Urgently looking for a holiday for x2 journalists

PR Bunnies are getting a stuffing at the moment from various journalist blogs about bad pitches on stories – Charles Arthur obviously has some genuine grievances as he works in such a specialist area at The Guardian and its tech section. But Getting Ink has a similar shtick.
But I do wonder if they do protest too much. For those of you who subscribe to the various news feeds and online journalist query services you might wonder what the journalists actually think we do. And remember I was a journalist for many years – back in the day when all we had was notebook and shorthand, and actually went out to talk to people about their dead son, or decrepit council house dwellers about dog shit on the pavement, and do court and council.
They certainly don’t appear to think that PR is a profession aimed at managing the reputation of clients and their products and services. Indeed, judging by the requests below they seem to think that we have access to the sort of people the Red Tops usually have on their front page. And I don’t wish to point the finger at the Red Tops because we get similar requests from the broadsheets, women’s magazines and others.
Here are just a few of the genuine requests we have had from journalists currently on deadline:

Hi, we're looking for genuine members of the Mile High Club for a feature. They need to be in their 20s or early 30s and quite photogenic. We need a 15 minute phone interview with them about their experience - why did they do it, how was it, and would they do it again?
We also need a pic of them. We pay £100 on publication and £25 tip off fee.
Thanks.

Fantastic – If I was PRO at BA, EastyJet or RyanAir I would clearly think we have a solid media proposition here – NOT.

I would like to speak to women who have had at least two abortions. They can be photographed in silhouette and their identity can be protected. I need three women - one in her 20's, 30's and 40's. The case studies would be used along side a report of government figures that state an abortion is carried out in the UK every three minutes. I am interested in why the women had the abortion in the first place, how they feel about it now and their reaction to the figures mentioned earlier. There would be a payment of £100 to each study and I would endeavour to mention any organisation that has helped.

Fantastic – what a great opportunity for my client AbortionsRUs! I must get on the phone to this thrusting investigative journalist. What other seedy clients can I peddle - um?

Possible magazine feature on drugs and the physical harm.
Are you a woman of 25-35 who does or has taken coke? Has doing so damaged your nose causing septum erosion? How has this changed your life and are you still using despite this? Tell us your story by contacting…

For God’s sake we are a PR company … we’re still using by the way though, Shoot up anyone?

I'm looking for women in their 20s and 30s who've made a conscious decision to give up sex for a year or so because they are fed up of ending up with the wrong men, choosing blokes who only want sex but nothing more, or even having one night stands which they've later regretted. The idea is that these women are taking a breather from dating and sex to work out what they really want from a man and how best to get it. I'd require a telephone interview and studio photoshoot.

Give me strength.

Urgently looking for a holiday for x2 journalists for feature to be written later in the year. Full credits given

Presumably earlier holiday plans had gone awry. I don't know.

And yes they are all real. What happened to old-fashioned, get-up-and-go-find-a-story-for-you- self-school-of-journalism? I wonder what some editors and news desks would think if they knew their staff were doing this? Perhaps they do? Oh, and by the way we never, never, get these requests from regional newspapers.
Or perhaps this is just one of the inevitable by-products of the internet. Any views? I did a version of this post last year and the requests we are getting still continue to scrape the barrel. The Daily Mail is the worst by the way – I think I should make this a regular feature. Watch this space.
I suggest Worst News Trawl Of the Day. Should I include names?

Is Facebook the death of blogging?

