August 24, 2008 at 9:33 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Modern life, internet, bloggers, camera phones, TV
A sideways look at life, and how techonology is changing the operating environment of communicators, is wonderfully summarised in the following snapshot of modern life. It has been passed to me by a PR colleague and I believe the credit due on assembling this factfile goes to Paul Willis from the Centre for Public Relations Studies at the Leeds Business School. It is now said, and who are we to argue, that:
- 1 in 3 mid-week visitors to a major UK theme park is pulling a sickie from work
- 70% of internet porn sites are accessed during the 9 to 5 working day
- Two billion people now have access to the Internet
- The number of bloggers is doubling every five months
- There are now one billion camera phones in the world
- Teenagers spend 60% less time watching TV than their parents
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August 21, 2008 at 8:18 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, speechwriting
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was 269 words long - 205 of these were one syllable - demonstrating the power of words when less is more. So it was interesting to see PR Week’s handy hints to speechwriting this week, although not sure that these are the Do’s and Don’ts that the US leader might have referred to.
DO:
- Make sure you know your speaker’s mannerisms and speech patterns
- Know what the speaker’s real agenda should be
- Have some good sound bites scattered within your speech
- Expose the conflict in a situation up front, then take it to its resolution
- Write in the active not the passive
- Practise, practise, practise
DON’T:
- Write over-long sentences or try to cram too much in - the best speeches have a single line of argument
- Over-use metaphors - one will do, which you should come back to near the end of the speech
- Disturb people’s values - start with what they want to hear then take them on a journey
- Write it at the last minute
- Whisper, threaten physical punishment for yawners, or undress
The last one was made up. PR Week assume we know that.
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August 3, 2008 at 5:52 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Alzheimer's, Nottingham conference, Trent DSDC, www.pwpcomms.co.uk
News this week that a drug has been developed that can halt the progress of Alzheimer’s and is twice as effective as current treatments. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, affecting about 417,000 people in the UK, a figure which could soar to 1.7 million over the next two decades. Readers might wish to be aware of a major conference on dementia being staged by one of our clients, the Trent Dementia Services Development Centre (DSDC), on September 12th in Nottingham. One of the speakers is Neil Hunt, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer’s Society and a leading figure in helping draw up new Government plans on tackling dementia, improving lives for people with the condition and their carers. For more news, please visit our webpage www.pwpcomms.co.uk and visit the ‘News’ web page. The conference is aimed principally at health and social care professionals. More information on the Trent DSDC is available from www.trentdsdc.org.uk
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July 30, 2008 at 4:20 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Add new tag, Ambitions for health, DH, Listen to Reason
The Department of Health has recently launched a new framework entitled Ambitions for Health which says how they will increasingly rely on social marketing to improve public health. PR Week this month reports on how public relations will increasingly play a role in the DH’s strategy on providing new ways of empowering people to make their own choices. An example of a social marketing campaign that I led, before establishing People, Words & Pictures, was www.listentoreason.org - a stop smoking campaign that was recognised in last year’s Association of Healthcare Communicators awards and has seen many local people approach the local NHS stop smoking service as a result of engaging with the campaign material.
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July 28, 2008 at 9:01 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Add new tag, Chartered Institute of Public Relations, CIPR, NHS
In the same year that Neil Diamond appears at Glastonbury, 2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, the founding of the NHS and the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, the eyes, ears and voice of the PR industry. This is surely some cause for celebration. What was it about 1948 that made people establish one of the great British institutions in the Health Service and get together an assembly of post-war communicators who would latterly be employed to defend the NHS’ reputation from attack decades afterwards?
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July 21, 2008 at 7:52 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Radlett, Hertforshire, speed cameras
‘Law of coincidence’ blog post - July 18 - seeked explanations to the unexplainable UFO (Unfortunately Frequently Occurring) mentions of a small Hertfordshire village of Radlett that is gripping the nation, or possibly just PWP Comms. See today’s Metro Newspaper “Speed cameras lottery explained” P14 article for further mentions of the phenomenon… “Residents in Radlett, Hertfordshire, have a conviction rate [for speed camera offences] of 27 per cent - more than double the national average.” Where will it end? What next will this previously unheard of town top the polls on?
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July 18, 2008 at 9:17 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged coincidence, East Midlands Trains, PR Week, Radlett
PWP en route to Luton
When an unusual word is mentioned three times by different people in different conversations in different settings in a relatively quick time space, the law of coincidence makes you stop and wonder why. Why Radlett in this case. Radlett is a place that through many previous decades has never been mentioned to me, or if it has, I was not concentrating which could explain a lot as not concentrating can sometimes be quite appealing, and possibly more appealing than listening to someone telling you in great detail about Radlett. Coincidence One: my train to London is terminated by East Midlands Trains at Luton with a belated message telling me I have the option of somehow getting to Radlett whereupon another primitive form of transport will somehow take me beyond “a large village located north of London in the county of Hertfordshire between St Albans and Elstree on Watling Street with a population of approximately 8,000.” Thank you Wikipedia. Coincidence Two: friend at the school summer fair announces her family are off for the weekend to Radlett. Coincidence Three: PR Week announces that Radlett is after a PR agency for some PR support or some such story. I cannot believe for one moment they need to boost the large village’s profile as everyone it seems currently is talking about Radlett or ending up there.
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July 13, 2008 at 7:46 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged favourite, People, Pictures, Survey, survey monkey, Words
Being based in the East Midlands, PWP Communications is after your favourite East Midlands person, your favourite word and your favourite picture. Early front runners include Brian Clough and Gary Lineker, and ‘lugubrious’ and ‘quagmire’, while favourite pictures seem a bit too random to mention at the moment. You can have your say by clicking on
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=Z_2fefWLfcXCQWbtKy_2byu55Q_3d_3d
and taking a few minutes to suggest names dear to you. It is probably one of the simplest quizzes ever arranged. There is no prize set up but if you desperately want a prize then we will see what we can do. The survey has an East Midlands bias but we would not preclude anyone from jotting down their favourites.
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July 4, 2008 at 5:04 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged 100% proof, lists, social marketing
If you like being social and you like marketing, then you will love ’social marketing’. If PWP had a top 10 list of things we love then social marketing would be right up there, along with ’summer’ and ‘making lists’ .
Drink sensibly
Social marketing is defined (by people who define things) as the ’systematic application of marketing concepts and techniques to achieve specific behavioural goals relevant to a social good.’ If you want to know more, please contact us - inquiries@pwpcomms.co.uk or have a look at the National Social Marketing Centre which is hosting a world conference at the end of September - www.nsms.org.uk/public/default.aspx
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July 3, 2008 at 10:03 am
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged absence of fish, Fishing, pr, press releases
Has anyone ever walked past an angler by the side of a river, lake or canal and at that precise moment of passing seen them actually reel in a fish? It must happen as often as a big Lotto win, if at all. These ‘ermen’ - as I doubt the existence of fish in said aquatic bodies - seem to be playing the equivalent role of the untargetted press release sent out by the PR executive, whizzing out his email like the line on a rod. If anyone has an experience of walking past an ermen and seeing a fish pulled from the water, I would be grateful for their tale. Please note spelling of the last word in the previous sentence.
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