By @Hannahal

Journalist. PR. Cake

As the leaves (finally) turn green on the trees, my first foray into PR has begun.

To say I was nervous about that on Monday would be an understatement.

In my past five years working as a journalist I was able to embrace many exciting opportunities and no two days were the same.

I was tasked with writing stories that would entice and thrill readers.

With that, I, personally, became accustomed to seeking out negative angles that made for good front page splashes.

Now here I am trying to promote the good, it takes a while to get used to that sort of mind frame!

I have to be honest and say I did initially have concerns that PR would go against what has been instilled into me ever since embarking on a career in news reporting.

Now, I am beginning to understand why people who aren’t journalists generally want to see positive pieces on a newspaper’s front page, rather than the usual ‘doom and gloom’.

And agency work has proved to be engaging and varied.

At the start of the week I never imagined that I would have created a new account lead or contributed to a client proposal

I have had a hand in helping to re-home stray dogs and have investigated the unfair treatment of temporary Olympic staff ahead of London 2012.

Leaving journalism does not equate to the termination of an endlessly interesting career.

I know now that after this week, I shall be privy to many more open doors in a fantastic company with great, great staff.

By Hannah Al-Taraboulsy

The victim of a rape carried out by former Manchester City player Ched Evans has been named – and through no fault of her own shamed – after she was identified on Twitter.

‘Terrible’, one might say and yes, that would be putting it mildly.

This act was utterly deplorable given that this country’s legal system rules that any victim of a sexual assault is entitled to lifelong anonymity.

Publishing a name is a criminal offence punishable by a fine of up to £5,000 incidentally.

This victim’s right to privacy was violated at the expense of another person’s right to exercise freedom of expression.

Did they do it maliciously or were they so naive they did not believe the revelation would cause such a frenzy in the Twittersphere?

I would have thought the former myself, given the abuse that was posted soon after condemning any woman that sleeps with a footballer.

Her name circulated so widely over the weekend, bearing in mind Evans  was jailed only last Friday, that it is understood it was one of the top ‘trending’ or used words on Twitter.

We may now live in a world where social networking is very much the norm, a part of our everyday routine, but this all too often appears to be happening to the detriment of others.

The victim, a teenager, said she was ‘traumatised’ by the incident and is seeking counselling.

It is all very well naming an egotistical footballer who bought himself a super injunction attached to a hefty price tag but this is nothing compared to further ruining the life of a rape victim.

Yes, some victims waive their right to anonymity some months or years later and sell their story to a newspaper or magazine, but that is their choice to make, not ours.

The problem is that Twitter, Facebook (and the rest) can give people with no real influence a platform with which to grab a little power while those with no control over those actions are in turn left powerless.

Surely this is a sign the so-called ‘masterminds’ behind such sites must be taken to task as well as those trolls who torture them.

So while 23-year-old Evans embarks on a five-year jail sentence, his victim must face a lifetime imprisoned by his actions and of those who cannot be trusted online.

Hopefully, we can take some comfort in knowing that leading rape charities are calling for anonymity laws to be toughened up against new technologies.

by @Gemmahaddow

Last month I wrote a blog post about sponsored tweets after Snickers fell under the watchful eye of the Advertising Standards Agency for its celebrity social media campaign: (#Spon; How transparent should brands have to be on social media?). But it seems that legal and moral issues around transparency and brands are only set to continue as we get closer to the Olympics. (Denise Lewis told Marketing Magazine today that she condemned athletes’ endorsement of sponsored brands.)

In April, Olympic cyclist Jessica Varnish (without disclosing her commercial relationship with the Jessica Nails company) tweeted: ‘@JessicaNails I won the team sprint at London world cup and we set a new WORLD record! Wearing Jessica nail Varnish!!’ Rebecca Adlington and Tom Daly also came under fire after tweeting about their ‘amazing’ BMWs they had been lent by the car manufacturer.

Celebrity endorsements on Twitter are not a new phenomenon. An American company, SponsoredTweets.com, is solely set up to link up brands with celebrity tweeters from Paris Hilton to Mike Tyson – but claim that the process is ethical and fully transparent. You Tube sensation Rebecca Black (famous for her pop song ‘Friday’) is charged out at $3,900 dollars per tweet!