With reference to the above question – I simply don’t know.
I’ve run blogs and social networks – Facebook, Linkedin, Fuelmyblog, and my own sites for getting on for two years now. Indeed, I went through Web1.0 and lost a lot of money at the time with Venturedome.com, so I am intrigued what will happen with the whole social media gig – including blogs and social networks.
However, the current interest in social networks (we have a lot of client asking us about it) is similar to the hype back in 2000 and let’s face it some will work and some will not. Facebook is in the ascendant at the moment and I love it and MySpace seems to be full of porn and teenage testerone and oestrogen and I hate it. An age thing perhaps?
The reality is that blogs will continue to grow (86 million according to Technorati today). But Facebook and similar sites have changed things.
Personal publishing – ie blogs - is more than just text, it spans all media. Videos, music and photos allowing people to share ideas whatever platform they use. Blogs were all about starting a conversation – if you were interested you would join in, engage, maybe blog yourself. That’s how I started.
Through my blog I have met lots of interesting people in the UK, US, Africa… well everywhere.
People like to be informed about what is going on in their group and do this by subscribing to RSS feeds which can be a nightmare. We’ve tried to address this at fuelmyblog by just bringing them all together although this is very much a work in progress and the community will decide what does and doesn’t work for them.
And that’s the point. People like to commune – we are social animals. Whether it is in the jungle or through the web we like to connect with other people. That’s why Facebook is growing so quickly – and I don’t think it was their intention! RSS feeds are all very well but if you can actually talk (is there a Skype plugin on Facebook?) directly with people who share your interests it's a much more compelling proposition.
That’s why Twitter has really caught on. That’s what makes Facebook such a killer platform – people love people.
But, they are still interested in your deepest, heart-held views, especially when they are well written, and that is why blogging has a future. Twitter is a mini-cast, Facebook (and its ilk) is a community-cast, blogging is broadcast – it may not be perfect but it gets you out there.

PROs: Be careful what you send to bloggers

Mike Butcher has just posted on Twitter about the perils of trying to engage with a blogger after a PR bunny sent him a pitch for a movie review.
As with traditional PR and journalism the first rule always applies - know your source and understand what the journalist is looking for and what his readers expect.
If you're going to pitch to a blogger - read their blog.
Here's Mikes views on the matter and pitch he received from the PR person, who to be fair seems to be out of their depth.

Some things never change

Some things never change. Like VCs and business angels for instance. Back in the day (January 1, 2000 to be precise) when we launched Venturedome.com our backers were private individuals and the now defunct Springboard.

Remember, this was the dotcom boom – the internet was the future. Investors wanted to know what our burn rate was! Curious question but the implicit argument in the question was that you had to have a really huge burn rate like Boo.com.

At the time I was always uncomfortable with this view of funding businesses and when the phrase was used by some well-meaning VC or BA the image that always came to me was of a burning parachute.

So I was somewhat surprised at a recent meeting with a VC and the management team of my latest venture (you all know what I am talking about) when the VC asked what our burn rate was. And these are sophisticated, smart people.

The truth is we had no burn rate – the CEO works for free (but needs an income and to get out there), the developers developed the site for free (but would like some comeback financially, naturally), and my services were based on passion, commitment and practical help (but hell – I need to feed the family).

Our financial adviser worked for free but sees the possibilities, so he has been willing to dedicate a lot of his time talking to VCs, BAs and other potential investors.

We’ve bootstrapped the whole enterprise. It worked like this:

1. No business plan – we just got on and created the site in December 2006. This is before I had ever met CEO Kevin Dixie. He lives in France and I live in UK. We communicate via email, Skype, Twitter and now Facebook.
2. Introduced CEO to developers at eleventeenth.com – they created phase 2 site in February 2007
3. Introduced CEO to finance guy – via email in February 2007.
4. Logo developed by friends. No cost.
5. We meet in real world at a meeting at GREEN Communications in Wakefield. March 2007
6. I write business plan. Why? The business model is so blinding obvious!
7. We now have a fully functional site with bloggers across the world using it. Cost to date? Our time commitment and hosting.
8. Number of VCs pitched too – zero. March 2007.
9. Decide we need a tiny amount of investment to bling up the site and start generating income. April 2007.
10. I re-write business plan again. May 2007.
11. Send business plan to three friendly VCs. First question: What’s social media. Second question: Is it like Facebook? Third question: What’s your burn rate? May/June 2007.
12. One VC still seriously interested and there are plenty more out there we are talking to – and they will all ask about burn rate.

So what have I learned?

