pr-media-blog.co.uk

Friday night is no time to post so I’m going to keep it snappy and then take a break.  I simply wanted to record my glowing admiration for the latest Kit Kat campaign.

It is simplicity itself. The first worldwide website where nothing happens does nothing but invite visitors to take a break and the branding is just visible enough to make the point.  It is bang on brand, reinforces the core message and it uses the web in an innovative way.   It also takes real advantage of the trend towards word of mouth communication across the social web.  My recommendation to view the site came via twitter from the Guardian’s Jemima Kiss, no less.  Fans and followers of Jemima will understand just what an achievement that is.

It’s rare I last as late as the BBC’s weekly, televised political shouting match,  Question Time. But the great DVD I was watching last night “borked” (teen speak for broken technology, kids), leaving me no option but to tune in.

And I’m glad I did, as the polar differences between being an effective spokesperson for your cause and looking like a weasel were placed in stark relief.

In the red corner, Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights organisation Liberty; and in the blue corner, Geoff Hoon, secretary of state for Transport.

The audience question focused on the Government’s insistence to the High Court that files about a terrorist suspect - who alleges torture by British and American agents - should remain secret because of national security.

Sure, it’s Chakrabarti’s brief to be indignant about these matters, but she was incandescent with rage. When in full flow, stabbing the air with her finger and trying (but failing) not to give Hoon a sideways glance of pure contempt, you wanted to go with her, right back to that High Court, and demand summary justice. Leaving aside the complexities of the case, it was clear who the audience was backing on this one.

Hoon - not the most charismatic of contemporary politicians - had the expression of a man looking into the abyss as he realised what he had to follow. And he made the mistake of describing his adversary’s monologue as “emotional”, which inadvertently emphasised his utter lack of emotion. To the audience, that says: “I can’t get emotional about torture”. Not great, as Obama is calling time on Guantanamo and all its associations with human rights abuses. OK, it’s not Hoon’s ministerial brief, but on Question Time he is the Government, and the image conveyed was icier than a country lane in Cornwall this week.

An unusual addition to the programme’s panel this week was the singer, Will Young. Not sure what the programme makers expected him to add (a degree in politics doesn’t automatically make you a spokesman for a generation), but Guardian blogger, Heidi Stephens, was thoroughly pleased with Will’s contribution. Call me a killjoy, but I’d rather he concentrated on singing. And even then…

Israel has embraced new media as a vital tool in the latest Gaza conflict. 

This is part of an active PR strategy it has been formulating since early 2008 according to Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, discussing whether the British media is anti-Israeli on the Media Talk podcast. 

Freedland pinpoints the formation of the National Information Directorate as a key turning point in how this conflict is perceived. The new Directorate was formed after an inquiry into why the media didn’t fully report Israel’s actions in Lebanon in 2006. Israel felt the world perceived it as Goliath against David. 

As Aviv Shir-on, foreign ministry deputy director-general for public affairs is reported as saying: “In the war of the pictures we lose, so you need to correct or balance it in other ways. Support doesn’t mean the world is standing behind us, but it does mean people understanding what we are doing and why.” 

In his interview, Freedland points out that about six months ago the Directorate started to court the publications like the Guardian and the BBC. The reason he believes was not only because of their important role in the UK but their websites, by definition are international publications which are widely read and respected in influential countries such as United States. This is also the case in Israel itself where, as Freedland says, the influential daily newspaper Haaretz  is seen as a foreign publication due to its high readership levels in the United States.  

Israel’s approach appears to have had some success. Justification was given for Israel’s actions in many news reports and particularly on the BBC, where it cited recent Hamas attacks on Israel. This had been absent from the reporting in the Lebanon war in 2006 in which the Israelis felt portrayed as an unprovoked aggressor. Major Avital Leibovich, spokesperson for the Israeli military, has said: “Quiet a few outlets are very favourable to Israel, namely by showing [it] suffering….I am sure it is a result of the co-ordination.” 

It is not just newspaper websites that have been the subject of the Directorate’s attention. In recent months they have been targeting not only Jewish communities and friendship leagues but bloggers and backers using online networks. Since the conflict has started it has even started a YouTube  channel. 

Regardless of the legitimacy of Israel’s military action, it has seen new media as a way of fighting back in the propaganda war.  

Welcome to the world of digital communications.

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

US President elect, Barack Obama, has finally spoken out about the crisis in Gaza, saying: “The loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel is a source of deep concern for me.” But, for some, his comments are too little and too late.