We are well aware of how strictly events like the Olympics and the World Cup, for example, are guarded by sponsors and brands – but how will competitors’ personal social media accounts come into play – will they be restricted?

Denise Lewis told Marketing that continued sponsorship is vital to the financial stability of events such as the Olympics – but that Twitter is a ‘dangerous game’, distracting athletes from what they should be focused on, their performance.

By Jane

It’s often surprising to us just how many large organizations on our client list have never been offered thought leadership activities by their former PR companies. Often, these are clients whose daily work and ongoing insights would be so welcomed and appreciated by politicians and other influencers, and would really help change things for the better.

At Smith & Smith, we have a culture where we view thought leadership as inseparable from other PR work in the context of dynamic clients, both commercial and not-for-profit, who forge their way through their particular landscape.

A case in point is Manchester and Cheshire Dogs’ Homes, a charity whose front-line work puts them very much in the frame for being able to tell Westminster and third-party organizations what the problems are and how they can be solved.

As a small regional charity, the Dogs’ Homes are of course not in a position to employ a public affairs agency to lobby Parliament on their behalf. But so much of the relevant thought leadership work can be done by their regular agency (us) because as their PR company, Smith & Smith is consistently au fait with what the Dogs’ Homes are doing, and why. The managers and trustees at the Homes are switched-on, progressive people who put the care of dogs at the centre of their work, and who are able communicators who understand instinctively that our PR work for them can and should stretch to thought leadership, whether that’s around micro-chipping, homelessness and dog ownership, pet ownership and social housing, or so-called ‘attack dogs’. Not weaving a lobbying element into this work would, in fact, be a disservice to this wonderful charity and its canine and human clientele.

Away from charities, at Smith & Smith we also come across many commercial clients for whom thought leadership has been a ‘no-go’ zone thanks to their former PR companies simply not wanting to go the extra mile for them. To us, this means they’ve had unimaginative or, worse, lazy PR teams who have completely lacked the level of engagement that you need in order to do good work for clients.

I’d like to see thought leadership activities talked about more, or ideally taught, on Master’s degree courses in PR. I’d also like organizations to complain loudly when their PR suppliers – whether international agencies or freelancers – are not qualified or not prepared to engage with thought leadership on their behalf. I’d also like them to question inflated fees for lobbying activities, when in fact much of the work should fall under the PR retainer fee, part and parcel of the core programme.

Thought leadership is an invaluable activity for many, many organizations – even if they don’t know it yet. And PR practitioners worth their salt should not only understand thought leadership, but practise it in an integrated way that helps clients get their issues very firmly on the right agendas.

Happy St George's Day

By ADwyer

It would seem that it’s not enough that George slayed a dragon and rescued a damsel in distress. St George does not quite ‘cut it’ when it comes to celebrity patrons.  Let’s face it, he pales into significance when compared to St Patrick – and he shouldn’t.  St George had a face-off with a fire breathing dragon, while in terms of reptile slaying, St Patrick rid Ireland of snakes – today’s equivalent of a pest controller.

Being Irish and celebrating the 17^th March with as much pride and enthusiasm I can muster, it strikes me as rather odd that the English don’t show the same gusto for George. I thought perhaps that George being Turkish cooled even more the latent patriotism that is the English way of honouring this great nation. But St Patrick is rumoured to be British, and that doesn’t stop the flow of Guinness or the rivers running green.

And in terms of borrowing other nation’s citizens and symbolism, there were no qualms about borrowing the St George’s Cross, the foundation of the great Union Jack, from the personal flag for St Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.  This hasn’t dampened the desire for the giddy waving of miniature ‘Jacks’ at Royal weddings and such. True, this could be the English nod to Milanese design, but perhaps there’s more to the less than sanguine support for poor George?

By ADwyer

Smith & Smith PR has been shortlisted, with our client Red Hot World Buffet, for Marketing Week’s Engage Awards 2012, in the category ‘Best Innovator’. The awards celebrate the ‘great and the good’ of brands and agencies, so it was surreal to see Smith & Smith PR next to some of the most recognised names on the international marketing stage.

