Whatever the stat is, Brits love a good PR survey story. Flick through any newspaper and you’ll be sure to find at least one and sometimes up to 10 a day in papers like the Daily Mail.

We lap up a good stat like its ground-breaking news, whether it’s new or not. It gives us something to compare ourselves to. Women spend £15,000 replacing make-up in their lifetimes, you say, as you tot up your weekly Boots bills. Drivers spent 106 days of their life trying to find a parking space, you say, as you run through all those agonising mornings before work.

Earlier this week, we were told that to fit in with the majority of the UK we must prefer video games to bedroom games (!), are more likely to have sex if we order a takeaway, be most worried about bad breath in the lead-up to a first date andown a Ford as our first car.

Like it or not, they’re fun stories. They’re a light-hearted and entertaining  way of getting across a message which most people can relate to – whether they fit into the ‘majority’ or not.

And even the heavyweight newspapers are adjusting. Open the Times or Daily Telegraph and most days you’ll find a good half page dedicated to a decent survey story, with expert quotes and an interesting case study.

But ensuring the right survey story is right for your client is a different story. So often you will read a list of interesting and unusual statistics with absolutely no link, and sometimes even no reference whatsoever to the company who ran the poll.

Unless the main purpose of a survey is to get a headline, a survey story must be relevant e.g. the solution to the problem must be your client. Nine in ten dog owners are worried about fleas for example, is the ideal story for Pets at Home who are promoting flea treatments. A survey claiming British women don’t insure their houses until after a break-in is perfect for a home and contents insurer.

Another point is timing. Knowing when the right time to sell in a survey story is crucial. Last week’s newspapers for example were sparse in their coverage of light-hearted stats and facts, making way for a much more serious news agenda.God help the PR that rings with a ‘silly survey story’ in the middle of some breaking ‘hard’ news.

And finally, choose your journalist! If a journalist has never written a survey story before, there’s probably a reason. For many, polls are like marmite and they either love ‘em or hate ‘em.

Henry IV, 3.4.283

Goodbye, David Beckham, master of the PR stunt and first modern global English sporting brand. From Goldenballs to golden locks, tattoos to missed penalties, you will be missed on the pitch. Yet, off the green grass, things will be strange only for their familiarity.

Brand Beckham is well publicised and SFX, then Simon Fuller, have helped the Beckhams create a niche market in happy family sporting icons; a brand not reliant on sporting success but shrewd endorsements, CSR and choosing the right moment, be it the 2012 Olympics or when not to put your name to a doomed musical.

This will undoubtedly be Beckham’s epitaph, his gift not to the game but to the individuals who followed him, From Wayne Rooney to the next big thing, he has made English footballers a market force again, something not seen even with players of a higher quality, such as Gazza.

So why has Beckham’s PR been so successful? Firstly, he understood the power of pictures to move around the globe faster than words. Not one for naval gazing interviews, his team knew when and where to ensure the right picture was taken. The finest example of this was when a local Manchester photographer who had always been respectful to Beckham was, allegedly, given a tip-off to be at a certain place and time one deserted Sunday morning. There he happened to get the shot of Becks with a rather large plaster on his forehead, following a heated row with Sir Alex. The photographer was rewarded with a shot that would be sold around the globe and Beckham said everything he needed to about his relationship with the manager, without ever uttering a disrespectful word.

One gets the sense Alex Ferguson would somehow have appreciated the gesture, he himself often using the silent but deadly approach to getting his point across – most recently demonstrated with Wayne Rooney being benched against Real Madrid.

Beckham never relied on this understanding and marketing team, though, he always worked hard. Gary Neville, his closest ally, often commented on his after hours practice and relentless approach to self-improvement.

What he showed was that even though his performances had long deserted him, Beckham was able to sustain a place at the top of world football for ten extra years through sheer desire. A desire to win, to build his image, to be remembered.

In the end, it was this lofty ambition was marked him apart. A gentleman, a fine sportsman and a good-looking man with an eye for a PR opportunity.

David Beckham won his place at court by seducing those who mattered. He gained glory in battles, despite not actually winning the fights himself, such as his ‘redemptive’ penalty against Argentina in the 2002 World Cup.