Well with some really talented people around you and passionate people like Kevin you can:

• Bootstrap a business with no financial support
• Realise that PR does work – even bad publicity generates profile
• Can’t convince VCs about social media and Web2.0 – they don’t get it but are worried about it
• Run a business from three different places. You don’t all have to be based in the same office or country to make a company work
• Understand that life is hard for an entrepreneur – plus ca change – but it’s lots of fun

Any views?

Eight uncomfortable rules of journalism

Just come across this from Michael Rosenberg from the Detroit Free Press. Uncomfortable reading for all journalists as so much of it rings true – certainly did with me as I was responsible for a series of stories based on rule one.

1. Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Then, after the afflicted become comfortable, afflict them again. This should provide an endless supply of news stories.

2. Be balanced. No matter what anybody says, find somebody to say the opposite. If a scientist claims to have a cure for cancer, find somebody who says cancer does not exist. If a man says "My name is Fred," make sure you find somebody who says "No, your name is Diane." Etc.

3. When deciding which tragedies deserve the most prominent coverage, use this simple math: 10,000 foreigners = one cute white American chick.

4. If the president of the United States is accused of violating the law on the same day that an African country erupts into civil war and an especially gloomy economic report is released, and you must decide which one is your lead story, ask yourself this: Did the local sports team just win a big game?

5. Internet, Schminternet. It will be gone in five years. People will always love reading a newspaper - and so will you, our intrepid reporter, once you accept our redundancy offer.

6. When working at the New York Post, make sure your story includes all six W's: who, what, when, where, why and with what kind of lubricant.

7. When appearing on television, insinuate that all newspaper reporters are biased. When writing for a newspaper, imply that all television people are boobs with no credibility. When at the bar afterward, complain that nobody trusts journalists anymore.

8. Keep each of the following on speed dial: a wacko religious leader who believes that god loves all his children, except the ones who skip church once in awhile; a gun nut who put semi-automatic weapons on his baby registry; an anti-weapons nut who thinks there should be a 10-day waiting period before buying steak knives; a legendary, highly quotable politician who has not been sober past noon since 1991, and a self-designated leader of each of the following minority groups: African-Americans, Asians, Latinos, American Indians, homosexuals, transsexuals, fat people, skinny people, people with absolutely no distinguishing physical attributes, and foot fetishists.

Be interesting to see what list a British journalist would come up with...

Is it just me? I like Olympics 2012

Am I going over old ground with this?
The Government has confirmed it will not be asking the organisers of the 2012 Olympic Games to reconsider a new logo despite demands for them to do so. Well thank God for that. And what’s wrong with it anyway?
When I first saw it I was a bit puzzled – and ribbed a former colleague about it who was working on the launch of the new brand.
However, the day after the launch I just thought… this is so right!
There is a lot of marketing bollocks being spoken about the brand (none of it by creators Wolff Olins by the way – I think they have missed a real trick here from a PR point of view).
At GREEN we do quite a lot of branding and at the end of the day you always agree with the client on what they want – they pay the bills after all. So for the organizers to go with such a bold and exciting brand says a lot for them – all of it good.
I notice that culture spokesman Lord Davies of Oldham said the logo "will establish the character and identity of the Games" – again this is too bland for the brand because I think the logo will work at levels that did not exist in the past – mobile phone, internet, blogs, MySpace, Facebook etc. And it moves! And that’s the point.
In the House of Lords debate Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked: "Why did it cost £400,000 to produce such an uninspiring logo?"
What planet is he on? He sounds like the High Court judge who asked what is a website. We don’t charge £400,000 for a branding exercise – but the effort we put in is probably worth that.
Anyway, well done Wolff Olins – I’m just curious why they are not shouting about it - don't apologise for being brilliant.
Oh and by the way I fully expect two girls from Bradford Amateur Rowing Club will be competing in 2012...

If you do anything - look at this

My thanks to Friendly Ghost for bringing to my attention Photosyth. Like FG I usually don’t get excited by the geeky stuff. Code doesn’t excite me. My usual question is: “What can it do for me and my clients?”

But his blew my mind into a whole new hair do!