The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall - not one for rash pronouncements - had already questioned the Obama’s ”keep shtum” strategy, suggesting that his silence may give the impression he either “shares [George] Bush’s bias [in favour of Israel] or simply does not care.” This image, surely, would be unthinkable for the man voted in on a platform of “change” and of reaching out to a world divided by US foreign policy. And how would Obama’s delayed response play in the Arab world? 

Middle East-based English language news source, Al Jazeera, was on Obama’s case before the close of 2008, quoting Mark Perry, Washington Director of the Conflicts Forum group with the damning: “Silence sounds like complicity”.

According not only to protocol but, apparently, also to the US constitutution, there is ”only one president at at time”, so hampering anything Obama may actually want to say on the Gaza situation.

Problem is, those looking for the soon-to-be leader of the free world to take action - or at least take a stance - are not interested in presidential protocol.

Saying something or saying nothing: before he has the elected authority to do anything about it, neither is a palatable option for Obama on an issue as complex as Israel and the Palestinians.

But from his 20 January inauguration, his credibility and fulfilling of the promise he presented at election time will hang on talking and acting clearly and quickly.

The “word of mouth” concept has been thoroughly appropriated by social media as its own, and rightly so. But it’s still going on off-line and in the most unlikely places.

With no national advertising campaigns, how else would AB demographic shoppers be helping to push up the profits of the discounter to end them all, Poundland? It’s probably not on their usual shopping route and they might be snobbish about their purchasing, but when you hear that everything costs no more than a quid a 20%-off deal at John Lewis or House of Fraser just doesn’t cut it.

And when did you last read a full-page of good business news in a national newspaper? Saturday’s piece on Poundland was exactly that.

Poundland has built a reputation by defying all the sophistication of modern retailing by simply doing what it says on the tin - selling at the same consistently, iconically cheap price.  

It’s when you don’t fufil your “brand promise” that you come unstuck. Take the Christmas theme parks currently choosing to prefix themselves “Lapland”. It’s a risky strategy, especially if you’re located in Milton Keynes. None of them are, but could they be any less like the destination whose spirit of Christmas they’re aspiring to capture?

As a parish councillor commented on one of the Lapland-themed days out: “Does it look like Lapland to you? It doesn’t to me.” The Lapland New Forest facility is now closed; but maybe it could have survived by scrapping the impossibly aspirational association with Lapland and achieving true authenticity by calling itself “Christmas in the Mud”.

The Guardian’s chief iconoclast, Charlie Booker, feels the failed Lapland attractions could have flourished with a wave of ironic visitors on a macabre pilgrimage as a result of the bad press. But kids and Christmas don’t do irony well and Santa is a brand you don’t mess with, as Lapland UK owner, Mike Battle says: “If you get it right people will love you. If you get it wrong, they’ll want your head.”

How does a city with a reputation for rudeness change its image?

The rudeness of Paris and its inhabitants is legendary, though I confess to have experienced none of it when last there. In fact, we got hugged to death in a restaurant by the staff. So, is the Parisian glumness nothing more than an urban myth cooked up by non-French speaking Brits and Americans?

Well, the Paris tourist board seems to think there’s a problem, having launched the Paris Greeter scheme, which provides local volunteers who are not only “enthusiastic and friendly” but show visitors the “the true Paris, the way Parisians live it and love it.”

So far, so good. But Parisian, Agnes Poirier, writing in the Guardian was less than impressed when trying to obtain the services of a Paris Greeter. After weeks, she’d heard nothing apart from an email saying the search was on for a suitable greeter. She says:  “I knew it: the friendly Parisian is a myth - even an association whose sole aim is to greet foreigners can’t manage to muster up a single volunteer. It must be a joke: the Parisian greeter who cannot be bothered to greet.”

Such is her personal commitment to making up for Paris’ Gallic shoulder shrugging in the direction of visitors, she has offered to give a personal tour herself, accompanied by a photographer to record the whole thing.

Now that’s what you call a welcome. A bientot.

More than a nation of dog lovers, the British love their cars. Third largest car in the EU, 2.4m new cars registered in 2007 and 850,000 employed by the industry. But more even than cars, I’d say we love a bargain.And what a bargain online car dealer, Broadspeed.com, was offering this week: £20 grand worth of Dodge Avenger, but not just one - “buy one, get one free”.  Company MD, Simon Empson, speaking in The Guardian, couldn’t have been more understated when he said: “It’s the power of marketing, I suppose.” Amen, came the holy choir of marketeers across the UK.