Yet desire is more than most can apply to their careers and it carried him through to win the game almost single-handedly against Greece in 2001. It was a performance fitting of the man, through its drama through to the conclusion.

People mock Beckham, they are foolish to do so. He has opened the door for many young men from poorer backgrounds to market their modest abilities and achieve superstardom in modern pop culture.

For all this is good, bad, and indifferent, it could not have been achieved without a unique desire.

Goldenballs always had balls.

Jonathan Welsh

(First appeared David Beckham, master of the PR stunt)

What came across loud and clear was a sense that the word content is in danger of eating itself. The speakers at the conference understood this and central to their brand strategy was planning, listening and evaluating. I’ll name drop a few of the brands who deserve admiration, o2, MoneySupermarket and John Lewis.

Yet the danger persists. For every brand investing in research, relevance and evaluation, more will simply see ‘content’ as an arms race, focusing on the now and ‘likes’ or ‘RTs’ and never beyond that.

One of the first things modern PR practitioners should learn is engagement. The skill of researching a story and the relevant audience and channel is one that all should know but many don’t practice.

To put it bluntly, PR spam has crippled email as an effective tool for journalists. They have to shift through mountains of irrelevance to find the diamond in the rough (sorry, I watched Aladdin with my kids recently). As more brands turn to brand journalism and content marketing, the danger persists that lessons from the PR industry will not be learned, or that those outside PR will help create dead-end content.

And dead-end content is bad for everyone.

The definition of dead-end content is, I think, anything that doesn’t tell the next chapter of a brand story, inform the audience, or listen to an audience.  It isn’t measured in commercial terms, it is defined in simple ‘likes’ or some other nonsense. It is the antithesis of analytics and includes anything to do with cats, memes, Willy Wonka or ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. In short, hot garbage.

I believe dead-end content is dangerous as it infects timelines, feeds and ultimately attention-spans. In the same way journalists turned-off to PR emails, consumers and audiences will turn off to content from brands – because the good stuff will suffocate under a mountain of cat hair.

Yet people are fighting back. I don’t know who is behind the ‘Condescending Corporate Brand Page’ on Facebook, but I salute them. By calling poor content out to account, behaviours can be influenced.

Yet it’s a serious point and if PR people are to make the move to true content generation then they must impose strategy and evaluation, the industry must teach the lessons of what happened with email. And for those outside PR, lurking as ‘community managers’ or ‘content creators’, then you must have a strategy, listen, and evaluate. Otherwise your content will kill you and the internet will explode. Or was that wishful thinking?

Jonathan Welsh

Being a good scouser and Evertonian, Sir Terry has a lot in common with myself (actually that’s all we have) and I enjoyed his presenting style which was blunt, articulate and informative. Too many speakers fill precious audience time with anecdotes that fail to deliver a pay-off, yet this talk followed the structure of the book and more, giving thoughtful points for consideration afterwards. (In that respect Sir Terry probably ensured you didn’t have to read the book afterwards, so his agent might want to tweak it next time…)

A businessman doesn’t become head of Tesco and the UK’s most admired leader of commerce without one key ability, and that is to convey something very complex in simple terms and Sir Terry didn’t disappoint on this score. The lecture was light on humour but he had an underlying warmth, a part of the boy from ‘St Eddie’s’ school that still resonates as being real. In that respect, he was comparable to a slightly less polished Tony Blair – not a bad thing, either.

During the event he touched upon the need to ‘find the truth’. This, for me, is a basic starting point for communications too. If you can’t find the truth of what your organisation is trying to say, then it won’t sound honest when you do say it. According to Sir Terry, it was only in finding the truth about where Tesco was going wrong and then putting customers first, was the business able to move forward.

Oddly, Sir Terry made little or no reference to the digital world but these principles also ring true for this channel. Companies looking to hear the truth about what people think about them and act on these opinions, can do so more swiftly and honestly thanks to social media and digital communications. I understand Sir Terry wasn’t referring to a period where digital played as big a part, but it was a shame not to get his views on it.

Overall, I found it an interesting lecture and it really added something to the book for me, which I’m currently finishing, and that is an appreciation of the clarity of his words and how defining meaning in simpler terms can sometimes solve the most complex challenges.