Friendly Ghost says it best:

“The first ‘wow’ factor is that you can zoom right into images - and when I say zoom, I really mean zoooooom. You know that scene in Blade Runner where Rick Deckard zooms in on a photo and just keeps going further and further in? Photosynth does that - and how. You can see an entire book and zero in seamlessly, watching the pixels turn into pages, then paragraphs, then sentences, then suddenly an entire, perfectly resolved character fills your screen. As Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the presenter, says, you’re only limited by the resolution of your monitor. So Photosynth is compositing and rendering images to your screen in real-time and absolutely smoothly. It works for maps and it works for photos - basically, any image or, for that matter, image-set.”

When you let it loose on the web, Photosynth can intelligently search for images and composite them together, effectively creating semantic links between images. So, point it towards Flickr, type in ‘Notre Dame’, and the next thing you know it has rebuilt Notre Dame, in three dimensions from photos - any photos, all photos - of the cathedral. You can walk around it and it just chunks the photos and overlays them to build the image. It really is amazing to see how Photosynth grabs and composites the images given the viewer’s perspective.

This is a Microsoft project – and fair play to them that they have put it out there as it has so many applications. Friendly Ghost again:

"How about setting it loose on astronomical images, recreating planets and solar systems that you can walk around? What about pointing it towards a medical image bank and recreating human beings, inside and out? There’s a theory that everything which can be digitised, has been digitised - maps, blueprints, plans, diagrams - everything. Imagine if Photosynth could crawl the web and grab all of this, creating a spatial, semantic representation of the real world.”

Enjoy the presentation at TED - Ideas Worth Spreading.

Northern grit and coffee make a good mix

It’s a funny place up north. Having just read Pies & Prejudice, I do think we have a deep down sense of insecurity, boisterousness, bravado, bloody minded cussedness sometimes – possibly it has something to do with the weather.
After all you could die on a walk on the Moors if you weren’t prepared. I know I did come close to that once on Pen-y-Ghent climbing it the wrong way round.
But forget London – there is lot’s happening up here, especially in the area of Web2.0.
In spite of our rough, wode-daubed features northerners are starting to do some good things in IT and in the social media space. Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield has some great talent.
I attended the first OpenCoffee event in Leeds today – organised by the excellent Imran Ali (we are planning a few of these this year across the north ending with a big bash at BarCampLeeds).
OpenCoffee was held at Starbucks on Albion Street, Leeds and we had a really good turn out of developers, entrepreneurs, business angels, VCs and various geeks.
There was a real buzz – and if we can keep the momentum going I am sure this will be a regular monthly event. If you want to get involved contact me or Imran and we will get you networked with the north’s social media.

Where has all the talent gone?

It’s a lovely sunny day today. And I am writing this blog before heading off to Bradford for some big Bollywood thing.
What’s prompted my musing are some recent posts at TWL, Stephen Davies, David Brain and others about the dearth of PR talent in London, the costs of living in the capitol and general problems about recruiting.
It’s no different in the north of England. Since we lost Simon to Edelman we have struggled to find good people. At the moment we are seeking two AMs, an AE, and a graduate trainee. We’ve been advertising, blogging and using other electronic methods now for the past two months looking for the above and it has been a struggle.
For the record we have appointed one new account manager – more on her when she joins us in a week’s time. We are close to appointing a graduate but we are still searching for others to bring us back up to capacity at a time when a lot of new clients are coming on stream.
So where has all the talent gone? Given the number of graduates coming out of universities with degrees in PR – why do so many of them struggle to write a decent press release, pass a spelling test or a maths test? Yes – we do ask them to do these tests as part of the selection process.
And why are their expectations so high? One graduate told us they would only work on certain client accounts, another told us that she couldn’t do the occasional weekend event with a client.
My career began in journalism (starting salary in 1986 was £8,000 – based in London) and for that I was expected to work very long and unsociable hours. I loved it.
I’m sure the PR sector is no different from any other and, while the London-centric debate of TWL is influenced by other factors like the cost of housing, the north suffers from similar problems. Finding recruits is easy – finding quality recruits is harder.
I noted on the comment board at TWL someone suggested that Edelman opened a satellite office in the regions (the regions! How parochial!). David, if you’re interested we have plenty of room in the Wakefield Media Centre if you’re looking for somewhere to park your out-sourced northern executives and the rent is very reasonable.

