Clients and missed bedtimes

It was going to take a PR Daddies classic to get me back on the blogging wagon after being in ‘pitchland’ for the last month and here it is.  So I have been a bit busy recently – more late nights and early mornings than I can count – and I admit, I’ve missed a few bedtime stories.  Been too busy to even as much as tweet if the truth be known.  But this vignette from the Lonsdale household yesterday just had to be shared busy or not:

Tom (5): Why is daddy sometimes late home from work?

Mommy: You know why Daddy goes to work, it’s because he’s earning pennies for our holiday…

Tom: But why is he sometimes late home though?

Mommy: Well it’s because Daddy has clients to look after.

Tom: What are clients?

Mommy:[Deep breath] Well…they are…erm…people who pay Daddy money to do things for them…

Tom: What things?

Mommy: Well… lots of things…writing lots of big words for them, going to lots of meetings, talking to them on the telephone…

Tom: [Big pause] But why do they make Daddy late and miss bedtime?

Mommy: [Bigger pause] Because they shout and get cross if Daddy doesn’t finish things…and he doesn’t like it when they shout…so he stays late to finish off all his jobs.

Tom:  Do they shout at Daddy even if he’s being a good boy?

Mommy: [Pause] Sometimes they do because they can be really grumpy…

Tom: That’s not very kind to Daddy is it?

Mommy:No it isn’t…[Pause].  Do you want to watch Backyardigans on the telly?

So now my son thinks he knows what a ‘client’ is.  But more concerning is that he thinks all clients are evil, grumpy and make Daddy miss his bedtime.  To be fair I think my wife has given clients a bad rep there…so if any clients are reading this, really sorry.  (The views of my wife and children are entirely their own and not representative of mine or any companies related to me.)

Rest assured, I will use all my PR skills to mount an out-of-hours campaign to convince my son that not all clients are grumpy and that they can also make PR Daddies happy as well miss bedtimes.

Posted by Jon

Change…bring it on

Hosted a dinner with 10 really fascinating heads of PR for major technology companies last night to get a temperature check on where PR’s at.  Great night.  Everyone very chipper.  Amongst the intense debates on recession, budgets, evaluation, career progression and Twitter (what else!), there was one clear theme running through everything as the wine flowed. 

Change. 

Yes, everyone agreed that the wider world and the PR world is, quite frankly, changing like stink.  A few snippets to share with you from around the table that stuck in my mind…

“I give my agency a budget for the year and if they spend it in a month that’s OK.  As long as that month is awesome and I never see any timesheets.” 

ECONOMICS OF PR CHANGING, AGENCIES FINDING IT IMPOSSIBLE TO PUSH BACK.

“My budgets are up 30% because I’ve taken the money from the marketing team.”

CLEVER PR PEOPLE ARE GROWING THEIR BUDGETS, NOT LOSING THEM.

“Our input into executive communications makes PR easy to justify.  My CEO really needs me right now.”

PR’S STANDING IN BUSINESS IS INCREASING BECAUSE EXECS NEED ADVICE IN UNKNOWN TERRITORY.

“The social media channels are changing and PR is the only department that can adapt quickly enough.”

DAMN RIGHT.  WHY DO YOU THINK WE’RE CALLED OCTOPUS?

“Our organisation has realised where the ideas come from, and it isn’t the ad agency.”

EVERYONE IS EVALUATING VALUE OF SUPPLIERS AND PR IS WINNING OUT, NO QUESTION.

“The marketing team are paralysed because they can’t spend money, we are innovating and selling new ideas to the business.” 

PR CAN GENERATE IDEAS THAT DON’T COST MONEY, WE ARE A CLEVER RESOURCEFUL BUNCH.

“We’re moving into a new political cycle and things are massively going to change.”  

WIDER INFLUENCER RELATIONS IS GOING TO BE KEY AND PR GETS THAT.

“I’ve just seen Suggs in the gents.”

HONESTLY. I GOT STARSTRUCK AT THE URINAL.

Now don’t get me wrong, there was a healthy dose of fear about the years ahead and many of the wise panel didn’t think business would ever be the same again.  But the unanimous response from this representative sample of the UK’s PR tech elite was not “oh no”, but more like, “bring it on”.

As I stumbled out of the club and into a taxi having had too much food and wine, I was left with the feeling that there probably hasn’t been a better time to be in PR, and be good at it.

Posted by Jon

Center Parcs or Twitter Rehab?

Doing a typical PR Daddies trick next week and loading up the car for a few days in the forest with my little kiddies.  Frankly I can’t wait.  But alongside the happy thoughts of wave pools, mountain bikes and fresh air something sinister crept into my brain. This probably officially makes me sad but, too bad, I’ll say it anyway.  Center Parcs = total technology blackout.   

