Now, unless you’ve been living on Mars or with that recently discovered tribe of rainforest indians, it can’t have escaped your notice that the economy’s in trouble.

So how can Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling’s comments in the Guardian be blamed directly for a fall in the pound and the FTSE?

Commentators have been banging on for months about the likely longevity of this financial crisis, so how do the Chancellor’s words have such a direct influence on the markets?

Well, maybe they do; maybe they don’t. But, the point is, the confluence of these two events is too tempting not to connect in the eyes of the media. That might be exposing my somewhat rudimentary grasp of international finance, but it goes to show that loose talk - if not costing lives in this instance - may not help Mr Darling come Cabinet reshuffle time.

The eyes of the world’s media are trained on Denver, the scene of the Democrat National Convention (DNC), where Barack Obama aims to show everyone that he can hold the most powerful (elected) role on the planet. You would expect it to be a media circus but lets peak behind the curtains a bit.

This race has seen relations with the blogosphere professionalised in a way that holds many lessons for corporate and public bodies over here in the UK. Here’s an example. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is investing big in a media centre for bloggers at the DNC. Highlights;

 Google Inc. will help set up a two-story, 8,000 square-foot headquarters for hundreds of bloggers descending on the Democratic convention in Denver next week, and it will offer similar services at the Republican convention in September, as new media gain influence in politics.With its financial support for the “Big Tent” blogger facility at the Democratic convention, Google stands to gain exposure and goodwill from 500 or so bloggers who paid $100 for access to the facility, run by a coalition of bloggers. Google’s software and services will be featured, including a kiosk in the public area of the tent where anyone can post videos on YouTube. “Four years ago, YouTube hadn’t been founded yet. Now, it will have booths at each convention to help delegates and bloggers upload videos taken on the floor or at events around town.

“It’s an amazing opportunity for us. You don’t get all these people in one place but every four years,” says Robert Boorstin, director of corporate and policy communications in Google’s Washington office and a former Clinton administration official.

Not only will bloggers have Internet access, workspaces and couches for napping in the “Big Tent” headquarters, they will be provided food and beverages, Google-sponsored massages, smoothies and a candy buffet. On the final night of the convention, Google is co-sponsoring a bash with Vanity Fair magazine for convention-goers and journalists that has become one of the hottest party invites.

Google will offer similar amenities for bloggers and new-media reporters who attend the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., company officials say. It will demo a variety of new political tools next week, including a search function on YouTube that will offer almost real-time keyword searches of convention speech videos.

The fascinating bit is that McCain’s team actually have set up base just a few blocks from the convention centre to counter the messaging! What does that involve? Well, you hire a big venue, invite all your mainstream media chums (don’t really have to invite - they’ll come automatically once you tell them where you’re gonna be), give bloggers free hotel rooms, and make sure you’ve got big trucks with satellite dishes on them.

Also bring along a few protestors who have some beef with Obama (either they’re “pro-Hillary” or “pro-life” or something or other), and then bring a few far left anarchist protestors as well (just to spice things up). Then go around the city and shake hands and kiss babies, making you look like the man on the street, and the black guy is made to look like an elitist rock-star.

They’ve set up this site as a focus for the ‘counter-messaging’ (great American-type term that will inevitably surface here!).

They’ve posted the reaction from Fox News’ Brit Hume on the home page:

“What’s interesting about this to me is I have never seen the campaign that is idle, if you will, during the other candidate’s nominating convention have as much of an impact before, and I think it owes something to the phenomenon of these what we call ads, and I guess in some broad sense they are. But what they really are, are Internet videos that are being published to the Internet and they spread around in this day and age very quickly and are probably as good as paid ads and I guess there’s some paid advertising going on. But, this is, wouldn’t you say Carl, from your experience, that this has been remarkable the extent to which the McCain camp has succeeded in intervening, so to speak, in this convention?”

Spent the bank holiday at the Edinburgh Fringe. Me and the wife go every year. She’s a financial journalist and is invited as a guest of Intelligent Finance, who have a press trip comprising of about 20 financial journalists plus partners:)

The brand link is through IF’s sponsorship of the fringe comedy awards, which used to be the Perrier awards and are now the IF.comedy awards. Great idea to link to something that could be described as a very popular niche! IF are a Scottish based company, owned by HBOS, and this kind of hospitality is a fantastic excuse to get their core, largely London based media away to a weekend on their home patch.

They always take us to see a top comedian on the Saturday night after a slap-up dinner at the Scotsman hotel and the evening culminates in the IF.comedy awards ceremony at the Jamhouse. Its a good way to finish off the evening - drinks, canapes, VIP section, Neil and Christine Hamilton (?!). But the awards themselves lasted about 15 minutes and were basically a 5 minute bite of last year’s winners announcing this year’s winners. They could have done so much more with it. Made it a real event that everyone wants to be at regardless of any free drinks.