I was working for Piccadilly Radio at the time and we had agreed to be the media partner for the event so I spent a lot of time in Vince’s company and as all of the tributes have said, he was a wonderful man.  As a thank you he gave me a pair of Pony running shoes and a place in the race and so it was that having mastered Plodder Lane, I finished in the very credible time of 3 hours 43 minutes in my first ever marathon.

Piccadilly Radio then decided to capitalise on the marathon boom by staging an event of its own and as Head of Press and Promotions it came under my remit.  My first love was still programme making, though, and who can ever forget the one hour documentary I produced, ‘From Athens to Platt Fields.’  Most people, I suspect, but I maintain it was a classic of its time.

I ran in the race, recording a PB of 3 hours 19 minutes, which would have been a lot faster had it not been for an unscheduled stop at some poor woman’s house on Princess Parkway to relieve myself.  The event was held for three years before its demise but it was great to see the Greater Manchester Marathon back on the sporting calendar last year and good luck to all those who are taking part this Sunday, the 28^th April.

Watching the London Marathon took me back to my glory days.  It was first held in 1981, with its founder Chris Brasher expecting around 4000 runners.  7000 actually took part and this year that figure had increased to 37,000!  I ran it in 1983, managing a time of 3 hours 28 minutes.  There was no chip then as you crossed the starting line so as it took me 20 minutes to get over it, I reckon I actually did 3 hours 8 minutes!

I was sponsored by the listeners of Piccadilly Radio and with the help of presenter Tim Grundy, I managed to raise £10,000.00 for a cancer ward at Wythenshawe Hospital.  And the running gene has been passed down from father to son, it seems.  My 15 year old, Isaac, is running the Bupa 10k with his mum, radio presenter Becky Want, to raise money for The Christie as part of the BBC Radio Manchester Appeal.

www.justgiving.com/beckywantBBC

So, keep on running is the message.  Runner’s World (their apostrophe, not mine) had just 50 marathons on its database in 2003.  This had almost tripled last year, with 145 official marathons.  In the same period half marathons have gone up from 189 to 336.  And seven years ago the Mont Blanc all night race had just 200 runners.  Last year there were 2000, with 10 times that number trying to enter.

I wasn’t one of them…

The New York Times obituary of Margaret Thatcher was an interesting piece of work, giving us an idea of how she was regarded in America. But then I came to the account of her 1980 Conservative party conference, and this quotation from her speech: “Turn if you like. The lady’s not for turning.”

You do not have to be a British politics obsessive to hear in your head that there is something clangingly wrong with that. What she said was: “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.” It was one of the best-crafted word plays in modern English speech-writing, transforming the familiar phrase “U-turn” into a defiant statement, with its emphatic rhythm, and someone who knew nothing about it, who had plainly never heard the speech, had mangled it.

My point is that I stopped reading the article after that. If someone could get something so basic wrong, why would I be interested in anything else they could tell me? This was partly irrational, because I was reading the article in the first place to find out about Americans and what they thought, not to find out about our former prime minister. But that is how communications work. Anything in a message that undermines confidence in the communicator makes it harder for the message to get across.

That is why, when people complain that I am a pedant or a censor in wanting to expunge clichés, jargon and annoying buzz-phrases from the language, I protest that I am here only to help. It is in your interest, as someone with a message to convey, to remove as many impediments as possible to its arriving safely in the cerebral cortex of your reader or listener.

If you include phrases that are over-familiar, or not quite right (“paradigm” and “parameter” come to mind), the best that can happen is that your audience will be bored. The worst is that those of your audience who are pedantic sticklers will do what I did when I got to that misquotation in the New York Times and decide that you are a fool.

So, buy my book and never put people off again. As a taster, here are 10 recent addition to the Banned List, to be avoided whenever possible:

Mainstream, as a verb.

Take-home message.

Fast-track, as a verb.

User experience.

Social media platforms.

Learnings.

Go-live, noun.

Navigate, as in “help our users navigate the web portal”. Means “use”.

Pathfinder.

Stakeholders.

John Rentoul is Chief Political Commentator at the Independent on Sunday. You can check for updates at the Banned List blog.