Serious times call for serious measures. And those measures now include the motor industry calling directly on the Government to orchestrate a funding package to resuscitate the retail motor trade. The Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) signalled the depth of the problem back in August, when reporting that month’s sales as the worst since 1966. At the time the SMMT caught some flak from the trade for “talking down the market”, and the messages seemed confusing, as with a bi-annual registration change the old focus on comparing August sales seemed misplaced.

But the industry’s lobbyists could clearly see the stark words written in the grime of the car market’s chassis. Yet it was probably David Smith, head of major - and iconic - motor manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover, going on the Today programme that added the true weight of the motor business to helping shift interest rates south by 1.5% at the end of last week. So, with potentially more cash slushing around people’s wallets and the prospect of another publicly-funded bail out package, the car industry should be quids in. But, as the BOGOF dealer offer showed, it’s time to be innovative in marketing, with a combination of tactics to drive people through showroom doors as well as giving them a good deal. It’s also an opportunity to test drivers’ brand loyalty - if someone will try a new marque at the right price, that brand might win a new customer for life.

Talking about the situation with my father - a motor business veteran of 50 years - he was remarkably sanguine. Having seen and sold his way out of economic lows across the decades - when even some UK car makers were not just helped by the state, but owned by it - the industry, he said, would get back in gear again.

Do you think straight ahead, from side to side or from one corner to the opposite corner?

Well, you can now find out, care of a new online self-assessment made available by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA).

The point is, an ideal candidate for the creative, communication industries should have - as opposed to just logical linear thinking or solely creative lateral thinking - what’s known as diagonal thinking, a winning blend of the two.

The Guardian’s weekend feature on the concept included our own group’s Tim Lindsay, president of TBWA\UK & Ireland who, according to the IPA’s test results so far, is the ”most diagonal thinker in the world”, though he modestly claims to be not much good at thinking either linearly or laterally. 

All you can do is take the test and be prepared to re-think your geometry.

Budding journalists and people writing for journalists (that’s you, PR people) could do worse than read the Guardian’s writing guide to journalism out today.

The introduction by columnist and former Times editor, Simon Jenkins, is a must-read for anyone tasked with communicating news via the written word.

He recalls a “ferocious sub editor” at The Times who would - after a reading a draft report - pose the million dollar question: “What is it you are really trying to tell me?”. Exactly what PR people should be thinking before they lay a hand on a keyboard.

Great tips for crafting a great story include:

- make every paragraph a single idea.

- Make nouns and verbs the workhorses of each sentence.

- Delete all adjectives and adverbs unless absolutely essential.

- Never use sloppy words, such as “interesting”.

- Begin every story with who, what, when and where.

But excellent writing - a skill which Jenkins sees as deplorably absent in today’s society - is the lesser part of the journalist’s armoury; the signs of the natural reporter are curiosity, the desire to communicate experiences, cunning and the gift to narrate. As he says, there is “no substitute for the person who saw it happen”, which opens the door for what we now know as citizen journalists.

When I hear colleagues talking about “the press release” or even truncated to “the release”, I shudder. A press release is merely a tool, a medium for the really important element: the story - that is what journalists are looking for.

Maybe that’s pedantic. Maybe I should’ve been a sub editor.

-

What an interesting autumn of politics lies ahead. Here, the Labour party conference kicks off in a week while ministers re-run the Mutiny on the Bounty and, in the States, the final reckoning for Obama and McCain.

BBC4’s series about American politics last night featured the 1972 Robert Redford film, The Candidate, which looks incredibly prescient about the way politics has evolved in the UK. In it, a fundamentally good bloke with honest convictions gets absorbed into the business of winning elections, complete with the “style over content” manipulation of voters that Gordon Brown probably wishes he’d picked up from Tony Blair. Telling indeed is the final scene when, on realising he’s won, Redford’s character turns to his campaign manager, pleading: “What do we do now?” So much for the manifesto, then.

Meanwhile, in the US presidential race, a clear distinction has emerged between the candidates’ strategies. Michael Tomasky’s blog in The Guardian explains how McCain’s campaign is focused on winning the “news cycle”, in other words, attacking Obama through adverts and generating stories in the mainstream media. Obama, conversely, is concentrating on grass roots politics by having a greater number of local offices than his opponent in every state, registering voters and building support in advance of November 4.

These contrasting approaches seem to illustrate some of the tensions between old and new media tactics; whether it’s better to have the traditional media on your side or get through to people directly, as in the social media world.

Question is, will it work? As one of the campaign managers in The Candidate says to a bemused Redford: “We know this is all bullshit, but at least they’re believing it.”