of one thing of value he brought to the sport or its coverage on the BBC – especially in the international format where his stumbling over cultural issues in particular has from time to time been exposed.

Take last night's gloating and wholly ignorant comment about the German national anthem - "not so Uber alles now" he scoffed, referring to a national anthem not used since the end of World War II.

Even many of the 'facts' and the insight he's so famed for (according to the BBC, it should be said) have been exposed as obvious at best in an age when everybody who wants to can watch football 24/7 on dozens of satellite channels covering teams from Ajax to Zaire. The internet also shone a light on factual shortcomings.

Furthermore, at a time when figures like Ashley Highfield at the BBC are quite rightly being lauded for advances in online technology, the Corporation's own website cites one of Motty's virtues as "a defiant refusal to exploit the stats, figures and opinion widely available on the world wide web".

Very progressive.

Instead the BBC concludes: "While there will be many more great matches to come, viewers will have to get used to them without Motson's unique humour."

I think we'll live.

Now go hire that PR agency. Quickly.

Read all about it...

Interesting new addition to the new-look PR Week - a media analysis section. This week's lifts the lid on Heat Magazine - and makes for interesting reading - but I really meant to flag the previous week's on the ailing Independent... not least of all because of the quote from yours truly which it includes.

I think Glastonbury distracted me from shameless self-publicity.

Let's try to get this right

The great beauty of language is that it evolves with culture and society but at what point do esteemed media outlets - our guardians of grammar - accept something incorrect is now acceptable? Witness how 'try and...' is creeping into common usage.

Rather unfairly on the BBC - though it is a serial offender - I've chosen to pick on this example below as I've just seen it (though it is also an interesting article too for all you social networking junkies).

"One 16-year-old ...has managed to harness the power of online social networking to try and break a world record." There are hundreds of examples in today's papers and across the online media.

Sub-editors and copywriters take note.

Amy comes out swinging

Back from Glastonbury and had an awesome time. All the Jay-Z hype paid off - his set was well attended by tens of thousands of festival-goers (I wonder if I could get Noel Gallagher to slag off some of my clients, thereby boosting their media appeal and wider popularity... Noel Gallagher talking software-as-a-service anybody?).

However, the highlight - more for talking points than quality of performance - was undoubtedly Amy Winehouse. Say what like about her, but she absolutely nailed every fifth or sixth word of her set, managing to fill the bits she'd perhaps forgotten with a kind of drawl that developed its own appeal. It's probably good for her the crowd seemed to know the words so en masse held it together for her.

Oh, and then of course she appeared to lash out at a fan... a moment I caught on my phone (see above).

Is Super Mario World getting warmer?

Nintendo is not just bad at getting products into stores in sufficient numbers to meet demand, it's also "the least green technology company" in the world, according to a report on the BBC.

With green very much the new black that's gotta smart. The findings have been punted out by Greenpeace, doubtless an outstanding organisation, but certainly also one whose research and claims have been questioned in the past (and on this occasion it only ranks 18 firms... making Nintendo also 18th best). However, that's not going to stop this story getting a lot of pick up.

Irrespective of the research's validity, Nintendo does seem to lag behind a lot of other Japanese tech brands in 'bigging up' (or perhaps even having) green credentials. I couldn't find any mention of green credentials on Nintendo's website. But in my experience that's uncommon among Japanese tech firms. Check out a random selection here, that I found in about two minutes, all with prominent links to their environmental work on their websites: Canon , Fujitsu , JVC , Nikon , Ricoh , Toshiba.

Of course, talking 'green' doesn't make a company green but it probably does put the concern front of mind as greenwashing is becoming a sin in its own right.

Perhaps the EU's WEEE directive should have been a Wii Directive. (I'll get my coat)

Media to become the new courts?

There has been shock and outrage in the media at a change in UK law that will protect the rights of criminals who may no longer be convicted as the testimony of anonymous witnesses will not be heard. So essentially it will be violent criminals, whose cases stem from communities living in fear, who could get off the hook. Seems a wise move in light of the government's concerns about gang/knife crime.

Meanwhile, on the same day, The Mirror on its front page further condemns one of Stephen Lawrence's alleged killers by citing an anonymous witness who says David Norris confessed to being present when Lawrence was murdered while serving time.

You can see where this is going right?

Get used to it. Trial by media will now become even more common, as the only place anonymous witnesses - and therefore 'the whole truth' - could be heard to any effect. But in reality it will be a version of the truth which is subject more to editorial decisions than the sometimes flawed machinations of our justice system.