It is that time of year again, when young graduates fire off applications to PR consultancies in the hope of finding employment.  That is if they are not going off on their gap year.  I didn’t have that luxury – I worked at Cussons Soap Factory in Salford every summer to pay my way through university.  They were happy days, coming home smelling of scent and covered in talc.  I still have some Imperial Leather and Badedas Bath Foam from the staff shop, all these years on.

Anyway, I digress so back to my point.  I have interviewed a number of soon to be graduates over the past few weeks, some good, some bad, some average.   However, what concerns me more is how many of them said they have been offered internships by North West consultancies.  Not paid internships, I hasten to add, expenses only placements with the ‘promise’ that there might be a full time – and paid – position at the end of the three months.

I find unpaid internships totally unethical – and, most probably, illegal – and have asked a committee member to raise it with the CIPR.  As I understand it, you can offer students in full time education unpaid placements as it is mutually beneficial but as soon as they have graduated you are legally and morally obliged to pay them at least the minimum wage.  Fifty per cent of the students I interviewed had been offered unpaid placements, which to me is both unethical and unacceptable.

And it is the same consultancies that have been doing it for years, which have a rolling programme of three month placements with no likelihood of full time employment at the end of it; who say on their website that they have 45 members of staff, when the truth is closer to 4 to 5 members of staff; who in the next round of PR league tables will submit fanciful financial figures; and the same consultancies who will say what they have won, but never admit what they have lost.

I could name names as it is the usual suspects year after year, but I won’t.  We have a rolling programme of two week placements and I know from feedback from the universities that students love their time with us.  We offer placements in Manchester and Edinburgh to give the next generation of PR professionals first-hand experience, not to use them as cheap labour.  All I am asking is a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work from everyone.

Years ago I made a radio documentary called ‘The Genius in the Bottle’ which showed that people become a lot more creative after alcohol.  Look at Keats, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dylan Thomas, Edgar Allen Poe – all pleasantly intoxicated, in one way or another, when they wrote their greatest works.  This has been my excuse for imbibing during the new business process ever since…

Meanwhile, I once went on a training course which informed me that there are two kinds of new business go getters – the Hunter and the Cultivator.  The Hunter hits the phones, cold calling people that he or she has never met; who, most probably, haven’t heard of their company; and who, almost certainly, won’t be looking for PR at that moment in time.  That isn’t me.  Samaritans hang up these days when I try and speak to them.

I fall very much into The Cultivator category, finding reasons to contact people.  Apparently it can take up to 7 times for them to bite eventually, but if they don’t you have to accept that the email of the species isn’t quite as deadly as it should be.  (The only other course I went on told me that you should always have clean shoes; never wear a wacky tie as it doesn’t ‘t say you are wacky, it says you are sad; and invest in a good watch that stands the test of time as people judge you by it…).

However, new business isn’t all fun.  You get the ‘tyre kickers’, the corporate equivalent of people who visit car showrooms every weekend with no intention at all of buying.  These companies say they ‘want to see what is out there’ with no intention of appointing anyone, simply using it as an opportunity to fire a warning shot across the bows of their incumbent and wasting a lot of other agencies’ time, and money, in the process.  Oh, and they use your ideas without paying for them…

Then there’s the prospective client for whom finding a new agency becomes a full time hobby.  ‘How many agencies can I see and how many free lunches can I get?’  ‘Maybe I can appoint someone in London so I can tie in monthly meetings with shopping trips or long weekends away?’  ‘I wonder if they’ve got tickets for the Arena or Old Trafford?’  Only last month someone came in to brief us on an account that we discovered subsequently would be less than 3k a month.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, they had given the same brief to 11 (?!*) agencies, all of whom the person in question had visited personally.

Another pet hate is when prospective clients don’t like what your pre-pitch research has conclusively revealed about them.  One such organisation recently kept on telling us that they were ‘wacky, creative, quirky’ when they were anything but, something proven by the fact they had to keep reminding themselves that was what they were supposed to be!  As I pointed out, when someone tells you that they are funny you ask them to tell you a joke so you can decide if they are or aren’t.  And as Oscar Wilde put it somewhat more eloquently; ‘People ask for criticism, when all they want is praise.’

