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No doubt there are many out there who would scoff at the fact that today’s politicians, in the run up to the general election, are making a beeline for women’s mags and daytime TV.

Ok, so being questioned by Kate Garraway might not be quite the same as being grilled by Paxman but, argues Mike Girling, Nick Clegg’s press officer: “Those interviews can be quite tough in their own way.” And Martin Frizell, former editor of GMTV, agrees that being asked left-field questions about X Factor or what they’re doing for their wives on Valentine’s Day can be “shit scary”.

It’s strange to think that a “comfort zone” could include the likes of Paxman or Frost, but for steely politicians, an interview about emotions, mainstream culture and even favourite biscuits, as recently demonstrated by Gordon Brown, can be way more harrowing than being quizzed on the state of Iraq.

Women’s glossy magazine, Red, is currently gearing up for an election special for its May edition featuring interviews with Brown, Cameron and Clegg. According to research carried out by the magazine, nine out of 10 of Red’s 225,000 readers will vote in the general election yet 48% say they haven’t decided who they’ll be supporting.

And it’s not just the party leaders who are being advised to focus on women’s media. Sarah Brown guest edited Fabulous, the News of the World’s female-focused supplement, last year but reviews were mixed.

MediaGuardian deputy editor Vicky Frost, commented that there was too much of Wellbeing for Women, of which Brown is patron, and too little of Brown’s life:

“I’m not saying she needed to star in the fashion shoot - although that really would have been fabulous - but what about a one-pager about life with her own kids, or healthy dinners she cooks,” Frost said.

Perhaps Brown and Cameron should sit tight in their comfort zones and let their wives spill some election winning gossip. With neither Sarah Brown or Samantha Cameron having ever given an interview, they could well clinch it for their steely loved ones…

For the last three weeks the BBC Two series ’The Virtual Revolution‘ (7.15pm Saturday) has been a highlight of the week.  It charts the very real impact that the Internet has had on our lives and forecasts how it might develop as access spreads around the globe.   The list of interviewees is stellar; Tim Berners-Lee, Arianna Huffington, Clay Shirky, Jimmy Wales, Steve Wozniak, Biz Stone and Evan Williams are just a small selection.  All of this hosted by the brilliant Dr Aleks Krotoski.  It takes on the big questions around politics, privacy, society and relationships bringing genuine insight into the changes driven by the web.

The web isn’t a channel like TV, radio or print it is so much more than that but it is critical that those involved in communications remember the residual power of conventional channels.  This series can be viewed on line but most are still watching on TV and tuning in on Saturdays at the point in time determined by the scheduler.  Mainstream media is still driving online traffic.   There is a very neat illustration of this if you take a look at Dr Aleks K’s twitter following.  She was already a respected authority on-line; Guardian journalist, blogger, presenter of the excellent Guardian Tech Weekly podcast, however her twitter following  went through the vitual roof when this series went live on the 30th January. 

TV along with many of the strands of conventional media is a channel of the future as well as the past and digital channels sit comfortably alongside.  It is the final episode of the series tomorrow and you really dont want to miss it.  Make an appointment to view and get a smartphone or laptop in hand for those live watercooler conversations. 

Hashtag #bbcrevolution. We’ll be virtually in the same room.

The World Wide Web has radically shaped the way we do business, in particular that of the fashion retail sector.

Estimated to be worth over £4.1bn by the end of 2009*, the sector is booming, with no self respecting high street retailer now without a transactional website. 

The savvy aren’t, however, solely using the web as a sales platform.

Responding to the rise in popularity of social media, a new culture is emerging, labelled by industry leaders as “democratic consumerism”.

Pioneering the move towards the new culture is Asda Chief Executive, Andy Bond, who recently announced plans to open up the workings of the business to scrutiny from customers in a move to build greater trust and long-term loyalty amongst shoppers. 

