More Fool You: The Art of Creating Shareable Content
One of my favourite scenes in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is when the duke and dauphin put on a makeshift and utterly farcical show called “The Royal Nonesuch” to make a quick buck. The audience on the first night, completely infuriated by what they had paid to see, decided that in order to avoid becoming the laughing-stock of the town they should tell all of their friends and neighbours how great the show was, so the play attracted sell-out audiences night after night until, on the final night, Huck noticed the crowd weren’t newcomers but people who had been there earlier and who had their pockets full of rotten eggs and vegetables. He informed the other guys and they skipped town with a small fortune in door money.
The scam worked because they evoked an emotional response that people shared. The anger of being lured in to a rip-off play by posters that read “ladies and children not admitted” was too much for the audience to supress and they felt compelled to action a response which capitulated on the final night when revenge was nigh. It paints an early and quite entertaining example of how to prompt a shareable action. It may have been a nasty trick, but it’s no more culpable than the first chain emails that promised eternal wealth if you forwarded it to five of your friends (I’m still waiting to cash in on that).
The art of creating shareable content is an age-old concept being carried out on new age platforms. Jonah Peretti, a founder of BuzzFeed, says shareable content is a delicate balance between something that is too shocking or controversial to be shared and something that is so ordinary it gets overlooked or ignored. Finding that happy medium between the two and ensuring it is relatable, engaging, funny or nostalgic is what propelled sites such as Buzzfeed to success, but increasingly digital users are looking to be engaged in order to share.
The digital world has made the art of shareable content both more arduous and more achievable
The digital world has made the art of shareable content both more arduous and more achievable. We’re more connected through social channels but have a shorter attention span and have evolved in the way we consume media. The solution, we have found, is multimedia. The 72Point Media Consumption report found that people are overwhelmingly more likely to share multimedia content on social media such as videos, animations and interactive games.
We recently recreated “The Royal Nonesuch” in an interactive game developed for Interparcel. The game, hosted here, was a ‘super-sharable’ bit of multimedia designed to test your patience, running on the back of a successful MPC (Multi-Platform Content) campaign that can be viewed here. Like the unsuspecting victims of the duke and dauphin’s show, if you’re fooled by the game it makes you more likely to share it in order to dupe your friends into doing the same thing. 21st century trickery at its best; Mark Twain eat your heart out!
To grab the minds of people today, you need content that is quick, visual and, most importantly, memorable enough so that they share it. - Hugh McIntyre
The 2015 Media Consumption Report: Prepare for MPC
If the minefield that is contemporary media has taught us anything it is that a ‘multi’ approach is the next big evolution for the PR industry with arguably more sticking power than any media shift in the past.
Not only do media consumption habits transcend channels (print, broadcast, online), they also transcend platform (smartphone, tablet, desktop) and the way in which we interact with media has changed irreversibly as a result.
To understand how the digital landscape has impacted media consumption 72Point has commissioned a survey of 7,500 people in the UK exploring what types of content the modern media consumer is likely to read, watch, share and like on which platform(s). The report, due for release in March, looks in detail at how to prepare for the challenges and opportunities presented by multi-platform content (MPC).
Media Platforms and Channels
Generation ‘Multi’ is about capturing large audiences with campaigns that transcend platform and channel, but this offers opportunities and challenges in equal measure. We look at what channels and platforms people are consuming media on and how this impacts the way in which they consume media.
Mainstream media confronts digital
The migration of mainstream media from print and broadcast formats to online platforms has revolutionised the media landscape, but pertinently, it has reformed the way in which mainstream publishers convey news. We look at how.
The rise of Specialist Publications
In the digital age everybody carries a digital news stand in their pocket. Their interests dictate what they read from a seemingly endless bank of media titles which eschew ‘mainstream’ objectives of catering to a wide audience in favour of specialisation. We look at what sort of specialist publications are popular.
Social Media: Traffic and Consumption
Not only has social media altered the way in which media conveys news, it has also altered the way in which people find news, creating a more consumer-led news industry that harks back to the rise of specialist publications discussed in the previous chapter. Some of our results have been published in an article on PRWeek.
In the report, we also discuss the rise of ‘lists, gifs, pictures and posts’ in media and how mainstream media has adopted a social media-led approach and new sites have been born from it.
