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A former boss of mine used to joke that top City finance houses would have an in-house press team and they would need to hire a PR agency so they could always have someone to blame whenever anything went wrong! I’ve been reminded of that many times in recent weeks when all the clever bankers seem to be running round in a mad panic as the financial system slowly melts around their ears.

It also jumped out at me this morning when I read an interview with the outgoing and incoming directors of trendy thinktank Policy Exchange in today’s Guardian. They’ve done some really interesting work over the last couple of years and have enjoyed a dizzy rise to prominence.

Full disclosure - I’ve done some work with Jesse Norman, senior fellow of the Policy Exchange over the last couple of years. I’ve also observed how the rise in popularity of the Cameron project and the revolving door between Policy Ex people and Tory HQ has boosted their media cache´.

But I think they were badly caught out by their release of a report last month that suggested entire swathes of the North of England should be closed down and the population moved to the home counties. A media package more toxic than the average sub-prime hedge fund.

It seems they were genuinely caught out by the media coverage being largely negative. They seemed shocked that the coverage was pretty selective and didn’t dig too deep into the fine detail?! Erm, yes, welcome to the British media:)

Even the Guardian and the Telegraph are writing for Mr and Mrs Average and need to pick a headline point with two supporting points. Add in two quotes, the more colourful the better and try and remember that your average middle englander neither wants to be forced out of York, Warrington or the Wirral or have bus loads of Mackems and Scousers arriving into newly built trailer parks in their back yards. So the press did what it does best - it frightened its readers!

Policy Ex also caught out here - forgetting that with prominence comes scrutiny.

Policy Ex are blaming it on the PR agency. They use InHouse PR , just like Boris ( a lot of Policy Ex’s people also went to work for Boris).  If their agency didn’t voice its concerns strongly enough then it has learnt a powerful lesson in when to be brave in their client advice. But come on, this study was a ticking timebomb and everyone involved should have known the message, the product, was plain wrong. 

Observers who attended the last Policy Ex Chrsitmas party remarked on how different it was to the year before. More corporates and hangers on, cheque books being flashed seductively and champagne flowing.  May be they got a bit too giddy…….Labourhome is less charitable…..

The Evening Standard has chased this scoop all week. So has PR Week as it seeks to preserve it’s status as bulletin board for all spin doctor type developments. BUT when Boris Johnson’s campaign chose to announce the big name broadcast journalist who Westminster reckoned was to become his new Head of Comms it was the blogosphere, Iain Dale and ConservativeHome in particular, who were given the exclusive that it is to be Guto Harri, formerly of the Beeb.

Makes sense. The Tory party is all about finding influence in society and using it. Iain’s readership is around 100,000 unique users per month but its not how many…..it’s who. Most factions in the Tory family, from Tory boys and blue rinsers right up to Lords and cabinet ministers check out Iain’s mix of gossip and musings at least once a week. Even Michael Ashcroft is a generous friend.

He also has excellent links to the Fourth Estate. He has a weekly column in the Telegraph, a weekly TV show on Telegraph TV, his blog is read daily by most political journalists and his tip-offs regularly become stories in the mainstream press. He’s also regularly wheeled out as a spokesperson for the blogosphere by Newsnight and the Today programme - two outlets that have high quality thresholds.

The interesting thing is, Iain is by no means a 21st Century ipod listening, techie-geek, early adopter. He’s just an old fashioned influence-finder who is using a simple online template to find an audience. 

Brands and public organisations take note - there are many like him.