Among the range of initiatives to be introduced by the retailer is Asda’s new blog, http://www.aislespyblog.com/, which invites customers to participate in the buying process - voting on their favourite styles and colour ways.

Still in its infancy, the blog is already enjoying a positive response.  Speaking on it its launch Beth Somi, George Marketing and PR Manager, said: “http://www.aislespyblog.com/ is a great way for our customers to understand more about what goes on behind the scenes at Asda and to know more about our colleagues who work here.

“I enjoy talking to people about my job, so this is a great opportunity to do it while I’m at work. There is so much to talk about, we have new ranges launching in store every week so there is always something going on. The tough decision is knowing what to blog about so that I don’t bore everyone!

“I love the fact that I can ask for feedback on my blog and that the readers respond in such a positive way. It’s a great way for us to get instant ideas on our new ranges. As I speak to the teams here at George House, they are excited about what we can ask for comments on in the future.”

An example of an entirely web-based retailer epitomising democratic fashion is http://www.styleshake.com/.  Possibly one of the most ingenious fashion websites to launch in recent years, StyleShake.com puts the customer at the heart of the proposition, allowing the user to design a garment from scratch choosing fabric, colour style and trim.

The site goes against the typical nature of the fashion industry with trends that ‘trickle-down’ from the catwalk to the high street, asking the user to vote and design exactly what they want to wear.

It is also a fashion community with users rating and commenting on one another’s designs. Recent celebrity fans include Duffy and Holly Branson.

Not only good news for fashion addicts looking to create an individual look, StyleShake.com is a pretty good business model.  The retailer only produces what its users order so there is never over-supply; good for the environment and for the businesses overheads.

Chief Executive Officer of StyleShake.com, Iris Ben-David, comments: “StyleShake is all about empowering the user, providing them with the means to express themselves and celebrate their creativity. We are delighted to offer new ways of collaboration”.

The retailer’s vision is to become a leading online resource that revolutionises the way we consume fashion by making it much more personal and individual. 

A design obsessive from a tender age and regularly frustrated shopper, I personally, am delighted by what looks to be a customer-empowered future.  But what does democratic consumerism mean for the future of retail?

Its potential to impact on the overall business model is huge.  Armed with increased customer insight, the risk of costly, unpopular bulk buys will undoubtedly be lessened, reducing retailers’ need to discount and perhaps marking the beginning of the end of the January sale.  The retailer/supplier relationship will also inevitably see a change.   The potential for collections to be further tailored by store in response to regional demand an increasing reality.

Democratic consumerism, it’s an interesting one to watch, one I will certainly be following with a close eye.  

* Taken from Mintel’s Fashion Online report, August 2009

Need media coverage - then hire your own reporter. That is what is happening in the US where newspapers are increasingly in the position where they can no longer to afford to send reporters to cover professional sports.

The New York Times this week highlighted the growing trend in baseball and hockey for teams to hire journalists who have previously covered their teams.

Newspapers have increasingly been using copy from news agencies, which tends to focus only on the winning team. It doesn’t necessarily tell the full story of the game and misses details that a newspaper’s dedicated reporter can bring to the story - particularly if his team has lost.  However, it is not just the match day coverage that has disappeared but the profile provided by non-match day stories and interviews.

To combat this, the hockey team the Los Angeles Kings have hired journalist Rich Hammond, who used to cover the team for the Los Angeles Daily News. He will travel to all the games and provide copy for the team’s local newspapers.

It immediately throws up issues of impartiality and potential conflict with the Kings’ PR team. Hammond has been quick to dispel concerns on his blog. He says that that his output will not need approval or interviews supervision and that his role is not PR.

He will be working as an independent reporter but can he? It is hard to believe that that the PR team will be totally comfortable with this as, in theory, he can write stories about the conflict within the club or how the manager may be about to lose his job. Compromise will happen somewhere along the line.