Then there’s the prospective client who won’t give you a budget so you end up playing ‘The Price is Right’, or for our younger readers, ‘Bargain Hunt.’  Most times you are more expensive than they are prepared to pay but as Ruskin said; ‘There is hardly anything in the world that someone cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper….It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot.’

Like I said at the beginning, I love new business, especially when we win it.  And I never ever forget Willy Loman’s advice from the wonderful ‘Death of a Salesman’; “The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want.”

It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice…

So, 18^th September 2014 it is then.  Only 544 days to go and the clock is already counting down until we get to vote on the country’s fate.

Hm, I wondered, what historical event took place on 18^th September that made the SNP choose this date?

After checking various “on this day” type websites and good old Wikipedia, my head is now spinning with details of those hatched, matched and dispatched in this day, as well as notable moments in history.

For example, did you know that The Netherlands gave women the right to vote for the first time on 18^th September 1919?

Or that the Royal Opera House opened in London on this day?

And that Lance Armstrong was born on 18^th September in 1971?

I could go on (and on and on ……..) about historical events but I must confess to being bemused by the date.

Why?

Will the first thing that jumped out at me is that the referendum is just a couple of days after the anniversary of the Battle of Britain – the 74^th anniversary no less.

What made the SNP choose this particular date because surely this is precisely what the ‘better together’ campaign is all about – a modern day battle for Britain?

I can’t believe I’m admitting this but I’m looking forward to seeing if the ‘no’ camp feeds this into its campaign.  Can we expect to hear some Churchill-style soundbites from Alistair Darling? Will the TV ads have dambuster music in the background and images of foreign plans invading Scotland en masse as we won’t have protection from the RAF any longer if we go it alone?

Or is the ‘yes’ camp thinking back to The Irish Home Rule Act in 1914 which subsequently lead to  the establishment of the Irish Free State?

Or am I over-thinking the date?

Is it just that the MSPs, in a bit of cross-party co-ordination, checked their diaries and this was the only date they were all free next year?

Who knows the real reason but at least we now know when it’s happening.

We’ve just got to live through the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ debates for the next 544 days.

Oh and one last point – according to a photograph of the SNP countdown clock tweeted by a party member, there’s 545 days to go until voting day yet media reports have Alex Salmond claiming it is in 547 days.

I’m tempted to comment on the disparity and wonder if this is an omen for the future but I think I’ll just leave it there.  I’m off to count the days myself!

By Ann Bryant

With work experience on my side, and age not so much on my side, I started my degree knowing I would not take the placement year (which offers students the chance to work in a PR setting for 12 months before completing the third year).  This however left me with added pressure to find as many short-term placement opportunities as possible in order to match up my practical experience to those students with a full year on their CV.

Now in my second year surrounded by students talking about their upcoming placements; my palms are getting a little sweaty, especially when it is reiterated to us daily, by our tutors and other professionals,  just how competitive it has become for graduates to break into the industry.

I’m one of the lucky ones as this is my third placement at Havas PR. On my first day back the managing director, Brian Beech, and I discussed how competitive the PR industry has become, even more so since I started my degree. His advice… “Get as many short-term placements as possible. Gain a variety of experience in B2B, consumer, charity and freelance and build, build, build your relationships.”

First rule of thumb in PR; find, build and maintain good relationships. It really is so important, if it wasn’t for doing so I wouldn’t have the fantastic opportunity to continue to return to Havas PR.   What’s great about coming back is that straight away after walking in on that first Monday morning, I can throw myself straight back into the workload as I already know the team well and the general routine of the working day.  This has been a blessing for me as I have been trusted to work on some amazing campaigns which have really helped build up my portfolio for University. The theory we are taught in lecture theatres means nothing to employers without us being given a stage to put what we learn into practice.

Following Brian’s advice I have begun applying for a mixture of placements in house aswell as at other agencies and charities – I’ve also recently started writing for an online publication ‘the Student Journals’. Of course, this is not forgetting my every intention to show my face at Havas PR again over the summer.

Being at Havas has exceeded my expectations of the industry, opened my eyes to the many different dimensions it offers and confirmed I’ve made the right choice for my future. I have a hunger to push myself to make the most of as many opportunities I can, knowing success is up to me and me only – if you don’t take the shot, you’ll never get the goal.

Charlotte Brierley

@CharlotteVaun