Organic and Sponsored Posts
Finally we discuss our attitudes towards sponsored posts vs organic posts.
The full report will be published and available to download from this site.
Social Outreach: What Is It and Why You Should Be Doing It
Anyone with an account on a social network has been there. A casual surf through your feed, checking in with friends, dishing out Favourites and Likes as needed. As you scroll you notice posts from accounts that you aren’t familiar with. A number of these go by, but every once in a while one hits its mark, grabs your attention, and demands a click to check out the story.
These are targeted adverts, created to spark traffic from a specific audience to a specific piece of content. We call it Social Outreach.
Now more than ever specialisation is key. New content arrives online in an endless torrent. It’s a wonderful outpouring but it poses a problem when trying to draw an audience for a specific piece of content. How do you get seen in this hectic and shifting landscape? Social Outreach can help by placing an ad for your content in the feeds of social media users, targeting only those who are interested in the topic of your content.
Now more than ever specialisation is key.
For example, say you are working for a company that builds bicycles and you’re looking to promote a new range of mountain bikes. Try targeting social media users who express an interest in cycling and fitness, or have been known to mention topics relating to outdoor pursuits in their updates. You could even get right down into mentions of ‘helmets’, ‘punctures’, ‘downhill’, ‘ATB’, ‘derailleur’, ‘schrader’ – terms that only dedicated cyclists are going to be mentioning. The more specific you can be the less time and money will be wasted placing your content in front of people unlikely to click.
Social outreach requires a nuanced approach to reap the biggest rewards. The most important variables to consider when crafting a successful campaign are all creative ones. First and foremost is the quality of the content you are promoting. Content that taps into the interest of the audience and provides a mix of storytelling, topical subject matter and engaging visuals is more likely to be read, shared and spread organically to a wider audience. This organic momentum, when the story takes on a life of its own, is the ideal outcome for your social campaign.
This organic momentum, when the story takes on a life of its own, is the ideal outcome for your social campaign.
Next to consider are the posts themselves. Both Facebook and Twitter advertising allow you to create variations of your post. This is an opportunity to be adventurous. Try a range of images and text configurations to see which resonates best with your audience. You might create two serious, corporate posts with professional images and direct wording, but mix it up on the next two will some pop culture references and a well-known meme. Inside tip: images of cats and Bill Murray never fail. Create the post that you would want to click on.
The three pillars of Social Outreach, then: killer content, engaging social media posts and a specialised audience. When these three elements align Social Outreach can be one of the most exciting and effective ways to get your content out there.
Posts and Pictures, Lists and Gifs
How Social Media has Shaped Digital News
The rise and increasing influence of social media has created a tricky quandary for digital publications; how do you cater for people who are visually wired, with patience at a premium and an aversion to information overload?
When the first wave of media publications started to establish an online presence there were clear warning signs that a simple ‘copy and paste’ strategy wouldn’t work. Media consumers weren’t migrating online because they found the Telegraph’s broadsheet pages too tough to handle, nor were the inky fingers or recycling headaches motives behind a ‘digital shift’. Online consumers of media had a thirst for a new type of publication, and thus a period of adjustment began.
Social media has shaped the way we interact with the online world. It gives us a role to play which is why we talk of a digital ‘world’ in which people are participants rather than just observers, cogs in the system and so forth. In that way it is by their rules that we comply; 140 character limit on Twitter, the list-like nature of a Facebook timeline and the multimedia-led structures of Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. Observe the elements of social media and you will begin to understand the underlying composition of digital media.
The use of visualized information has increased by 400 per cent in online literature since 1990, by 9,900 per cent on the internet since 2007 and by 142 per cent in newspapers. In short that’s because we suffer from information overload in the digital age and thus crave information that can digested quickly, like social media, and media outlets have both been born from this trend and responded to it.
BuzzFeed, for example, dubs itself as a “social news and entertainment company” that “provides shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment, and video across the social web” to a global audience of more than 200 million people.The site has become a world-wide phenomenon as a media outlet based on social media concepts and isn’t alone in capitalising on social-led media. And mainstream titles have started to catch up.