Could something like this happen with professional sport in the UK? Unlikely at national newspaper level but with the cuts being made in the regional media and the number of journalists that have been made redundant it is not beyond the realms of possibility. A media owner could jump at the idea to have a flow of stories about a football club without the cost of employing the journalist. But the nagging question would be how much input has the PR team really had?

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……

The relationship between journalists and PR people is privileged, even if it can be somewhat strained at times.  It was never more so than with the embargo, the implicit agreement between press office and journalists that they won’t publish until a given hour, if it no one else does.  Social media has essentially seen the death of the embargo but some PR people seem to want to dig it up, rebury it and dance upon its grave.   

PR organisations are handing out press releases with embargoes and then breaking the story themselves.  Kris Vire the Theater Editor for Time Out Chicago magazine recently posted “PR firm asks for 11am embargo, then posts/tweets its news itself at 10:55. Why am I even here?”.  There is no reason PR firms can’t break stories but this is about trust - if you make an agreement stick to it.  It is essential for your relationship with the media both on and offline. 

Control of the flow of information, whether embargoed or not, has changed.  The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) sent e-mails yesterday to all the entrants in the CIPR Pride Awards informing them as to whether or not they had been shortlisted.  Within minutes the wires were alive with PR people tweeting about their own fortunes, before the CIPR posted the list and presumably before the media had the information.   We have to be circumspect about the objectivity of PR people posting news about their own successes.  I couldn’t help but notice the agency which announced that it had been entered just five categories and been shortlisted in all five, only to proudly confirm later that they’d been shortlisted in a sixth category.

Most people who read a newspaper will have picked up on the story of Mathew Robson, a 15-year-old intern at Morgan Stanley who wrote a report into teenage consumption of the media which broke surface a little over a week ago. At first glance this smacked of a well executed PR stunt after the story made a huge splash in the nationals and had significant penetration online.

However, upon reading the report in its entirety – rather than reading what other people have said about the report, which is where most conversations have derived from – it is actually surprisingly simplistic, logical, and to someone who was not a teenager all that long ago, far less than groundbreaking than you might imagine. Everything contained in the report, well, it just seemed rather self-evident.

For instance, one of the key points that the media picked up on is that teenagers don’t Twitter. Of course they don’t. You actually have to invest some time in Twitter to get anything out of it. It takes months, if not years, to actually build up enough followers for one to feel their tweets are actually reaching an audience which could be, in any way, defined as significant. And even once you do, there is little content other than the oh so boring medium of text.

Compare this to the Facebook experience where you can jump into a ready made group, lured by a diversity of visually stimulating and engaging content, such as pictures, applications and games. It’s all rather Scrabulous.

Many of the other observations are fairly straightforward, claiming, for example that most teenagers don’t read newspapers or watch the news…is this news? Were you interested in global geo-politics or the lack of transparency within the political system when you were 14? No, thought not. Funnily enough, kids aren’t now either.

Most kids have mobiles on pay-as-you-go because they can’t afford contracts…hold the front bleedin’ page…the FT did.

So ok, this isn’t a PR stunt, but it does demonstrate a few things. Firstly, that if you want a report into the habits of media consumption – or anything for that matter – to have penetration, keep it simply and write it in language that is not impenetrable to the man in the street. Secondly, if you want to know how teenagers consume the media or anything else, just ask them. Thirdly, a story really does not have to be groundbreaking to get blanket coverage; it just has to be insightful, informative and PR’d within an inch of its life.

The report in its entirety can be viewed here.

Sky Sports have been hyping The Ashes for months in their own inimitable way and who can blame them with the money they have spent to secure sole television rights.

It is one of their older commentators, the former England player and coach David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd, who has taken on their coverage to another level with his tweets from the commentary box.

Reading his tweets reminds me of listening to the grandfather of cricket coverage Test Match Special (TMS).

Over the first two days we have learnt from Lloyd his views on the food being delivered, suggested player look-a-likes and that he even listened to the Inspiral Carpets and Mark E Smith on the way to the ground this morning.

