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With a hefty £60m marketing budget being dangled by Disney like a diamond encrusted carrot, it’s clear why Boris Johnson has taken the unprecedented decision to turn on London’s West End Christmas lights earlier than ever.

Traditionalists, I’m sure, will be up in arms about the early switch on - up to nine days earlier than previous years - but if this means London’s economy gets a much needed boost by playing host to the world premiere of A Christmas Carol, surely Johnson can be excused.

Opinion however, appears to be torn with certain commentators suggesting it’s a rather sad state of affairs when a “venerable city becomes a marketing tool.”

The problem is, the West End lights are famous and have always featured their own distinct theme. This year though, they will follow the theme of A Christmas Carol, boasting Disney’s Scrooge related decorations from Leicester Square to Oxford Street, Regent Street and the city.

From a PR perspective this is an incredible coup; a total dream to dress a city head to toe in branding but this is Disney after all, who apparently gave London little choice as to when they switched the lights on saying: “It has to be the 3^rd November as that is when the cast are going to be in London.”

With Jim Carrey and Colin Firth in town, at least this year, London won’t be stumping up public appearance fees for the likes of Kelly Brook.

A recent tweet from journalist and blogger, Sally Whittle, went like this: “Dear PR: I’m not sure it’s a viral campaign if you have to send a press release telling me it’s viral…”

In other words, something has either the quintessence of being viral or it doesn’t; no amount of trying to talk it up or publicise it as viral will make it so. 

Not only did it make me laugh, it seemed to sum up what Starbucks is trying to do to reverse its coffee retailing fortunes.

As the Independent reports, Starbucks wants its outlets to look “less corporate” and give each one something more “locally relevant”.

Well, a shop is either local or it’s not. And like the problem with viral, trying to dress it up as something it isn’t will be immediately obvious. And with 750 stores in the UK under the familar brand name and identity of Starbucks, how authentic is any attempt at being “local” going to be? That’s the territory independent coffee shops should inhabit, and embody much better than Starbucks ever could.

What this Guardian report refers to as the “carefully selected authenticity cues” Starbucks plans to deploy makes it sound even worse. It’s either authentic, or it’s fake.

And if Costa Coffee, with more outlets than Starbucks, and Caffe Nero, with fewer, don’t see the need to tamper with their identity, what is Starbucks thinking?

Rather than trying to be something it’s not, shouldn’t the company face up to the fact that it’s no longer the province of a few cool people in Seattle? It is a corporate entity and there’s a customer base out there that’s quite happy with that: something the coffee customer can readily recognise and rely on to deliver exactly the same product wherever they go.

Perhaps the focus should fall on the core product: the coffee. As this ex-Starbucks employee comments, the coffee still beats most of what you’ll find on the high street, and the company prides itself on the quality of the java on offer.

Leave being local to the locals. And being a “local shop for local people” isn’t always something to shout about. 

Anna Friel blowing bubbles adorns thelondonpaper’s last ever front cover as the final issue is being handed out by the guys in purple jackets this afternoon. Its pages over the last couple of weeks have been littered with tributes from an army of regular readers and celebs alike, along with ads promoting the stalwarts of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, The Sun and The Times.

The closure of the paper, which attracts more than 1 million readers every day, has come as quite a shock to many. What does it mean for PROs? First, it significantly reduces print coverage opportunities in London (Lite takes most of its copy from the Evening Standard) and is a big blow for PRO’s working in industries thelondonaper was brilliant at covering, such as music, arts and environment. Second, it’s yet another reminder that no print publication is untouchable. It’s clear that as our media consumption habits are changing rapidly, even the big papers are struggling with their business models.

So where will the readers go? In his goodbye letter, the Editor, Stefano Hatfield, calls on readers to switch to the sister papers, The Sun and The Times. I, however, believe Perez Hilton, gossip blogger answers it best: “I’m going to miss thelondonpaper. And a lot of other readers will, too. Thankfully, they can still get all the latest celeb scoop on PerezHilton.com. Ha!”