Lists, pictures, infographics, videos and Gifs have become a pre-requisite of most posts on sites such as the Mail Online, which is now the world’s biggest newspaper website.
One of our recent surveys commissioned on behalf of Interparcel found Brits are becoming increasingly impatient in general, with the average respondent waiting only ten seconds for a web page or link to load and only 16 seconds for a video to buffer. But as interesting as the results were, the real clever bit is what we did with them when it came to selling the story into the media. Not only did we provide solid news copy that was picked up by The Mail, The Telegraph and Metro but we added infographics, video and list material into the mix that meant it was picked up by countless online sites including The Star, MTV, BT.com, AOL and, of course, Mail Online.
The concluding remark is that if social media is shaping digital news then it must in turn shape how we do PR. At 72Point we have a growing digital team that is keeping ahead of the curve in that regard with exciting new infrastructure and a wealth of expertise, creating social campaigns for a social generation.
The Information Superhighway to Heaven
Breathe a sigh of relief, the information superhighway to heaven is open. Or at least, it was ten years ago when FuneralWishes.co.uk approached SWNS with their new ‘digital funeral service’.
Thanks to Roger– a pioneering visionary in the funeral world – bereaved individuals were offered a streamlined approach to all their funeral needs thanks to the interweb and its revolutionary ability to link things up. People with people, firms with firms, vicars with florists, coffins with the deceased, Funeral Wishes became one of many ventures founded on the notion of being able to do things from the comfort of your front room, a sort of computerised Yellow Pages if you will, and found its way to South West News Service as a result.
The story definitely had legs. In an age where people were still becoming accustomed to the ramifications of a global network of computers that can connect the world’s individuals, firms and organisations – AKA the Information Superhighway – an online funeral service demonstrated the potential of being able to do everything online. Today a simple Google search returns more than 66 million results for funeral services, but back then Roger had a real proposition. Put down the phone, don’t bother arranging meetings, just log on to his site and “plan a funeral before your own death or after the death of a relative”. How wonderfully morbid!
Today a simple Google search returns more than 66 million results for funeral services, but back then Roger had a real proposition.
Trailing through the archives at SWNS can often reveal corkers like that, written by SWNS Owner & News Editor Andrew Young at the start of the millennium. Back then the firm was a small news and pictures agency in Bristol and terms such as social media, interactive infographics and viral content would have been as alien to the journalist’s ear as an alcohol-free lunch invitation. But today when we compile digital press releases these are the things that are at the forefront of our minds.
If the same story came across our desks today we would immediately consider how we can engage all the media channels and shape the content to suit the medium. Perhaps a Top 10 tips for planning a funeral or an interactive infographic calculating your own death date and options for planning your own funeral. A video showcasing the site’s functionality with commentary from Roger himself shouts viral; ”I have died about a hundred times checking that the site is all working okay” is just one of his quips in the original feature.
The parallels between our approach then and now highlight how far the company has come. From a news and pictures agency in Bristol SWNS has become a family of firms spanning across the country and internationally that specialise in delivering multi-platform content to suit all audiences. The ‘information superhighway’ has been shown to complement traditional media which means that for companies such as us knowing how to deliver on all fronts is the key to offering our clients the best the market has to offer in public relations. Or in the parlance of Roger, a PR service made in heaven
Radio Days that Deserve Capital Letters
I read with interest the article in The Guardian this month about Radio days often being perceived as a waste of time and money amongst PR people.
I just wanted to throw in my two pennies worth.
I agree if you are just re-hashing a press release, based on what the client wants the listener to hear with no regard to the specific demographic or location that the radio station is serving, then yes it's probably a big waste of your clients budget and time.
If you are trying to offer PR for a company who have stores all over the UK and the biggest station that you are running on is BFBS serving the armed forces in various locations around the world, then this probably isn't going to work well for you.
The key to effective Radio PR is to target the stations with relevant content; you have to think about the audience. Radio is such a fragmented market place with very defined target audiences. We have to think about what the audiences want to hear not what we want them to hear. The copy we send out to the Radio stations can't just be a replica of the press release; it has to be re written and targeted for a Radio audience.
You can't expect to get on air across the BBC promoting a specific campaign or trying to receive endless brand mentions, that would be against everything the BBC stands for, and quite rightly so as a publicly funded corporation. If you can go to a station with content that's targeted to their audience and locality then there is every chance they will find a use for the story.
