There is NOTHING more sacred than football

Thaksin Shinawatra, former Prime Minister of Thailand and alleged liberty taker with human rights, has appointed Bell Pottinger North and Chime founder Lord Bell to manage his reputation.

"Why?" I hear you ask... is it because of the pesky Amnesty International allegations? No, it turns out he's fine with those - water off a duck's back. It's because the Manchester City fans, whose club he is owner and chairman off, are angry at his treatment of manager Sven Goran Eriksson.

Yeah, don't mess with football... that really is an abuse of power.

Another nail in Brown's coffin?

Having tried and failed with the unfashionable 'being a good Prime Minister' approach, it seems Gordon Brown's given himself over wholly to his agents of spin... who are already leading him a merry dance up shit-creek (to mix my metaphors just a little more).

According to PR Week, and a number of today's papers: "Gordon Brown's latest comms offensive involves cold-calling members of the public who have written him letters, according to sources close to Downing Street."

Redefining the word 'brainchild', PR Week adds: "The initiative is said to be the brainchild of Downing Street chief of strategy Stephen Carter and is intended to 'humanise' the Prime Minister as his popularity continues to wane."

It's the kind of 'brainchild' whose parents love it nonetheless.

Getting the low-down from their own Deepthroat, PR Week adds: "'Carter thought it was a good idea to have Brown call people personally,' said one insider."

The insider sounds as incredulous as anybody else would be who wasn't in the pub with Carter when he came up with that idea (at least I hope he was drunk).

What next... getting Gordon Brown down Sainsbury's offering to carry people's shopping to their car?

Of course there is no value in Brown doing this for its own sake. Current polls suggest he will have to call a lot more that 20-or so people per week to prolong his stay in Downing Street beyond the next general election, let alone the next leadership challenge. The value that Carter clearly perceives is in going to the papers and telling them that Gordon is exercising his common touch. But when it's so clearly contrived and so clearly an emergency sticking plaster of a measure it can only backfire. If nothing else it's probably going to lead to an increase in people writing letters of complaint to Gordon Brown hoping to get a phone call so they can have their say, thus realising they are actually quite dissatisfied and then even more so when the odds of them being one of the call recipients lengthen even further.

Expect more stories around this 'brainchild'... perhaps the calls that go badly or the leaks about the vetting process on who gets a "random" call. Brown's spin doctors will of course be trying to position in front of the press happy old ladies, 20-something builders and single mothers from the regions who were 'surprised and delighted' to get Gordon's call but they should have learned by now this is a Prime Minister for whom very little goes as planned.

Gum things rotten in Fleet Street

In a previous post I suggested the medical world (and press covering it) should show a little more responsibility when it comes to exploiting the tried and tested 'research + PR = coverage' formula, especially when that research whiffs more than a little.

Today's Telegraph claims: "Gum disease indicates a higher risk of developing cancer, scientists have found. Patients with a history of gum disease have been found to have a 14 per cent higher risk of developing any form of tumour."

Says who? Well, says a paper from scientists at Imperial College published in cheery journal The Lancet Oncology (yours for just £122 per year).

Now, the research findings may be reasonably sound. What I actually know about oncology begins and ends at how to spell it. But I do have some (not much, but some) common sense – enough in fact to see through this research.

And what leaves a bad taste in the mouth (no pun intended) is the way these findings have been presented to sell copies of a magazine and latterly to make sensational copy for a newspaper. It goes something like this: 1) take two things with some apparent correlation and present them as a worrying fact, 2) don't worry, the newspapers will go for it and probably spin it further through selective fact-checking.

No mention is made in the article of whether those people with gum disease were smokers, ate red meat, drank heavily or chewed tobacco. No mention is made of dental hygiene trends, ethnicity, brands of toothpaste, preferred holiday destinations or public versus private dentists.

In fact what other circumstantial conditions could have produced equally conclusive results? (Perhaps a 14 per cent higher instance of cancer victims had ginger hair or brown eyes, or tattoos or a brother called Neville?)

This really is the age of 'cutandpastealism'

Tabloid journalist? Seen a funny email...? Well, job done, now get yourself off to the pub.

Despite the tabloid newspapers' apparent fondness for blaming the internet for the ills of the world (except MySpace which The Sun remains fond of, funnily enough) they don't half like the old cut and paste function and letting 'free' internet content fill their pages.