The word on Twitter is that the staff have been at the pub from 6am this morning. Other twitter comments have been both mournful and mocking. Glasses will be raised to toast thelondonpaper in pubs across London tonight. You’ll be missed.

Strictly Come Dancing versus X Factor. Brucie versus Simon. Celebrity versus wannabe. All part of the fight for the largest viewing audience on Saturday night.

This weekend sees the return of what has become the traditional autumn battle for the crown of most watched TV programme of the weekend.

X Factor, currently showing the auditions, is already an established part of Saturday viewing more than a month into its latest series. Last weekend more than 12 million viewers tuned in. It seems not only to be pleasing viewers but must make the ITV bosses happy acting as a spur to advertising revenues in these difficult market times.

The BBC’s announcement last week that it was to pit its Saturday flagship caused a flurry in the media with claims that the BBC was being ‘aggressive’ taking on ITV head-to-head. Over the last couple of seasons, when the shows have been complementary, each has reached around 10 million viewers.

It is unlikely that the viewers will be split down the middle as Britain’s households will probably choose to record one while watching the other. Potentially it could be X Factor relegated to the recorder as it has already been announced that its results will now appear on Sunday rather than on Saturday night, with the BBC dropping its Sunday night results show.

The danger for ITV is that with X Factor recorded, viewers are tempted to skip the ad breaks. This must be a concern for advertisers and for ITV.  

There is only one group that will decide this and it is the British public. Next  week I am sure we will have more debate as this has a lot further to run - well until Christmas.

Let battle commence.

What do you do when a peeved employee or - in this case - former employee goes haywire on your premises and makes it public?

And how can your employees offer a meaningful voice at a time of crisis?

These were the questions facing Asda yesterday, when an ex-staff member at its Fulwood, Preston store went on a clandestine, night-time rampage - and then shared his antics via video film.

Adeel Ayub certainly succeeded in making himself look moronic with a trail of random destruction at his former place of work. But grabbing media attention presented a different challenge to Asda’s communications team.

Dominic Burch, head of corporate comms and new media, was clear about the risks this unfortunate incident posed:

“There was a chance people would think this was still happening in that store or that we’d turned a blind eye at the time it happened.

“But once we’d seen it, we were quick to say how disgusted we were and then worked fast to find out who the person was and whether he was still part of the business. Colleagues at the store, aware of the vandalism from the first incident, were glad the perpetrator was now out in the open.”

And it was the wish of the store manager to express her and her colleagues’ feelings about Ayub’s actions that prompted the comms team to come up with the idea of filming a personal video message, later to be uploaded to YouTube (see top of post).

Burch adds: “The manager simply asked a few colleagues on the night shift to respond to the video in their own words. The resulting clips were posted on YouTube unedited.”

In the video, the shared bemusement and dismay among the staff about why a former colleague would behave like that has an authenticity and real, unembellished quality; something that says more about the impact on them and their loyalty to the store than any official, corporate statement could.

As they are the people who work in the store and live in the area, who better to reassure the local Asda customer that unpleasant things have happened, but it’s business as usual now?

In a guest blog post Paul Unger, editor of property news website, Place North West, shares a personal view of the value of Twitter:

Like many people I’m in two minds about Twitter. Not wanting to be left behind in the scramble for online immediacy and the next big media platform, but wary of the distraction from what I thought was the day job.

Of all the ways to describe the beguiling phenomenon of Twitter that have sprung up, the best has to be The Guardian Media desk’s heading for all memos about their own Twitter Strategy: Twatergy. It’s something not to be ignored but a pain in the arse at the same time.

In the media’s hands it reminds me of the BBC and broadsheets’ obsession with Brown and Blair at its marital painful height. Yes it was important and interesting - if you think politics is important and interesting - but it was a sad geeky clique as well, that turned readers off. The editors and political correspondents were seduced by the access they enjoyed and thought it endlessly fascinating when in fact it was dull.