For Red Hot World Buffet, this is no surprise, as they are shortlisted and named winners in a number of high-profile awards we enter them into, on a regular basis. For Smith & Smith PR the story is slightly different, we’re a small team and we’re mostly absorbed by our clients, so we rarely have the time to put ourselves forward for any accolades [disclosure: we did win 2009 Manchester PR quiz].  But when we do, we sure know how to pick them! And pick clients. Because to be shortlisted for such a prestigious award means that you have to a client that lets you be part of their team, that infuses you with their love of the brand, and in Red Hot World’s case, their energy and passion that frankly, is contagious. So we’d like to thank Sachin Bajpai and the Red Hot team for showing us the Red Hot Way and go back to gazing at our prestigious companions on the shortlist again.

by @NeilKnighton

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Was the Harvey Nichols walk of shame advert sexist? The Advertising Standards Authority says no, ruling against seven complainants who called the ad offensive, sexist and insulting. Personally I’ve got to say I thought it was bold, funny and a great way to get people talking about the brand, but then again I’m a man *ducks*.

According to The Guardian, Harvey Nichols said the idea of the video was “to show that women did not have any reason to be ashamed, that society tended to be judgmental and that a woman’s choice of outfit could playfully show that she could also have a ‘stride of pride’”.

While the company’s Christmas 2011 video makes a good advert, I think the overall campaign was a bit of a fashion PR masterstroke. The advert got a healthy 740,000 views in five months on YouTube, and the PR campaign has generated national coverage not once, but twice. The original launch was also backed up with a great twitter campaign, with users encouraged to share their own #walkofshame.

There are a few articles of passive-aggressive outrage at ASA’s decision not to censure Harvey Nicks, but seven complaints to the ASA is small-fry compared to the Littlewoods Christmas 2011 advert. Littlewoods received 456 complaints within the first month of airing its ode to children’s grubby materialist greed. The number of YouTube views on the official video currently stands at 1,270,000, which underlines the adage about the speed of bad news. The newspaper coverage was also pretty bad for Littlewoods, and this was compounded by the company censoring angry Facebook users who were upset that their children no longer believed that it was Father Christmas putting the presents under the Christmas tree.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

What a difference a well-planned and comprehensive campaign can make. Harvey Nichols did the research, tapped into an unspoken consensus within their target audience and coordinated advertising, PR and social media to make sure they both generated and managed the conversation. They also managed the difficult task of treading the line of controversy without straying too far from water-cooler titillation – it would be an interesting study to see the correlation between ASA complaints and positive/negative news coverage.

Littlewoods spent a lot of money on their television advert, but that seems to be where their thinking ended. Did they test the advert before broadcasting it? Did they brief their social media team on how to manage a backlash? Did they have any crisis communication strategy at all? This blinkered approach to communication cost them a chunk of their reputation, and probably a fair amount of revenue to go with it.

By @fionamcr

One year ago health secretary Andrew Lansley unveiled the government’s Responsibility Deal, in which the food and drink industry was asked to sign up to a voluntary agreement to improve public health.

The collaboration – believed by the government to be more effective than statutory regulation – aimed to encourage businesses to take measures such as labelling food with calorie and salt content, as well as trying to cut down on the amount of saturated fat in their products.

For the first time we have seen exactly which brands signed up to the deal, thanks to a new report by the consumer group Which?.

The body announced that the pledge has failed in its aims, as just two of the UK’s top 10 restaurant chains agreed to introduce calorific information about their products.

JD Wetherspoon and Harvester have seen the benefits of the ‘carrot approach’, but others such as Pizza Express, Café Rouge and Prezzo have so far decided against publishing these details.

With the vast majority tending to ignore the government’s suggestions, some have suggested it is time to bring in tougher measures and force all food outlets to sign up to the responsibility pledge.

But could there be a PR opportunity in deciding to jump before they’re pushed?

Harvester and JD Wetherspoon can now proudly announce that they are in a minority of businesses in the UK’s food and drink industry doing everything they can to help public health. And surely that’s a cause worth supporting?

With near-constant messages about the importance of healthy eating being pushed by all the Jamie Olivers in this world, you can probably find worse bandwagons to jump on.

One of the hardest things for businesses attempting to make their mark on the heavily-populated food and drink industry is to prove that you are better in some way than your competitors. Providing customers with all the information they require to make the healthiest possible choice gives them the reassurance that you care about their wellbeing and have nothing to hide.