BarCamp comes to Leeds

Plans are now in place to do a BarCampLeeds – led by Imran Ali.
I attended a similar event in Sheffield but was overwhelmed by the techie nature of the event and left early. Detail is all very well but I am more interested in what it can do for me and the bigger picture.
Anyway, Imran is hopping to make the Leeds event more inclusive with geeks, techies and more generalist enthusiasts like me. And I, for one, plan to do a piece about Ladybank and some other stuff we have been working on.
I am hoping pals like Stuart Bruce and Simon Collister will also attend to talk about their work with Alan Johnson and London 2012.
Let me know if you are attending and check out the Wiki at BarCampLeeds.

Fuelmyblog Phase 3 - close to launch

It’s been an interesting couple of days on the work front. Loads of new business propositions have been coming our way – which is nice!
But for the past few days I have been concentrating on fuelmyblog – which we will shortly re-launch.
Watch this space as we will be inviting people to beta test the new site shortly with a lot of new social network features.
We’ve also attracted some interest from VCs looking to invest in the site which will allow us to further ramp up the community platform and generate ties in other countries besides the US and UK.
This will significantly take the pressure off as we have been running fuelmyblog through our own resources and, in particular, the dedication of Kevin Dixie and the technical genius of eleventeenth.com.

Seems the media is "on message"!

Coffee, cakes and communication

As an antidote (or compliment) to BarCamp Imran Ali is organising an OpenCoffee Leeds some time in June.These have been a big hit in London and the US.
Manchester has had one and a second one is due in the North-West shortly, so it’s great that Imran has taken the lead in this.
I’ve pledged to help out on the support of the event and hopefully we can get a lot of movers and shakers there and some of the professional organizations in Leeds who are still standing on the sidelines of Web2.0.
So far Imran has Ed French from Enterprise Ventures, Carl Rahn Griffith of Ensembli.com and a handful of others in the group. Imran is hoping to rope in old friends and colleagues from Orange, Kingston Interactive, the Universities, Zythe and Inteleme...geeks, coders, bloggers, investors, entrepreneurs, designers, developers and anyone with a passing interest.
Dates will be confirmed here asap.

Overwhelmed by tech talk at Bar Camp

I am ashamed to say that I only spent three hours at the BarCamp in Sheffield this weekend.This is no reflection on the organization by Plusnet and the volunteers who organized it – they were very impressive. However, I had attended as a non-techie and was slightly alarmed by all the talk of PHP, mashup, web apps etc.
I was looking for big picture stuff and how the technology could help my clients rather than the nitty-gritty detail which seemed to excite the Uber-Geeks (no disrespect intended).The North of England is full of enterprising and innovative individuals and businesses but we have to travel to London to talk to kindred spirits – so fair play to the organizers of BarCampSheffield for at least doing something about it.

As they say:

We want BarCampSheffield to showcase the best that the UK has to offer. We want to share knowledge, experience and techniques. If you have a great idea, have developed a great Web App / Mashup or are simply interested in finding out what everyone else in the market is doing then come along.

I did make contact with some interesting people but given that I could actually make little contribution to the tech debate I made my excuses and left.

Fuelmyblog Television

Firebug is brilliant

I've just downloaded the Firebug extension for Firefox. It was always a really useful development tool now it’s just got 100 per cent better. No web developer should do without not that I am a developer but useful just the same.
Firebug lets you view and edit the HTML and CSS of any page.
It tells you exactly which CSS rules affect the styling of the element you select in the style inspector - not only which rules affect it directly but also which rules it inherits properties from. It lets you edit anything and toggle CSS declarations on and off, with the results immediately showing on the page.
Firebug also has a layout inspector that displays a nice graphic of the currently selected element’s box model properties, and a DOM inspector that lists all DOM properties and their values.
There’s even a JavaScript debugger and the Net inspector. A brilliant piece of kit.