How many journalists have mainly PRs following them on Twitter? I do. I’ve started doing a bit more on Twitter but in four months have still done only about 40 updates on there. I get told via Blackberry on a Sunday afternoon whilst painting the back yard that some cryptic pseudonym is following me. Fine. Who? Why?

The biggest problem I have with it is not the usual guff about our fixation with our own celebrity or who cares whether someone makes it to the gym tonight, it’s a professional one.

As a commercial property journalist operating in a small niche of the British business-to-business publishing world I have always been told to know your reader, know what interests them, and stay focused on those two things. As a freelancer I also have to know who exactly will pay me. Any journalist on Twitter in work time should ask themselves, ‘who are my readers and are they on here’.

 I was asking a senior Manchester surveyor his thoughts about TomBloxhamMBE (to give him his full chosen Twitmark) being on there and the surveyor stopped me with ‘what’s Twitter’. My readers are not on there. My job is to spend my time and effort getting stories about and for them. They pay me at Place North West and Property Week for content published in those places, not on a free website they haven’t heard of. My job is to serve the paying readers.

Are Estates Gazette right to be on Twitter so much when, the last time I checked, an individual subscription to its website, EGi, was £650+VAT. What is your job and who are your readers? It’s why I will keep it strictly low key and see what happens. If PRs use it to tell their clients about stories and they become my readers, maybe it’s worth it. If all we are doing is chatting in the corridors of our internal clique, let’s get back to some real work.

Compared to the real world of magazines, has ITV’s new look This Morning gone from Take a Break to the dizzy heights of Cosmo?

With new co-host Holly Willoughby replacing Fern Britton, the 28-year old ex-model brings a younger element to the show, and dare we say a touch more glamour.

But what will the typical viewer make of such a change in presenter? Both Fern Britton and her predecessor Judy Finnegan were consummate broadcasters. Holly, on the other hand, has already been described as a “talkative airhead.”

But this is daytime TV after all and as a new mum to three-month old Harry, Holly is no stranger to this audience.

What’s more, we’re in a recession with 2.43 million of the population out of work, nearly one million of which are under 25. Not only does this change the viewer profile, it also creates a greater need for escapism and perhaps Holly, who incidentally came out top in a recent poll of who women should most look like in order to land a good job, is just the tonic.

Now in its 21^st series, it’s perhaps time the flagship daytime show had a revamp. With new title sequence and music, the first fundamental change to the opening sequences since it moved to London in 1996, and the likes of Peter Andre signed as the new showbiz reporter, one can’t see why This Morning won’t remain the all time favourite “coffee morning” telly.

The Church of England is taking to the airwaves in the battle for souls or, at the very least, a few more bums on pews come Sunday.

Its first-ever radio ad - created by what the Guardian calls a “Christian media production company”, Whistling Frog Productions - might be the aural equivalent of the trendy vicar wearing Doc Marten boots; but based on a difficult brief (getting people to go to the Church of England at the weekend, instead of the Church of Retail), it does a good job.

And it doesn’t stand alone. As part of its “Back to Church” campaign, The church is clearly getting good advice about integrating its media activity, therefore adding video and audio to the mix.

As a church spokesman says about the radio medium: “It’s a chance to talk to people at the breakfast table and on the drive home. That is the beauty of advertising on the radio.” With a difficult message to convey, nothing beats a captive audience.

Update: an insightful take on the future of social media for marketing, c/o Sydney, Australia’s Ganador Management Solutions.

Social media versus traditional marketing communications? Gentlemen, please choose your weapons.

It’s always good to see some healthy debate about one theory or another - in any field; but it’s such a long time since I’ve seen a blog post comment so overflowing with vitriol that I thought it was worth a closer look (see comment 2 in the link).

