New Lego Playset – UK Edition
Don’t you just love a great viral? I wonder if Lego are party to the black humour. Thank you www.thepoke.co.uk for the naughty creativity.
The lessons of 6 degrees of connectivity and brand advocacy marketing
Yahoo’s announcement last week that it plans to test Stanley Milgram’s influential ‘6 degrees of separation’ theory on Facebook shows that it has very little idea about the implications of social media for human interaction over the last few years. The experiment- in which anyone with a Facebook can participate- requires users to transmit targeted […]
Hapless Jacqui Smith, PR Maniac and foot shooting expert
You almost feel like applauding; Jacqui Smith has done it again. Obviously deciding that, since she isn’t quite so busy with politics anymore, she may as well give The Sun something to do. It emerged yesterday that Smith recently borrowed two day-release lags from a charity run by Maureen Smith- a former political ally- to […]
Twitter: Building PR Order From the Chaos
As executives from Twitter, Facebook and Research in Motion (developer of Blackberry) prepare to meet Theresa May for a chat about possibly turning off operations during times of crisis (as if…), the former company has capitalised on the confusion with a publicity coup that places it streets ahead of the other two in terms of […]
Celebrity Big Brother PR coup or Voyeurs Wet Dream
While CBB goings-on may not be great news for John Bercow and his marriage, it looks as though Richard Desmond has scored a PR coup in bringing the franchise to his ailing channel. Thursday’s launch show (peak: 5.6m viewers) has been splashed all over the net as the show’s most watched non sporting programme ever, […]
Husbands of Britain
Husbands of Britain: pity, pity, pity John Bercow. Already under fire from colleagues for somehow being both a bit of an old fart and palpably anti-Conservative in the Commons, his wife took her first steps into a full-blown publicity maelstrom when she entered the Big Brother house last night. Anyone who’s so much as walked […]
Five Hollywood Bad Boys who raised hell for their publicists
Gerard Depardieu’s recent aeronautical mishap may on one level have been an act of obstinate vandalism by a cantankerous old Frenchman, but on another it is a welcome example of an increasingly rare phenomenon. Time was, every overblown vagabond actor was creating merry hell for their publicists with acts of wholly gratuitous depravity. I was […]
The appeal of danger
The appeal of danger to the public (particularly the younger sections of it) is among the oldest weapons in the marketing and publicity arsenal. From James Dean’s motorbike to the guns-n-weed lifestyle of the 90’s gangster rapper, the outsider figure living life on the edge has always sparked media furore, and consumer brands have long […]
Fabulous out take from Michael White's Guardian commentary
Fabulous out take from Michael White’s Guardian commentary this morning. Haunting Back catalogue material. “I always get uncomfortable when David Cameron talks about the sick society. He was a member of the Bullingdon Club with George Osborne and Boris Johnson and they used to go round trashing restaurants”
God save the queen
God save the queen cos tourists are money And our figurehead is not what she seems Oh God save history, God save your mad parade Oh lord God have mercy all crimes are paid When there’s no future how can there be sin We’re the flowers in the dustbin We’re the poison in your human […]
After the Phone Hacking: Networking Sociably on the Social Networks
Back in February, I wrote an entry about the ‘lost art of the long lunch’, which lamented an unfortunate consequence of the modern, social media-dominated environment and its ten minute news cycle. With most conversations now conducted via mouthpiece or screen, and quickly at that, it strikes me that the generations of hacks cutting their […]
After Amy: The Changing Nature of Fame
Lady Gaga was quoted yesterday as issuing a warning to the public on the death of Amy Winehouse: ‘It’s a lesson to the world,’ she said: ‘Don’t kill the superstar, take care of her soul.’ it’s worth considering just who did kill Amy Winehouse? The drug dealers? The hungry media? Her zealous fans? Or could […]
Furthering the Tragedy: Norway and the News Agenda
The shooting rampage which claimed nearly 80 lives in Norway last Friday would have been tragic under any circumstances, but it is rendered continually more appalling by the calculated PR agenda of the sick, sad ‘fabulous nobody’ behind it. Yesterday’s decision by Judge Kim Heger to disallow both the public and the media from the […]
PR verdict on Rupert Murdoch: Small, unfrightening, unimpressive
This week’s performance by Rupert and James Murdoch at a British parliamentary hearing raises some questions that News Corp. will struggle to answer, regardless of the outcome of the phone-hacking scandal. I find it difficult not to believe that in the days leading up to the inquiry that Murdoch senior and junior will have been […]
Power PR: Matthew Freud and the Murdoch Empire
Many media commentators are speculating on who exactly has the most to lose from the precipitous events caused by the News of the World hacking scandal. The obvious casualties are the hundred journalists who have been pushed out into the cold. Murdoch has withdrawn from BSkyB bid. Other titles are in a definitive tailspin. Andy […]
The Early Days of Hacking
In a time when dinosaurs ruled the earth, or so it would seem to anyone born after 1989, there was a big TV name called Michael Elphick. He had a hit show, attracting millions of viewers. He’d been a party animal in his time and, for some reason, a Sunday taboid editor decided to take […]
News of the Screwed
Yesterday was a momentous day for British journalism and, of course, the PR industry. The world’s biggest English speaking Sunday tabloid newspaper is dead. Rupert Murdoch’s action to try and halt the hurricane sweeping through his empire by taking a Butcher’s cleaver to his own corporate flesh was tactical filicide. It seems clear from the […]
Wedding Stunts with Stories
We live in an age where we’re increasingly concerned with the methodology of publicity rather than its veracity; from celebrities Cheryl and Simon, to government bodies, start up fashion brands and particularly charitable causes everyone gets involved in publicity stunts. Stunts are the red cells flowing at blistering speed through media arteries, nourishing the media […]
The Resurrection of MySpace?
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought MySpace in 2005 for $580m. Yesterday it sold to an online ad company for around $35m. Few tears will be shed for Rupert’s $545m loss. Did anyone know the true value of MySpace? More pertinently, does anyone recall the MySpace hype? Current PR hot air suggests that other media darlings […]
Brand Glastonbury: the survival of the muddiest
“The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men – the man he is and the man he wants to be.” William Feather I’m off to wade in the ever-welcoming Somerset mud. Yes, it’s work not pleasure, especially considering the Glastonbury Festival regularly descends into a […]