I actually spent the whole weekend thinking what I’d do with the fringe for the benefit of my clients. I know, I know its sad but I blame too much creative stimulation and the coffee and toffee muffins at our basecamp, the excellent Chocolate Soup.

Ok, so what would I do if IF were a client? Why not involve your customers in the brand and get them to rate a group of up and coming comedians via YouTube? Budding comics would post 5 minute demos of themselves on an IF.comedy channel.

This thing would be worth doing because all the finalists would end up doing a turn at an enhanced IF.comedy awards evening. with stronger press profile (great for the brand) and possibly televised via the web, attracting traffic to an IF branded web presence. The IF.comedy site is great but could have more ongoing interaction. There is a Facebook group but its got barely 200 members and again, not a lot regularly going on that would incentivise you tell your friends. Is there any blogger outreach?

Whenever we’re at the Fringe we always disregard the official brochure. Its a doorstop and picking shows is the proverbial needle in haystack job. So you ask other folk. People in the same hotel, people who were there last weekend. Or you walk up and down the Royal Mile, chatting to budding producers and performers. But there still hundreds of shows and fresh talent that you’ll miss. Surely this is screaming out for a Tripadvisor type service, where folk post about acts/shows they’ve seen and other people can agree/disagree? Well promoted this would attract critical mass and you could plan your w/end well in advance.

I Googled but couldn’t find one. Can anyone let me know if I’ve missed it before I put my life savings into starting one (that’s a joke, Boss:))  

Other highlights:

- A drama called Borough High Street - dark drama about two gay students and cocaine addiction. Acting, direction and writing excellent! What drew me in? It was well promoted by the flyers, guys who were chatting to us on the street and the chalk outlines all over town pointing towards the venue.

- Chocolate and cinnemon soups at Chocolate Soup.

- RANDOM EXCLUSIVE: Got talking to a source ‘extremely close’ to Simon Fuller who says that Fuller and David Beckham plan to buy a US soccer team when Beckham retires and basically use all of their combined stardust to create an international football hub that competes in the Champions League……

Forget your two litres of water a day. Cancel your colonical irrigation appointment. It’s time for the marketing industry to undergo a detox.

Steve Young, director at Winning Pitch, a business which assists individuals and companies to achieve profitable breakthroughs in revenue performance, has spoken out to put sales and marketing under the cost-cutting spotlight:
“While companies have ‘streamlined’ their factory floors and operations as the credit crunch continues to hit hard, few have dared to put sales and marketing under the same scrutiny – usually for fear of what they might find. However, in the vast majority of sectors, there is a huge amount of waste in marketing, which few companies have even noticed, let alone tried to address.”

With the recent conversations in the blogosphere about the death of PR, perhaps it’s not just this field of marketing that needs to refine the ‘usual way’ of doing things.

“It seems that half of what marketing professionals do is hugely wasteful. For example, a paltry two to three per cent response on a direct mail campaign is seen as successful and a one in twenty conversion rate in telesales is seen as phenomenal. Many advertising campaigns are based on the ‘drip effect’, and, despite an enthusiastic launch, most websites are rarely updated and often under-promoted. To compound the issue, most marketing and salespeople are driven, measured and even incentivised by sales volume – not profit volume.”

Steve goes on to state the seven ways in which most marketing is wasteful:

1. Waiting
This could be waiting for returns from a customer questionnaire or leaflet, waiting for another person to complete some other work, waiting for someone to make a decision or waiting for a call or meeting with a customer.

2. Wasted effort
Too many people make appointments with people who will never buy, spend time checking others’ work, do a mailshot of 500 when they can only follow up 50, retype proposals that you have on file, and many other duplications that could so easily be avoided.

3. Making mistakes
This could be as simple and careless as making spelling errors in a leaflet, or as costly as recruiting a salesman who, it turns out, can’t sell.

4. Poor admin and communications
Jargon puts people off, as does inviting prospects to an event taking place the same evening or not responding to enquiries quickly enough.

5. Inconsistent ways of working
Not having standard ways of doing things can lead to unpredictable timings and performance levels, trial and error and difficulty in training staff.

6. Unnecessary inventory
It’s no use being a jack of all trades – don’t hold an extra wide product range just in case, don’t print an extra thousand copies of a leaflet just in case, and don’t hold on to too many qualified prospects.

7. Untapped human potential
Not taking advantage of an individual’s latent talent or listening to new ideas from staff is a critical mistake for too many businesses.

So how can companies and agencies eliminate these waste by-products of the marketing industry?