The thrust of the comment - made by a Jacob Wright in response to the Econsultancy post and the preceding video film all about social media - is summed up by the phrase he plunders from Jerry Maguire:  “Show us the money”. In short, where’s your cast iron proof that social media marketing works? And he’s got a point. Amid all this wonderful engagement stuff, is anyone spending one more euro, yen, buck or pound on anything thanks to social media?

But, unfortunately, there’s a priggishness that creeps into his argument that suggests social media advocates are merely Johnny-come-latelies who haven’t got the grey matter to grasp traditional marketing, and should do so before they herald its successor. Now, before traditional marketing advocates/social marketing haters rubbish the new kid in town, they have to admit one thing: that for every great piece of marketing activity undertaken, there’s a great big dud consigned to the marketing dustbin of history. That’s life, and all the “straw men” that go with it.

Mr Wright demands engagement with “WHAT MAKES PEOPLE BUY STUFF” (I wish people wouldn’t shout in type; I fear for their blood pressure). OK, so let’s engage ME.

I’m a reluctant shopper, full stop; a shopper of necessity, ie., when the trousers are ready to split. So, in theory, I’m looking for the fastest route to making a purchase; one which barely engages the part of the brain labelled “shopping”. So, when I needed a way of carrying money abroad last holiday, what did I do?

1. Launched Google.

2. Found news sites recommending travel credit cards (the most prominent being a Santander card and a Thomas Cook cash passport).

3. Sought online reviews where I’d get punters’ views.

4. Found nothing on Santander (already I’m worried) and a few discussions about the Thomas Cook card, with mixed reviews.

5. Picked up a leaflet and went for the latter, as it felt like the least terrifying option, despite the mixed messages I was getting online.

It’s risky treating oneself as a case study, but for someone disinterested in buying stuff, I certainly spent time circumnavigating the traditional marketing communications effort to get at the truth before making up my mind. So, Thomas Cook won my business because I trusted real people’s views more than I trust it as a commercial entity. However, if Thomas Cook had been engaging in the same forums and clarifying some of the conflicting experiences of its cash passport users, how many other cautious customers could they harness?

So, while the Jacob Wrights get hernias about metrics (and they count, don’t get me wrong) the customer is out there making purchasing choices with the help of social media.

Olivier Blanchard seems to get the balance right with his insight into proving that social works by looking at its effect on “transactional prescursors” - a lofty phrase for the stuff you do before you buy, I think - and so being able to measure and track its true value in marketing terms.

But also, as The Guardian just revealed, the BBC has a team of reporters dedicated to trawling the social web looking for stories. And if your organisation is engaging in those places, who’s to say these online networking natives aren’t going to find something valuable and NEWSWORTHY (now I’m shouting) in what you’re doing.

Just as the talkies didn’t kill cinema and TV didn’t kill radio, it’s far fetched to think that social media marketing will deal a killer blow to the establishment.

Put your weapons away, gentlemen; there’s room for everyone.

It seems the power of the PR ‘stunt’ to gain coverage is still well and truly with us - as the story of Winston the pigeon is anything to go by.

Winston was challenged to get a  4gb data stick from the offices of Unlimited IT in the town of Howick to Durban quicker - one hour and eight minutes -  than a transfer by an internet connection from the country’s biggest ISP Telkom.

Unsurprisingly, Winston’s pigeon post won delivering the data stick whilst just 4% of the data had arrived electronically.

The object of the exercise was to demonstrate just how slow broadband connections are in South Africa and give some profile to the IT company.

However perhaps this ‘stunt’, which gained global coverage, was timely as qualification games were taking place across the world and people were thinking about South Africa.

Today’s tournaments are so heavily reliant on the internet that the’ stunt’ offers a wake up call to the authorities and tournament organisers that its communication  network needs to be able to cope with the demands of the modern World Cup.

The last thing you want is a meltdown while the world’s media is in your back yard. Now where is that crisis management plan……