I like Banksy - we all think it but never express it

Top Ten PR Tips

Here's my latest Top Ten Tips (first posted on Fuelmyblog – you really should join). Perhaps I was foolish to accept Kevin's invitation to do a regular "column" for the FMBblog but I will persevere.
Anyway, here's my top ten tips for mounting a PR campaign whether you are running a small business, charity or a blog – in fact I am doing a talk on this next week for charities. Enjoy.

1. Don’t hide your company/charity/organisation/blog’s light under a bushel. If you’ve got some good news, collaborate with the media and let your customers, suppliers and everyone else know how wonderful you are. Do you have an event planned, a new service to launch or an interesting story with a regional angle to tell? If so, let the local (or even national) media know about it through a press release.

2. Always date the release and include a contact name and number. Phone ahead and find out the name of the editor or the local business reporter, and their preferred method of delivery (email, fax or post). Importantly, find out their deadline, particularly if your story is time sensitive.

3. Newspapers receive hundreds of press releases every week, and only the ones that stand out will ever make it into print. Step into the shoes of the particular publication and its readers and ask the question ‘What is interesting and newsworthy about this announcement?’. The answer should form the angle for your press release.

4. The most important elements of a successful press release are its title and opening paragraph. If these fail to grab an editor’s attention, the chances of the release being used drop significantly. These should sum up the most important points of your message. If the release is to inform about a forthcoming event or launch, then the date, place and time should be included in the first paragraph.

5. Press releases should not read like a promotional brochure or be overloaded with information. Too much image building is not necessary, and will weigh down the message. Sentences should be short and snappy and the whole thing should be no longer than two sides of A4. Extra information, including company background, can be included in a section called ‘Notes for editors’.”

6. If you can create a picture opportunity to tempt local photographers from your chosen media, your story will be more attractive. A photocall is a managed event which might be a one-off or a part of a bigger event, such as a presentation or exhibition. An unusual location or the presence of a celebrity can help if it is relevant to the story. Plan ahead and have contingencies in place in case of adverse weather conditions or other eventualities. Issue a photocall notice to relevant media.

7. Build good relationships with journalists you speak to. Having good contacts in the media is key to a successful PR strategy. When you have a story printed, call or email to thank the writer and you’ll know who to contact next time you have an event that you want to publicise. They get a good story, your business gets good exposure. Always be polite to journalists as they have the power to decide what your customers read or hear about you - if anything at all.

8. Prepare a press pack (electronically or on paper) containing a company history, facts and figures, key contacts, pictures and examples of work. You probably already include this in your marketing literature and on your website, but it can be useful to send or give out to journalists to back up photocalls or other events. It’s also useful reference material if you are asked to answer questions on the spot.

9. Be prepared for follow-up calls and comments. Designate a spokesperson in your company to have a few paragraphs ready for journalists who call to follow up any kind of PR activity. You could also issue a statement or comment whenever there are any developments in your region or industry. Journalists are always on the lookout for a local perspective.

10. Keep press cuttings. This is not just a vanity exercise, but a good way to track your PR activities. Consider which stories attracted a lot of interest, and which did not, so you can better target your campaign in the future. Cuttings are useful to refer back to if you receive any further enquiries on the story or event.

What do you think? Have you learned anything?

A present from my son Frank - a DVD of Cool Hand Luke

Did Google get bigger or better?

Google claims to be re-launching its search engines according to The Guardian.
It’s refinement brings together all internet content from text to video and has required the effort of more than 100 engineers and involved a major revamp of the company's software platform.
The Guardian claims that there will be an "experimental" pilot services allowing users to see a timeline on a subject or a map flagging important locations in an individual's life.
Up to now, Google has been building separate search engines in individual "silos" for different types of media - videos, books, blogs, news, maps and pictures. Combining them all means writing code that can measure the relevance of a picture against a piece of text.
I love Google – hell, I blog on a Google platform - but I am frequently frustrated by the search results – especially when I know they are out there. So I hope I will pleased with the new Uber Google.
My worry is that Google is now the new Microsoft (I have nothing against MS but flinch at big institutions) and, in future, I worry what I will get from them will be pushed on me rather than pulled by me.