It is not just the occasional tweet either from Lloyd there is regular comment and views through each session. While the BBC’s Jonathan Agnew is sending regular tweets, it seems as if Lloyd has edge. Perhaps Agnew, sitting in the TMS commentary box can add little to what is being said.

Both set up their accounts within days of each other last week and Lloyd has taken a first innings lead with Lloyd having 8885 followers compared with 6820 following Aggers. Interestingly, old stalwart Henry Blofeld has started up his own Twitter account - only yesterday - most of tweets seem to be just retweets.

Sky, along with Bumble, seems to have grasped the extra dimension that Twitter can bring to fans – some of whom are sitting in the office and can’t watch the TV or listen to the radio.

Exciting news from the Guardian where they’ve announced they will make their content available on an Open Platform. Great, but what does this mean??!

Essentially the Guardian are saying they see the future for news brands as content providers, making themselves useful to readers on the web by allowing other content providers eg online niche news sites, bloggers, forums to repackage Guardian content by making their code widely available.

But wouldn’t the Guardian lose out by losing control? I don’t think so. The best place to come for Guardian content in one place will be the Guardian’s site and its articles will still rank very highly in search - much more than most other sites. But where users have a close relationship with a particular blog or forum then it makes sense for Guardian content to appear there, with the potential for online publishers to innovate with that content to produce something even more tailored. 

The Guardian are ensuring they have a place in audience’s networks in a way that keeps pace with their viewing preferences. 

UPDATE - Jeremiah has a great post on what innovation may result from the Guardian extending control beyond the walls of their site.

All details are here and a summary of what is planned is below: 

The Open Platform is the suite of services that make it possible for our partners to build applications with the Guardian. We’ve opened up our platform so that everyone can benefit from our journalism, our brand, and the technologies that power guardian.co.uk.

The Open Platform currently includes two products, the Content API and the Data Store:

1. The Content API is a mechanism for getting Guardian content. You can query our content database for articles and get them back in formats that are geared toward integration with other internet applications.

The Content API is a free service. We have some limits and restrictions detailed in our terms and conditions, but we hope that you will use our service for whatever needs you have, including commercial applications.

2. The Data Store is a collection of important and high quality data sets curated by Guardian journalists. You can find useful data here, download it, and integrate it with other internet applications.

The Data Store has a range of different uses for different types of partners. We will include relevant terms and conditions along with each service.

Our aim is to make the Guardian Open Platform a useful environment for anyone who creates for the internet. We will offer more services in the future such as an ad network and an application platform.

This initial release is a beta trial that will help us identify the ways our partners want to work with us. Access will be granted on a limited basis.

If you want to use the Content API, read the Getting started guide and apply for a key.

If there was one science at school that was fun, it was chemistry. Throwing potassium in water and watching it combust? Bliss!

And if you wanted, truly, to define yourself as a world-beating brainbox, the surest route was to get an A grade at A-level chemistry.

Which is why I’ve been so impressed with the Royal Society of Chemistry’s recent experiments in media relations. An early news page in Saturday’s Guardian  carried a great weekend story about the Society’s competition to find the best way of saving the looted gold in the closing scene of the iconic 1960s heist film The Italian Job. How could chemistry, surely the preserve of men sporting corduroy jackets with leather elbow pads, be this hip?

Only a couple of weeks previously, there was the Society again, launching its 2009 theme of food sustainability with servings on the street in Piccadilly, London, of Victorian workhouse staple -gruel -prepared by a French chef and dished up on the day before Dickensian musical, “Oliver”, was revived in West End theatreland. 

And, in between times, the Society’s latest report into food sustainability was bolstered by a timely reference to new President Obama’s placing of science back on the US Government’s agenda.

With some creative ideas and clever execution, what could have been as dry as reciting the Periodic Table is given life and some great media coverage to boot.

Royal Society of Chemistry, go to the top of the class, but please be careful with that bunsen burner.