Also think about the guests that you hear on the radio stations that you are targeting, if you're running a story about how much TV the average family watches over Christmas, look for a third party spokesperson that relates to the content, someone who has a family would be a good place to start and also someone that relates to the Radio stations audience you are targeting.
A Radio station aren't going to accept a story where the copy is about a specific product where a survey carried out by that product revealed that the same product is key to everyday life… and the spokesperson well this just happens to be the Marketing Manager for the company that makes that product.
The article says that people who run Radio PR companies will no doubt disagree with the comments made, actually I agreed with most of the points the writer raised, having worked as a presenter for most of my working life, I know how annoying it is to be a presenter on a 15-24 Hit Music Station - Capital FM in London and being sent a story that is clearly aimed at the 40+ market.
In summary listen to the Radio stations that you want to be on, what are they talking about and what type of guests do they have on. This way you can be useful to Radio stations by going to them with ready made content that they can just insert into their running order.
Chris' blog was original posted on his own blog which you can read here....
A Picture Paints a Thousand Words
It might not come as a surprise to you that more and more stuff is going digital. This is to some degree spurned on by the sheer speed and quality of technical advancements. It wasn’t that long ago that I had to plug my laptop into the phone line to surf the interweb. Now I can check my emails whilst on the train; 10 years ago that would have blown people’s minds, either that or I’d have been burned for being a witch.
The move to digital is also fuelled by a desire to make people’s lives more convenient. Whether it’s an app that tells you how long to cook your steak for or the e-reader which lets you have all your favourite books in one place. People are reaching out for things that make their life easier.
This trend is becoming more and more dominant in the world of press. As with books, people want all their news in one handy place and in condensed formats. In June of this year (2014), The National Readership Survey estimated a decline of 13% in the readership of national newspapers, yet an article in the Guardian reported an increase in their online readership. Digital news seems to be where it’s at.
I for one am an advocate of traditional methods; I like printed books, newspapers and magazines, but when it comes to finding out about what’s happening in the world my first port of call is to check twitter. I think it’s safe to say I’m not alone. As people get busier and busier, they want things at their fingertips, in small, easily digestible nuggets. People haven’t got time to read massive news articles anymore. You probably can’t even be bothered to read this blog, but as you’re here, you might as well persevere.
Infographics are a good example of how news and press is adapting to modern life. If people can visualise a story and take in the key points instantly, why bother reading a 3 page article on it? To put it another, more simplistic way, how many of you would rather read the Very Hungry Caterpillar over, say, Crime and Punishment?
The move to digital is also fuelled by a desire to make people’s lives more convenient.
A good example of this is the BBC. Earlier this year they announced that they would be launching daily infographics on their social media channels. In an interview with Jounalism.co.uk, the BBC’s editor of Visual Journalism, Amanda Farnsworth, stated that what they were ‘trying to deliver is a really salient, interesting nugget on a big story’. She claimed that the world of infographics was an answer to the question of covering the same story across all media platforms. Farnsworth added that “Visual journalism meets three audience challenges: distinctiveness; a modern and lively way to treat news stories; and an aid to understanding” with infographics ticking ‘all the boxes’.
It’s not just the BBC. More and more news sites are utilizing infographics to tell a story. Since the 6th October we found 8 infographics featured on the travel section of the MailOnline online, most of which were PR stories.
PR stories are one area of news that have always done well when in infographic form. As PR survey gurus… *cough* …we have first-hand experience of this. The British Airways infographic that we curated alongside our own design team, Drench, was featured on the MailOnline. Likewise the one we created for Monarch Airlines featured on Yahoo, as did our infographics for OnePoll and Tecmark. Both the Monarch and British Airways were also featured on infographic site Visual.ly, with the Monarch example making the homepage.
It is indisputable that infographics are becoming more and more popular, which is why we recommend using them in your campaigns. Visual media can transform a simple survey story into an online hit due to their readability and easily digestible content. Not only that but they can be split up into bite size chunks to either break up text or for use on social media.