The Daily Mail appears to be the worst offender for seeing a funny email attachment or website and thinking 'sod it, that'll fill a double page spread'. You may have seen the ctrl+C, ctrl+V job they did on the incredibly sticky Color War website earlier this week where people post contemporary recreations of childhood photographs (sample content, left).

And the trend – media historians take note – which I reckon was kicked off by The Mirror in 2002 when it used a notorious email attachment of Argentinean footballers with superimposed handbags (right), seems to be increasing. Witness the number of newspapers running the above 'funny' about teary-eyed nightclub brawler, crap penalty taker and all round nice guy John Terry.

Who'd do God's PR?

Ok, so I bet the retainer is a fair size but client meetings on a Sunday? That's not going to go down well with the team.

Despite this the church is getting much better at playing the PR game and getting its 'brand' out there in the national press.

And now a museum exhibition attached to Vienna's 14th century Catholic cathedral and backed by an eager PR campaign is looking to cash in on the interest in next month's Euro 2008 football tournament being partly staged in Austria.

The "exhibition...is out to show what football owes to religion", says Reuters.

The exhibition's curators claim: "Kissing a football trophy after the moment of victory recalls the kissing of Orthodox icons, while bearing a cup aloft to a stadium of cheering fans is a profane re-enactment of the displaying of the Body of Christ during the Catholic mass."

'Facts' which Reuters doesn't question. But surely holding aloft any prize – whether a hunter's kill, a sacrifice or the very head of Medusa – is rooted in many cultures which predate Catholicism? And the same would be true of kissing which it appears is equally instinctive.

However, it's nice to know even God's PR people don't let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

I'm writing an article about people who lost their teeth in the Arndale Centre

Anybody familiar with the excellent, if over-used, Response Source service will know journalists regularly speculate on the chances of PR agencies being able to satisfy all manner of unusual requests. (Nick Davies even reserved a little criticism for such services in his Flat Earth News book, suggesting they are symptomatic of journalists giving up the ghost on filing anything that hasn't been hand fed to them.)

I've seen some crackers today... which pieced together read something like this: "I'm currently working on an article about bereavement and I'm looking to speak to a woman aged 48 – 50 whose husband died in a pony trekking accident on a Greek island (preferably Kefalonia). Ideally the woman should be called Margaret and her friends should have clubbed together to buy her some plastic surgery afterwards to aid her search for a new man who has discovered he had a twin brother he's never met."

It puts me in mind of this inspired Fry and Laurie sketch from many moons ago.

Visa strange times in tech PR

When a slightly confused looking Indian gentleman turned up on the doorstep of my colleagues over at OCTANE PR in Victoria earlier today, asking for his visa, the team there thought nothing of the apparent mistake he had made.

But it didn't stop there. Because then two more, then three, then four, then five, six, seven people started queuing outside OCTANE's office, all asking for their visas.

By this stage, as ever more callers came knocking, the team was looking into what was causing this issue and tracked it back to the website of the Indian High Commission.

The High Commission's website has recently been updated and is now erroneously telling people it has outsourced its visa processing to a company based at 54 Wilton Road which just happens to be OCTANE's office.

More on why journos don't rate PR

The Inquirer is running an irreverent expose, lifting the lid on this PR lark.

Having sat on both sides of the fence it raised a smile on a couple of occasions and parts do certainly still ring true. This is of course because there are good and bad on both sides of said fence.

I know from experience that journalists hate to feel they're being told how to do their jobs and certainly don't like to feel they are being chivvied or checked up on with multiple phone calls and emails from over-eager account executives who have the audacity to worry that a journalist [ahem] might not turn up for an engagement they swore blind they'd be present for.

If ever a group of professionals didn't need any level of hand-holding it's surely journalists.

Yet how many PRs might recount encounters with journalists such as this: "I know we've both just arrived on the same flight, to the same strange city but could you tell me where I can buy a US plug adaptor and an iPhone - and can I drink the water here? - and what time should I have dinner tonight, and have you booked somewhere and do you have a copy of the menu, because I can't eat seafood and I have a wheat allergy and I've only brought one shirt, so is there any chance you could ask the hotel to have it cleaned and pressed when I spill soup down myself, else I'll have nothing to wear when I don't turn up for the keynote tomorrow?"

