Airmiles Commits PR Suicide
Posted by admin on September, 19th 2011
It has been a tough couple of weeks for The Mileage Company – the people who manage Airmiles. Since the announcement that Airmiles would be ‘making some changes’ to its offering, there has been an outpouring of anger from the public about it, with disgruntled customers taking to TV, radio and of course, the internet to publicise this issue.
For a bit of background information for those who may not already be aware of what has happened, Airmiles is changing its name to Avios, and under this new brand name, Airmiles as we know it will cease to exist. Points already saved by customers for free flights will be devalued and from 16 November 2011, customers will have to pay for the fees, taxes and charges of flights they want to use their points for.
The Secret to a Great PR Pitch
Posted by admin on September, 6th 2011
Public relations is more than writing press releases and emailing them out to a list of contacts. To get the best coverage, you have to pick up the phone, call journalists and pitch the client’s story.
It is nerve-wracking doing this, so we have put together some tips that should help anyone making a pitch over the telephone.
- Keep it brief – there is nothing worse than picking up the phone to someone who wastes your time rambling and going around in circles around a couple of incoherent points. Loads of people write a script with the main points they need to cover to help them stay on track.
- Act confident, even if you’re not. It is pretty scary picking up the phone and trying to talk to someone who you’ve never met before and sell
Reasons not to hire a PR Agency
Posted by admin on July, 6th 2011There is a lot of emphasis right now about what public relations, marketing, SEO and social networking can all do for businesses, whether they operate online, offline or both. When times are hard, it is sensible to consider the value of all of your PR and marketing and see not only where savings can be made, but how you can get the most from the talented people you work with.
As a PR and internet marketing agency, JPR Marketing believes that when working with clients, it is our responsibility to manage their expectations by being honest and realistic from the outset about what we can achieve for them.
As with anything in business, particularly when it comes to communications, there are good reasons for going in any given direction and bad reasons too. Take on a PR or marketing company for the wrong reasons and you risk wasting huge sums of
Superinjunctions – do you opt for a PR agency or a lawyer?
Posted by admin on May, 11th 2011
It’s all getting out of hand. The papers are giving clues about superinjunctions that we, the public, aren’t supposed to know exists and Twitter is buzzing with speculation where names of footballers and actors who may or may not be guilty of infidelities being exchanged between anonymous users.
Thanks to the anonymity that Twitter and other social networking sites can offer, it has become much easier to break superinjunctions and evade prosecution. Yet, because Twitter is not responsible for content published so cannot be sued for breaching superinjunctions.
Two of the women caught up in the middle of the scandal, Helen Wood and Big Brother 7 contestant Imogen Thomas have both been outed as having slept with the men at the centre of the superinjunctions and both have complained that
Riding out the PR storm – how to make the best of a public relations disaster (Part 1)
Posted by admin on May, 5th 2011Is your company prepared for a PR storm… and not a good one? There comes a time where every business needs to be ready in case something bad happens. Whether you’re anticipating the worst or just like to be prepared, we’re not about to judge. What we will say is that even if your company is whiter than white, having a PR crisis plan in place can really help you if the worst case scenario becomes a reality.
Well, the first thing you need to do is appoint a spokesperson. This doesn’t necessarily have to be the managing director, but it ought to be somebody with accountability and responsibility within the company. Before you make the appointment, you need to ask yourself if they represent the look of your brand. For example, if you were appointing a spokesperson for a bank, you wouldn’t choose someone with long hair, a beard and
Getting Value From Your PR Agency
Posted by admin on March, 25th 2011When you hire a PR Agency you will understandably be excited about all the good things that are going to come out of your new working relationship. If your PR Agency is working on a retainer basis, then you will be expecting to get great coverage every month that either shields you from negative attention or getting people talking about you for the right reasons.
It’s great to look at all the cuttings of all the press coverage your PR Agency has got for you every month, but did you enter into a contract with your PR company just to rack up some column inches? The question you need to ask yourself regularly is: am I getting value for money?
What we have found time and time again is that a one size fits all approach to a PR campaign hardly constitutes a strategy. Less talented consultants will suggest all kinds
Baby Gaga – Breast Milk Ice-cream
Posted by admin on March, 16th 2011Over the last three weeks, you might have been aware of a PR stunt that has started plenty of discussions across social media channels.
An ice cream parlour based in central London started selling ice cream made with human breast milk. An advert had been placed on the popular parenting forum, Mumsnet and women came forward to sell their breast milk for the project. Called ‘Baby Gaga’, the ice cream consisted of breast milk, vanilla pods and lemon zest, selling out within two hours of the launch… but this isn’t the end of the story.
A further 200 women came forward to donate their milk but health officials in Westminster put a stop to the operation, deeming it unsafe but didn’t appear to be entirely sure what made the product unsafe.
Cue the hand-wringing from PRs across the country with some declaring that stunts such as this one may give a short term
Online Reputation Management Strategy
Posted by admin on March, 14th 2011
Carrying on from our last blog post about online reputation management and how to monitor online chat about your brand, we are posting a quick blog about responding to discussions about your brand.
With social media, the purpose is to engage with customers and build relationships. However, companies that get it wrong can end up making things worse with customers who have a grievance. Here are a few platforms internet users may use to write negative things about your company and what you may be able to learn from the mistakes of others.
Reviews – Trip Advisor in particular is a massive reviewing engine. Reviews can even be indexed into Google and show up on Google Maps. Businesses are offered the right of reply but this could play out badly. If you respond to every negative review
Using Your Blog for Advertising with PR Companies
Posted by admin on March, 8th 2011Following on from our blog about blogger outreach programmes from a PR perspective, we have compiled a quick blog ourselves about how bloggers can work with PRs to add value to their readership as a result of their professional relationships.
If PRs have done their research well then they will already be satisfied that your website is an ideal space for their client to be visible in. As a blogger, you should be confident that working with particular companies will add value to your readers. Some readers may be looking for help and advice and just lurk in the background as the non-vocal majority. Advertising can add value to their experience but you ultimately need to put yourself in their position and ask yourself if the work you are doing with PRs is worthwhile for your readership. Otherwise you run the risk of alienating them with too many marketing messages
Churnalism
Posted by admin on February, 28th 2011In the last two days the ‘Churnalism’ story has sparked a great discussion in the PR world. A new website has been launched by the Media Standards Trust to expose the true extent of how many news stories began life as a press release… and how many have been published in almost entirely their original form.
If you suspect that a press release has been poorly edited and passed off as journalism you can go to churnalism.com and copy and paste in the article so you can see for yourself whether your suspicions were correct. However, no PR company will ever complain that their press release resulted in coverage!
In PR, the purpose of writing a press release is to make it easy for a journalist to identify what the story is and then write good things about your client. A good PR company will only send press releases to