In case you didn’t know Center Parcs are impenetrable for the mobile worker – there ain’t much of a signal in the forest.  I think they block it to stop losers working instead of playing with their kids.  But hold on a minute.  That means no sneaky email checking when the wife is not looking, no breaking news or factoids from Twitter and probably not even any good old fashioned ‘call me now’ emergency texts .  Now don’t get me wrong.  With 43 followers and 7 tweets to my name, I’m hardly Twitterati, but I do enjoy watching the game from the sidelines.

It got me thinking that the last time I went a couple of years ago, I was only using my mobile to speak and text and Twitter was just an egg waiting to hatch.  Now it’s a whole new world.  Can I really cope with 5 days off the grid?  I’ll let you know.

In fact…anyone know who PR’s Center Parcs?  You heard it here first, the UK’s first Twitter Rehab Centre launches in Sherwood Forest.

Posted by Jon

15 agencies, 15 minutes

It’s taken me 13 years of agency life, but I have finally seen the light. I have just been part of the perfect pitch process. 

It goes something like this. Ask for creds from loads of agencies, a week later book out a hotel room in London and invite 15 of the best looking ones to come and present to you for 15 (yes 15) minutes against a simple brief, let them ask as many questions as they like on the phone beforehand, pick the 2 or 3 companies that you liked the most, then have another session a week later to get to know them all better.  Then make a decision. 

“Outrageous,” I hear the PR purists cry.  “15 agencies – what a joke! How can you make a decision based on 15 minutes? It dumbs down our proud PR profession.  I think agencies should refuse to pitch in these circumstances. “  Rubbish.  Here’s why I think it works: 

Firstly, I know within 2-3 minutes whether I like a person, would offer them a job or invite them for a beer.  So should a selection panel.  (If you’re a Malcolm Gladwell fan, it’s called ‘thin slicing’).  Secondly, it is massively time efficient for everybody.  We presented 8 slides in total, each well thought out and packed with flavour.  It meant that I didn’t have to cancel seeing their kids for a week to sweat over a monster ppt.  And from the client side, they got to meet a really good cross section of the agency world.  Win, win. Finally, and most importantly, it was tough, but immense fun.  A true test of creativity and getting to the hub of their communications challenges.  Sort of the reason I got into this game in the first place.

A good, creative, honest, hard-working, entrepreneurial agency will throw themselves into it enthusiastically and actually really enjoy standing in front of a panel, Dragons Den style, to show what they can do.  Bring it on, I say.  A crap one on the other hand, will moan about the injustice of it. So there it is.  Clearly because I’ve now blogged about it, we won’t win the 15-1 long shot pitch, but hey, it was great to be part of.  I wish I could say that about all of the pitches I’m involved with.

Posted by Jon.

Put down that WD40

(This is our first guest post – kindly penned by Tom Berry, PR flack, former  journalist, father of three and collector of 7 inch singles. Thanks Tom, great stuff)

The UK Technology Journalists and PR Facebook group (@UKTJPR for the twits amongst you) asked the snowbound media world a simple question: Do you prefer working at home or in the office. Well, the dimpled chads have been recounted and the results show that 38% of us prefer working at home, 21% don’t and 40% like it sometimes. MORI researchers are sleeping safely in their beds, I’m sure.

What struck me about this poll, however, was the one-in-five people (like myself) who would much rather work in an office environment. The reason for this is blindingly obvious to anyone with children – trying to work with the strains of MarioKart drifting upstairs, or writing a whitepaper in the midst of an argument about lost library books, is the sort of test that should be reserved for cosmonauts and applicants for a double-O number.

Frankly, even on the most stressful of workdays, going to the office is like a holiday – it gives me focus, allows me to socialise with people who don’t need help going to the toilet and allows me to differentiate between professional and personal.

You can imagine that with two days off school (soon to be three) and a faulty train network, the Berry household is approaching something akin to Lord of the Flies. During an enforced wii cold turkey session this afternoon, William (for he is five years old) struck up a very odd conversation with my seven-year old Henry. The topic of discussion was our new daughter Elizabeth. “Do you think Elizabeth will get fat?” ask William. “Maybe,” replies Henry “But she might also die in a road accident or during childbirth.” Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued – mostly from Mrs Me.

I only hope that in between building snowmen, watching daytime TV and making sense of the insane ramblings of their own school-starved children, the magnificent employees of Southern Railways can get back to work, clear the lines and make it possible for me to return to sanity.

 Elizabeth, put down that WD40…

Do you like Snow? Oh yes I do. I like it any place! Do you like it in your face?

I love it when it snows, makes it feel like Christmas Eve again. Lots of people not in the office and a slow work day.  Great to watch everyone’s attitude as the day presses on. Being in Windsor, my wife started with Radio Berkshire to get a list of the schools that were shut for the day. Funny thing is our kids are too young to go to school. I was later informed that the grand day out in the snow with the children lasted 10 minutes… hot chocolate and scones were certainly favoured in our household. Get that après ski in early I say.