Not to mention "...I've lost my room key and passport, so could you help me look for them?"

I certainly remember being on press trips with journos like that (of course I wouldn't say I've encountered any since I switched sides) but it would also be misleading to suggests it's anything other than a small minority. However, it does make follow-up calls or emails seem a lot less uncalled for in some cases.

However, it's also true that the skill of a good PR professional is to work out which journalists are which without tarring them all with the same brush and to learn the best way to work with individual journalists. The piece on The Inquirer suggests some PRs are failing in this regard.

Either that or it's a slow news week.

UPDATE: It's interesting to note The Inquirer underpins its critique of PR with the caveat that it "never runs any press released material. Ever". So you'll never see it run stories like this or this from today.

(Original press releases here and here.)

"And I'll tell you another thing!"

One of the side-effects of working in PR and playing geographical dot-to-dot between contacts, clients and meetings during the week is that you end up taking a lot of taxis. This means you run into a lot of taxi drivers and enjoy the kind of one-to-one focus group that newspaper editors have clearly come to rely upon over the years.

For example, I had a taxi driver today who was planning a one man war on advertising (I didn't dare tell him I worked in PR. For all the ungodly occupations which are doubtless on his 'list', PR is no doubt higher than many):

"If I was Mayor I'd ban all advertising. TV, radio, newspapers, billboards, the lot," he told me, while offering no answers as to how the media would survive. It probably had not dawned on him the copy of the Daily Mail sat on his dashboard would cost him £5 per day but for the advertising it carries. (And yes, I was taking notes.)

"As for f*@king estate agents," he added, straying into more reasonable territory. "I'd stop them driving around in cars covered in their f*@king logos."

Black cabs as well would be covered by his blanket ban.

"A black cab, is a black cab, is a black cab," he said, "not a f*@king yellow cab with blue f*@king stripes!"

Next he went on to explain, albeit indirectly, why the taxi driver demographic is so commonly associated with the tabloid news agenda of the right.

"Tell you what else I'd do. I'd ban anybody under 30 who's out of work from owning a dog," adding somewhat inevitably, with a knowing wink "...if you get me?"

"They walk around - you know who I'm talking about - with their f*@king designer trainers and their f*@king designer mobile phones and their f*@king dangerous dogs."

"Well it costs you and me money in taxes and if they don't like it then I'd just f*@king shoot them."

I'm not sure if he meant the dogs or the owners... he probably wouldn't discriminate.

He did leave me wondering though if the right wing tabs, for all the hatred they revel in, go anywhere near far enough - bar a couple of columnists - in servicing the level of discontentment which clearly exists among their core demographic.

Tough call...

It's a few days old but I just saw this on PR Week: "An East Sussex PR agency has successfully sued an AIDS charity for unpaid fees."

Result! ...er...

The article adds the charity claimed "the [two months] work had been done on a pro bono basis but did not produce evidence of any such agreement".

The article doesn't mention whether any evidence to the contrary - such as a contract agreeing fees - was produced. But I assume so from the outcome.

Tough call though taking a registered charity to court. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case a PR company knows better than anybody how such a move could be (mis)represented. Apparently the agency took the action to send a warning to other marcomms companies the charity may have been speaking to.

Please give generously

On the weekend of the 7th and 8th of June, myself and a team from LEWIS PR will be taking part in the 3 Peaks Challenge in Aid of CARE International.

I'll come onto what the challenge involves in a second but the really important thing here is that CARE International is one of the largest relief organisations working in spite of the Burmese regime to take much needed aid into that part of South East Asia.

Year-round CARE works tirelessly in much of the developing world but the crisis in Burma is a timely reminder that there is much we can all do for people less fortunate than ourselves.

...now, back to this Challenge. A team of five from LEWIS will be covering a distance of 40km (climbing through a total elevation of 12,000 feet over the three highest mountains in Scotland, England and Wales respectively. To make matters tougher it is a race against the clock to complete the Challenge within 24 hours, including travel time between the well-dispersed peaks!)

We have set a target of £6,000 which we are hoping to raise and having met all costs ourselves we're delighted to say that every penny raised will go towards the work CARE does. So please dig deep and give whatever you can online at our JustGiving page.