“The surprisingly simple answer is to cut all the marketing mumbo-jumbo down to three key processes: finding customers, winning customers and growing customers. It’s then a matter of finding out how each process is performing currently, how it’s being measured, at which steps it goes wrong, where and how improvements can be made, and how to make these improvements a way of life.

“In the vast majority of cases, sales and marketing processes are both ineffective and inefficient. To maximise results, however, the detox exercise is much more than simple cost-cutting. You must be skilled in mapping and re-engineering techniques, and have the people skills to ensure that the team buys into the new approach, owns the new approach and continues to improve the new approach. But when you get it right, you will be stunned by the results.”

I don’t know about you but I’m feeling better already.

Spending the whole of August living in New York City, working at one of the world’s most talented agencies – TBWA\Chiat\Day, and still getting paid. Not a bad position to be in. How did it come about? Here’s the deal… 

As part of TBWA\Manchester’s ongoing push to build connections in our worldwide network, I’m out here to live, breath, experience and learn, first hand, how one of our most recognised network agencies works. It also means that we can keep ahead of the trends by making the most of the media and sector insights out here that we can take back and use for our clients. 

So, I’m at the work pod – naturally a Mac given that only geeks have PCs out here. It’s summertime hours and I’m still here, which does make me a bit of a geek but I like the buzz about this place. The agency, located on Madison Avenue, is a similar size to TBWA\Manchester (around 200ish people). There are 2 receptions, 3 floors, and walls that are plastered in Disruption case studies of some of the biggest and best brands you’ll ever come across. From Absolut Vodka, known for campaigns such as the Sex And The City placement through to Mars, whose Skittles campaign swept the floor at Cannes this year, beating Cadbury’s over exploited gorilla. 

There’s also a ‘firsts’ wall, spanning across a global map to reveal achievements of TBWA\ agencies worldwide. From holding the first vertical sprint up a 33 storey building and being the first to use U2 in a commercial through to creating China’s first interactive billboard and being the first to use currency as a medium, it gives you a sense of pride to know that you’re part of something so big and ambitious. 

First impressions? Makes for a pretty cool place to work in, and the fact that it’s 2 blocks from Saks and 2 streets across from New York’s hottest spa – Bliss – helps settle me in even more, despite the credit card looking tired and weary already.

You may remember the story of the graduate who broke the bank!? Not a story about unpaid library fines but an enterprising young guy who used new media, particularly Facebook, to organise a protest against HSBC levvying charges on its graduate accounts. View our interview with him here. He found many, many people who felt as strongly as him and they organised petitions, flash-mobbed flagship branches, got mainstream media interested and HSBC blinked first.

Well he’s up to his old tricks again! He’s working as Campaigns Officer for the Burma Campaign  using new media to mobilise protest against human rights abuses in Burma (check out their activities and huge member base on Facebook). Finding supporters in the country who feed stories out that he uses to funnel to UK media, who then build up trust a mutually beneficial relationship with him. It also keeps people talking and focusing attention on what’s going on ie a truly terrible situation that can easily be forgotten about due to its geographical distance from here.

His latest trick is to name and shame British insurers that are profiting from doing business in Burma. Already two insurers, XL and Chubb, have pulled out of Burma and it’s causing a kerfuffle amongst the bowler hats in the City of London. They’ll keep up the pressure by exploiting their supporter base on/offline. They recently asked over 20,000 supporters to contact the ‘Dirty Insurance Companies’ via email/post, urging them to pull out.

Also check out the kinds of people they’re getting behind their campaigns.

There’s a lot of hesitation when it comes to joining in conversations online through blogs, forums etc. Questions I get asked include - are there enough readers to make it worthwhile? will we get a barrage of abuse from other commenters?

An organisation I occasionally work with is the Centre For Cities, a think tank spun out from the IPPR. Their media strategy is innovative and I often natter to Claire Hibbit and Rosi Taylor, who head up their PR team, about innovating in new media channels.

The last couple of days has seen cities policy shoot up the agenda thanks to the Policy Exchange’s, ahem… contraversial report suggesting some Northern cities be closed down and the population bussed down to the south east.

The reaction of Centre For Cities was interesting. They responded via traditional media, as you’d expect. But they were also savvy enough to realise that opinion is influenced via online discussion. You can reach your opinion leader audience by joining discussion online, just like meeting up for coffee or speaking at a conference or being interviewed on the Today programme.

You just have to understand the media you are dealing with. Rosi was monitoring discussion and offering the expertise of Head of Policy, Adam Marshall, to contribute insight to the discussions. Adam is genuinely an expert here and has done some high quality work but he remembered that this was a conversation. He was using accessible language and then linking off to an epolitix article for anyone that wanted a more in-depth analysis.