Children’s Food Campaign co-ordinator, Malcolm Clark, said: “By not taking a tougher stance, the government continues to let our most prominent food manufacturers and retailers off the hook. If this initiative is to shake off its ‘irresponsibility deal’ moniker, the government is going to have to develop sticks to go with the carrots it is handing out.”

Is any of this sounding familiar? Before the national ban on smoking in public places came into force in 2007, some bars, restaurants and pubs decided to lead by example.

In 2003 Pizza Hut announced all of its 500 branches would become non-smoking and JD Wetherspoons followed suit in 2005. Being the first to take a brave stance can often give businesses a head-start on their peers. Pizza Hut and JD Wetherspoons would have had a lot longer than others to plan for the eventual ban, leaving plenty of time to generate some great publicity around the fact that they were working to protect public health.

As it is one of the minority to publish calorific information while the procedure is still voluntary, perhaps JD Wetherspoon has learnt valuable lessons from the past decade and senses the stick could be approaching. Doesn’t it make sense to sit on the high ground, enjoying a nibble on the carrot while it still exists?

By @Gemmahaddow

Personally, I thought that Snickers’ social media campaign (that involved five celebrities tweeting unusual content, followed by “You’re not yourself when you’re hungry”), was clever – and quite an amusing PR stunt. Amir Khan, Sir Ian Botham, Katie Price, Cher Lloyd and Rio Ferdinand all posted an initial tweet, very out of the ordinary for each of their characters. For example, Rio tweeted about looking forward to getting home from training so he could finish knitting his cardigan and Katie Price tweeted about economics in China. With such huge followings, these tweets sparked a spike in interest over whether these celebs’ accounts had been hacked.

This week, the Advertising Standards Agency stated that they were not going to uphold complaints about the campaign stating that although the initial tweets didn’t include the hashtag #spon (sponsored) or #ad, the follow up tweet did, therefore making it obvious they were paid-for and formed part of a marketing campaign.

Arguments over how transparent brands and marketers need to be on social media have been rife since the campaign, and its success has been jaded by the anger people felt at being ‘duped’ by their favourite stars. But to put this into perspective, what is the difference between a star being paid to post a picture of themself with a product on their Twitter account and appearing on TV or in a magazine endorsing a brand? Even more so, just yesterday, Peter Andre (@MrPeterAndre) posted the following:

Where it only becomes clear by scanning down his timeline that it is likely he has some sort of commercial deal with Gowilddeals.com:

February 10^th he tweeted:

There was certainly no reference made to any commercial involvement in yesterday’s endorsement. Celebrities must do this all the time, whether they are in line with the Office of Fair Trading’s guidelines on social media and celebrity endorsements or not.

At Smith & Smith PR we are all for full disclosure and transparency online, but we also think that in the Snickers instance, the public is savvy enough to know when they are being marketed to. Nevertheless, with the continued rise of social media marketing, it looks like we will need to get used to seeing #paid #ad and #spon hashtags much more frequently in the future.

By @Gemmahaddow

Businesses that track the browsing histories of web visitors via cookies could find themselves on the wrong side of the law if changes to their sites are not implemented by May. The EU e-Privacy Directive, or ‘Cookie Law’, has actually been in place for nine of the 12 ‘compliance’ months given as a grace period for brands to get their technology up to date.

Cookies (small pieces of software that install themselves onto the computer of website visitors) are used to track people’s online behaviour in order to tailor advertising, give a more user-friendly experience and for web analytics. They also remember log in details and have a widespread use on the internet.

In order to comply with what has been a controversial law, companies will need to ask for users’ permission (“explicit consent”, in fact) before being able to apply cookies. But have UK businesses acted fast enough – if at all – to protect themselves from the Cookie Monster?

It has been argued that it has been difficult for companies to meet the new legislation, as solutions need to be developed and some say it will affect users’ experience of the internet. Despite this, the end of May deadline is approaching and pleading ignorance will not work, the law, as far as we know, is here to stay.

From a public relations perspective, companies that are early adopters will have a competitive advantage. Being seen to care about the privacy of visitors and being transparent about their data could serve to gain respect of customers and gain brand advocates. What we do know is that doing nothing is not an option. Brands need to act now to avoid being caught with their pants down.