We’re so enthusiastic about infographics that we have News-By-Design, our own site dedicated to showcasing both our own infographics and other excellent examples from around the web. The site is a true statement about just how popular infographics are and that is not just us showing off. The site has a huge following on both Twitter and Pinterest, including journalists and PRs within its diverse fan base.
Whether it’s a story about cats or a hard hitting piece about Ebola, News-By-Design really has covered it all. That is for one reason, and one reason only….because infographics work for every sort of story. There’s even one about why visual data works so well which is pleasingly topical. The infographics we have produced for clients have covered everything from yoghurt to back up relationships, from smartphone obsessions to vegetables. There really is no limit. All you need is an idea, some stats, and a design team……now if only there was a company that could do all that….
The Power Behind the Rainbow Laces Campaign
Paddy Power never fail to disappoint when it comes to PR and marketing.
Previous examples of brilliance include their Luis Suarez advert, their break glass in an emergency Alex Ferguson, or their multiple world cup themed pieces.
Their latest marketing campaign however, although less comical, surpasses all previous attempts.
Working with sexuality charity Stonewall, Paddy Power have launched their#RainbowLaces campaign. The idea behind the campaign is to show solidarity for gay footballers and intolerance for homophobia in the sport by wearing, you guessed it, Rainbow Laces.
Although the campaign originally launched last year, it was accused of being merely another publicity stunt and has been redrafted with a more serious approach.
The campaign re-launched on the 8th September and has already found its feet.
The Metro produced a special Rainbow Laces edition of their paper which featured re-designs of well-known ads showing support for the campaign on behalf of dozens of household brands. The issue was even voted as Creative Review’s Ad of the Week.
Intelligent adverts being given a national showcase in the national press in which to convey their message is more than just a clever marketing trick. It’s a statement of how far society has come. It’s a reflection of what can be achieved if you have the right tools, support and platforms.
Notable examples of the above ads include Premier Inn who showed their support for the campaign with a rejigging of their brand name, changing it to Premier Out. Genius.
Smirnoff’s ad featured a rainbow coloured bottle of Smirnoff surrounded by the laces and the strapline ‘We wouldn’t change our recipe but we can change the game’.
This tied in with one of Paddy Power’s own ads which uses the line ‘it only takes two minutes to change the game’ and diagrams of how to place the laces in your boots in a style reminiscent of managerial tactic sketches.
Rather unsurprisingly Paddy Power have based all their advert designs specifically on football giving each a football punned strapline.
As well as the ‘change the game’ line above, other Paddy Power slogans include ‘now more than ever you’ve got the world at your feet’ and, possibly my favourite, ‘We don’t care which team you play for ’.
They even recruited the help of the Arsenal squad. It’s not the first time that Arsenal Football Club have shown their support for equal rights. In 2008 the club launched its ‘Arsenal for Everyone’ campaign to ‘ensure that everyone associated with the club feels an equal sense of belonging’. We live in a culture where, perhaps unjustly, footballers are idolised by a generation of young boys and girls, so who better to spread a message of equality.
The video, which shows certain Arsenal players list personal characteristics they can’t change, is worth a watch if you haven’t already. It not only reinforces the message that being gay is something you can’t change, but it also shows a level of self-deprecation and a sense of humour that, I for one, was unaware existed in football.
Highlights include the diminutive Santi Cazorla’s eyes peering over the edge of the camera unable to change his height; Mikel Arteta using more hairspray than is ecologically acceptable unable to change his ‘perfecto’ hair and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain stating that he is unable to change that he looks like a teenage mutant ninja turtle. Which he does by the way….Like, really does.
The rainbow laces campaign shows the true power of PR and marketing; using the power and influence of brands and influential personalities to spread a positive message to all age groups and demographics. My only concern is that it limits the campaign to football, after all homophobia has no place in any aspect of our culture or society but hopefully this is a step in the right direction.
So Much for Silly Season
Well, that was that…
‘Silly season’, by far and away the best time of the year to deliver PR content to the UK’s national newspapers, passed by in a blur of war, death, phone hacking and paedophilia.
(By the way, they are not in order of seriousness, they merely read quite nicely in that order).
No room for tales of great white sharks being spotted off the Cornish coast this year – and subsequently very little room for PR stories.