By posting, quickly, here, here, here, here and here, many MPs, councillors, journalists and policy wonks (ie their target market) have quickly got Centre For Cities on their radar, what their expertise and knowledge is and that they are responsive.

Just thought it was worth sharing as its an example that can be applied in any area…..

A good PR consultant is a good communicator. To do that well we have to understand all our audiences. What do they want from our brand and when. Its not what we say to them its what they hear.

We have a society that is less deferent. They don’t want to be fobbed off with a script and they don’t want to be talked down to. Yet this what so many public and private sector organisations do, increasingly so as so many retreat from talking to customers or service users in physical locations.

I had a ding-dong with a Virgin Trains call centre person who refused to give me their advertised complimentary first class ticket, as an apology for leaving me stranded for hours and hours and hours on the West Coast mainline, during the Network Rail fiasco in the new year. I qualified, I endured the pain and had the ticket stamp to prove it, I have spent thousands with Virgin over the past few years and could prove it through my online account…..but applied for the offer after the deadline. It was entirely possible for them to adopt a human, commonsense approach based upon the degree to which they valued me as a customer. But Computer Said No!

OK, I won’t exactly take my custom elsewhere but in my job, I speak to politicians, journalists, regeneration professionals all the time. I used to always remark how great the West Coast upgrade was in conversations. Now I’ll remark on Virgin’s rubbish customer approach.

However at least this wasn’t a life or death situation. I was appalled to read the harrowing account, by Jenni Russell in the Guardian, of her inability to reach her elderly mother, living many miles away in a rural location, desperately trying to help her elderly father who was having a stroke.  There was a fault on the BT line. When she called BT’s customer ‘help’ centre to fix it they couldn’t help because it wasn’t in the script, the right person had gone home for his tea, computer basically said no!

This is wrong on so many communications, professional and humanitarian levels but like Jenni says, the response from consumers should be to vote with their feet and reward a brand that treats its customers like people rather than a cost. I hope to be advising the comms of organisations like that. I’ve got a few ideas………

Marketeers looking for a crash course on social media could do much worse than reading over the list of 12 Historical Social Media (Marketing) Moments compiled by Julian Cole of Adspace Pioneers.

He’s asking for other great moments to add to the list. Cue the discussion, disagreement and inevitable project defining the moments that will make this era of marketing memorable.

Still hungry for more? You can download and read 20 free eBooks about social media as noted by Chris Brogan.

Enjoy your homework. I expect it on my desk first thing Monday morning!

Hat tip: The WOMMA Word

They’re talking about you. Right on your doorstep. In front of your restaurant, your bar, your shop. Remember the poor service you gave that guy? Well now everyone who walks past knows about it. They know which bartender pours the best cocktails. They know who to speak to in order to get the best seat. They know that you offer discounts to ’selected’ customers. They know that your bar is better than your neighbours.

How do they know? The writing’s on the wall…but you probably don’t see it yet. You won’t see it until you have an iPhone and an application that I believe will change how we see the world around us. Graffitio is so simple, it’s genius.

“Attach conversations to the places you go and the things you see! As soon as you open Graffitio, it looks around you for Walls created by other users at restaurants, bars, stores, parks, events, or anywhere else you could imagine.

Read what other people have to say, and leave your own thoughts behind for others to find later. You can even create your own Walls. Graffitio connects you to people who have been there before and those who will follow.”

It’s just one of the many applications now available for the iPhone which make great use of the location-specific data. This isn’t the first time this technology has been talked about but it is the first time I’ve held it in my hand. There is no doubt other similar applications will soon find their way onto other mobile devices but in the meantime, Graffitio has a great opportunity to take the lead in this field.

At the moment the creator, anoopr, admits there are problems:

“Graffitio is still pretty raw. Someone on Twitter said that Release 3 is a solid 1.0, and I agree with that. In it’s current form, it’s not impressive. I’m really flattered that so many of you are so excited about it and see its potential. It’s really inspiring, and why I’m working my ass off to get new features into your hands.”

And, of course, the walls are being abused by ‘vandals’ who just want their make their mark with profanity but you can’t deny the potential.

For years, we’ve been told that location-specific technology will allow advertisers to jump out at us as we walk down the street, screaming out special offers, new products and ‘exclusive’ events. In using Graffitio, I see a very different world. One run by consumers who can share information, practically writing it on the wall of the establishment for all to see, allowing them to make a judgement without walking inside.

Some may see it as a mobile version of trustedplaces. I see it as one of the most powerful consumer tools of the future available today and PRs need to keep a close eye on how this technology develops because all the press coverage you work so hard to achieve just to get someone to walk in the door could be undone with the bad review they read on the doorstep.