We love a standstill in the UK and all the major news outlets had, not unsurprisingly, lengthy pieces on road closure, motorway closures, runway closures, even the football transfer deadline  has been moved. Football affected. This is positively apocalyptic. These stories then inevitably turn to the business cost of the snow. It’s a shame everything has a business cost these days.

Lastly, it seems everyone is in two camps on the snow, those that exclaim they can’t believe it is such a big deal “it snows in other places as well you know”. Bah humbug. We’re not in other places. And those that bunk off work to build snowmen. I salute you all. Lots of these people took brilliant photos of the best snow in London for a generation; Mark Pinsent certainly took some brilliant ones.

Posted by Louie

8 babies, 8 little stories

“It’s a boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, girl, girl!” declared the Evening Standard. Have to say got this from Charles Arthur via Twitter, very fast becoming the best source of info. It was a really heartwarming story of only the second known set of Octuplets, born in the early hours of Tuesday morning in San Francisco.

 

Radio 1 centered on the fact that the babies would be given letters whilst the parents settled on names. This of course meant that the fourth baby would be Baby D, an excuse to play let me be you fantasy! Meanwhile The Mail provided a very informative diagram of this ‘miracle’  exclaiming that the babies were born within 5 minutes of each other. FIVE minutes. Most reports were centered around the ‘surprise’ when baby number 8 or H (Steps anyone?) appeared. I can only assume that they were only expecting seven. Just how much of surprise can that be?

 

For me, I’m full of hope that the little mites will all be OK, but I’ve also thought a lot about the reality of this in practice. If I have only one piece of totally unqualified advice it would be…Get some sleep, while you still can!

 

Posted by Louie

Two Olympic Breakfasts

When our company was approached by Little Chef a while ago about helping them re-establish their image as an iconic British brand it really got the tongues wagging in the office.  Comments ranged from “erm, impossible brief” to “why not, it would be a laugh” to “I once eat two Olympic Breakfasts in one sitting”.  We met the marketing director, she seemed nice, but it all seemed to smell a bit and nothing ever came of it.  So last night I tuned into the last course of the much trailed ‘Big Chef takes on Little Chef’ [Heston Blumenthal tries to revive Little Chef menu] on C4, with a bit of professional interest. 

 

 

Ohmigod.  What great PR-porn it was.  The shiftiest parody of a CEO that said “blue sky thinking” a lot, NO saucepans in one of 180 Little Chef kitchens (how mad is that?), grimey staff who had all worked their 25 years for some reason and a central programme narrative that seemed to be “is Heston just being used by management as a marketing ploy?” 

 

You can just see this appearing as a big idea on a ppt slide in the Little Chef PR pitch, and I suppose the principle is OK even if it’s not that original.   But hey, as someone who’s had fond memories of Little Chef from being a kid (and yes I’ve had a few Olympics in my time but never two), I now think it’s run by greedy Northern pirates and serves food out of plastic sachets, army style.

Posted by Jon

The wrong kind of help…

I spend a lot of my working life trying to work out how to ‘help’ people – whether that is helping my team with new ways of working, or trying to get those all important results for our clients. At home it’s more about helping the little ones not to drop their dinner on the floor or getting them up the stairs. Either way there are clear parallels. The balance in both scenarios is always when to let something go and when to intervene, I’m guessing working that one out is good management or good parenting. On one hand making those those decisions is not always clear cut; on the other it can be blindingly obvious.

 

For example, last night I ran downstairs to the cries of my son (1yo), a common occurrence. I’m quickly informed by my daughter (3yo) that he has been banging his head on the wall, a not totally uncommon occurrence. Was she involved in any way? “Yes I was helping him.” I do admire her honesty but probably time for a chat and another award in diplomacy.

 

Posted by Louie

The competition, I am consumed.

It’s a strange time. We finished last year distinctly glass half empty. Since then it’s been new business galore, in the last two weeks alone I’ve been prospecting in Jersey, Finland and Starbucks (twice). It wasn’t meant to be this way? Can we dare think about proper growth at this early stage of the year? No idea yet. What we can be sure of is that the work is out there… for the best amongst us. As part of this, I’m pretty sure I spend too much of my time worrying about the competition, who has won what account? Where are the hires being made? How are they selling social media? It’s a combination of healthy paranoia and an unhealthy obsession with trying to keep up to speed with the best. It’s what makes it fun, especially in current times. I have a fundamental belief that PR agencies have a window at which they hit a sweet spot at the top of their game, when their best work is done. Whether two weeks or ten years, keeping that window open for as long as possible is key. Red has managed it for 10 years now and the likes of Blue Rubicon that are defining our industry today. It is going to be a wonderful journey but it is an obsession I’ll return to again and again.

Posted by Louie