What a terrible own goal

For an organisation with turnover of £200m+ it never ceases to amaze me the quality of PR which comes out of The Football Association.

The launch of its 'FA Vision' plan for the next four years is the latest own goal.

As Reuters reported: "The Football Association wants coach Fabio Capello to take England at least to the semi-finals of the 2010 World Cup or Euro 2012, the FA said in a review published on Tuesday."

What other country among the supposed superpowers of international football would publicly disclose, especially given the famously optimistic fervency of English football fans, that fourth place, at every other tournament, is the target.

In Brazil they have an inquest when the national team finishes second. In England we're already planning to tick a box marked 'job done' should we happen to lose on penalties in the semi-final rather than the quarters some time in the next four years.

Some 'news' never goes out of date

Doesn't look like anybody touched the flaky release I flagged from the British Chiropractic Association over the weekend.

Or rather, they didn't take it this time around.

My search did however uncover a piece in the Telegraph, who ran the same story back in 2001. As did the BBC. In fact, the Evening Standard also took the story in 2001 after the BCA issued it, leading me to wonder why the BCA didn't cut its losses, recognise that well had run dry and try something different this time around.

There's a word for people like you

In certain media analysis circles the phrase 'animal porn' is used to describe the obligatory daily picture (normally) on page 3 of the Daily Mail or page 7 of the Telegraph featuring some kind of cuddly animal whose story will appeal to readers.... and maybe make them go 'awww!' It's the meeting point where lazy, space-filling journalism collides with a UK public accustomed to the phrase "I love animals I do".

However, the BBC has really pushed the boat out, or rather some scientists with a camera may well have done.

Story of the day is undoubtedly the breaking news on the BBC (yes, the BBC of all places) that an Antarctic Fur Seal has been 'caught' trying to have sex with a King Penguin.. or a "...'king penguin" by the time his seal friends start pulling his fin about it.

According to the BBC "Sexual coercion among animals is extremely common".

"Extremely common"? It's downright slutty!

The Beeb adds: "Why the seal attempted to have sex with the penguin is unclear. But the scientists who photographed the event speculate that it was the behaviour of a frustrated, sexually inexperienced young male seal."

That's his reputation shot to pieces then.

Spare a thought for the penguin though. What a day he's had.

(* For legal reasons I should point out the seal featured in the above picture is not the seal involved in the alleged 'incident')

It makes you sick, doesn't it...

From the Daily Mail (I know, I know, what do I really expect): "Computer keyboards can harbour more harmful bacteria than a lavatory seat... according to the consumer group Which?. It warned that 'qwerty tummy'... could sweep through workplaces after tests on equipment in its own London offices showed alarming results."

Eh? Because now it is known about, it becomes more virulent?

How does that work? Surely more likely this has been the case for as long as keyboards have existed but daily exposure breeds immunity?

But of course 'Keyboard bacteria won't make you sick' ain't such a good story.

Well done Which? you fooled the sharp minds at the Daily Mail.

Let the opportunism begin...

Around any event there are PR opportunities to be exploited – be it Christmas, Easter, the Olympics, a World Cup or even, it would seem a bank holiday.

As such, a press release caught my eye today: topical and tenuous in equal measure:

"With the bank holiday on the horizon, the coming weekend will no doubt be a combination of DIY, lazy lie ins and perhaps a spot of spring cleaning, but the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) reveals that, come Tuesday, these tasks may leave us lying flat on our back!"

An exclamation mark no less! This! Is! Serious! Stuff!

"Research commissioned by the BCA shows that back pain in the UK has risen by a staggering 5 per cent in just 12 months."

The flimsy premise here is that we're all going to be doing so much gardening and DIY this coming weekend that we all run an added risk of putting our backs out, or so claims the BCA with absolutely no foundation.

I would have thought an organisation established to raise issues of a medical complaint would impose some sense of responsible self-regulation.

For example, why not discuss the role of the UK's well-publicised ageing population in raising the percentage instances of back complaints? Why not discuss the role of increasing levels of obesity?

No, sod that, that would be credible, let's come up with something about bank holidays and gardening in order to capitalise on news-desks being understaffed over the bank holiday weekend.

After all, never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.... and I look forward to seeing just how many media outlets deem this to be a good story given the total absence of facts and credibility. I'm betting it will find a home somewhere.