It's hard enough to remember our opinions without remembering the reasons for them

Honesty has to be the Best Policy

With the age of online transparency upon us and instant consumer reaction and upfront comment here to stay - is the age of PR exaggeration and manufacturing a good old fashioned news story dead?

Now, I have always been honest during my PR career and upfront with clients and contacts alike.  However, I have to admit that in the past on one or two occasions I have stretched the truth just a little to sell the story.  Products might not have been flying off the shelves, the student on work experience was not actually going to get married to the receptionist, as depicted in a client case study, and my giant shirt might not have been the world’s biggest!

 So, I hold my hands up. In my defence I felt it was harmless fun and when the papers ran stunt stories on the death of the artic roll and subbuteo, only to bring the brands back due to popular demand, I felt my small transgressions paled into insignificance. 

This musing was prompted when I came across an ‘egg on the face’ incident for Walmart, in the US. The poor team were hung out to dry when they supported a story about Laura and Jim camping on Walmart carparks and blogging about their experience.

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2006/db20061009_579137.htm

The trouble was they were being fed news and key messages by Walmart and so they became more unbelievable, with critics eventually questioning the couple’s authenticity.  Whatever the truth of the story, Walmart’s critics investigated Laura and Jim online and holes developed in their story. 

I am sure clients and agency professionals alike, over the last ten years, lived by the mantra - “Oh nevermind if they are not a real couple or case study, we will get them to make up a story to illustrate the campaign,  it will be fine!”

The art of our industry is to present people, products, services and brands in a good light and I think the industry possesses some of the best storytellers in the business. 

Surely the trick is now to drive a debate and a conversation both off and online with our target audiences in an up front, open and honest, engaging way. 

Thereby, we the guardians of reputation, can be part of an honest conversation which is far more powerful than a manufactured news article.  Stunts and ‘made up news’ need to be fun and obviously manufactured as the online generation make Poirot look inept!  

Posted by James in Hatch, Social Media / Tue 06/10 / 17:23

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Embrace your own Human Clock

If you love photography, synchronicity and celebrating humanity then you should definitely check out the Human Clock.

It was during my first day here as a new recruit at Hatch, when I discovered I’ve lost all sense of time. Now I’m not a big clock watcher and often have no clue what the time is……….and sometimes when your bored the time does tend to drag on and on and on and on. I hate to admit it, but in previous jobs, occasionally I longed for the clock to strike 5pm.

But how this has changed. As I immersed myself head first and with great gusto into my first day at Hatch the time whizzed by, as jokes, emails, press releases and conference calls were the tasks of the day. Now not too long ago it was 9am on my first day and now it was 5.30pm and time to ‘cluck off’. Where does the time go? I think we have an uncanny and built in knack to tell when certain daily events are – such as lunchtime, snack time…………..…oh and of course when its time for a brew (ahem………..James!), but I think we find it harder to assess other key times throughout the course of the day and often miss them. I’m going to make a note from now on to regularly check the time when I can, as it seems, for me, to stretch the day out and prolong the daylight, which I’m all for!

Now the Human Clock is a great little website I’ve stumbled upon, where every 60 seconds a different image is displayed that somehow magically tells the time. Although I doubt we all check the time every minute. There are plenty of obvious pictures on there with people holding up a sign of the time, giving a shout out to their favourite band or hometown, but the human clock also has many colourful pictures that fall into charming coincidences.

They offer a tidy little desktop window so you can also watch the pictures change throughout the day (go on give it a go…….…you won't be disappointed). To me it gives clockwatching a little more giddy up!

You can even submit your own photo and become part of a global art project.

I hope it inspires your work week, as it did mine!

Posted by James in Hatch, new staff, PR, recruitment / Tue 06/10 / 10:09

Tags: hatch, pr, new recruit

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