Last year was very different, the country was enjoying a feel good factor, the birth of the young Prince and Andy Murray’s Wimbledon victory gave the nation a huge boost, and opened the door for bucket-loads of PR fun within the pages of the national press.
In PR terms the summer of 2013 was the summer of love. Positivity flowed through the streets of Britain and through page after page. Boasting tans and clutching a glass of Pimms, the media opened their arms to light-hearted content.
Stories which may have squeezed in at the middle or back end of the news pages landed in the first five to seven, leaving the PR industry with a glow as warm as Kate and Wills’.
Fast forward – and this year could not have been more different.
This summer has been flat. A bit like arranging a posh barbecue, inviting 22 friends, spending £300 on steaks, fresh fish and couscous from Waitrose, only for your mate and his not-so-sociable girlfriend to be the only guests to turn up.
Time and time again I have seen good quality PR content, which would have sat nicely up the front of papers, being given a smallish show in the later pages.
Whilst this time last year was the summer of love, we are now in the midst of our very own annus horribilis.
Thinking about it – why didn’t we see it coming?
Should have gone to Specsavers, perhaps.
The tone of the year’s news seemed to be set quite early in March when within six days three massive global stories kicked off, pushing PR-based content off the news list.
First the Oscar Pistorius trial began in South Africa, and the world hung on every piece of evidence put before the court.
Page after page of coverage followed for days on end as the grim final moments of Reeva Steenkamp’s demise were made public.
The trial of publicist and all-round Mr Fix It, Max Clifford, dubbed the showbiz trial of the decade, followed and again took up page after page of the papers.
An art and sub desk’s dream, maybe. Having a string of belters to place on the flat plan after the morning news conference. But a complete nightmare for the PR industry.
They always say things come in threes, and just when we were all hoping things would quieten down and free up a few pages reports started emerging of a missing passenger jet.
And so the greatest mystery in the history of aviation was born.
Never before has a packed passenger jet just vanished without a trace – but it did this year.
Malaysian Airlines MH370, which took off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing, lost contact with air traffic control less than an hour into its flight.
The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations, left Malaysian airspace with a casual ‘good night’ from the co-pilot and is still missing.
Search and rescue teams from around the world joined the hunt for the doomed airliner, hundreds of ships – including dozens of naval vessels were scrambled to the area where experts pinpointed as a possible crash site.
Harrowing photographs of friends and relatives of the missing passengers collapsing under the sheer weight of their grief filled the pages of the world’s media.
Around a month later Britain was stunned by the initially mysterious death of Peaches Geldof at her home in Kent, hours after she posted a photo of herself as a child with her late mum Paula Yates.
From grief and disbelief, the nation’s emotions quickly turned to disgust and deceit and even the feeling we were all duped, when the trial of Rolf Harrisbegan.
Surely at some point there would be some respite for the PR industry, a shard of light at the end of the tunnel – or even a triangular-shaped fin off the coast of St Ives.
But no, the death destruction and mood of media misery continued, this time when after a thoroughly public laundering of the industry’s own dirty washingAndy Coulson was found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones of celebrities, royals, grieving families and even fellow staff from the now defunct News Of The World.
Sandwiched between the Harris and Coulson cases came the sad and untimely death of comedian and all-round good guy, Rik Mayall.
More recently – and right smack bang in the middle of our beloved ‘silly season’ – came another potentially fatal blow for Malaysian Airlines.
The mid-air annihilation of MH17, a packed passenger jet, amid the disputed skies over eastern Ukraine, in what looks likely to be an attack by pro-Russian guerrillas, left the world shocked to the core.
Again, alongside stories of those who died, subsequent tributes and heart-breaking family photographs, those who should have been on the flight but weren’t for one reason or another, told their stories. Within hours graphic images of charred human remains amongst the twisted fuselage of the downed jet, the most haunting pictures of the year in my opinion, began to filter through.
As the ramifications rumbled on, and President Putin did his best to distance himself from the rebels who will surely be held responsible for the atrocity,trouble escalated in Gaza.
Hamas troops launched rocket after rocket over the border at the Israelis, who responded in kind, devastating buildings and leaving hundreds dead, including dozens of schoolchildren. This again providing news outlets with a plethora of horrific images with which to fill their pages and illustrate the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before us.
Social media and instant news and images have also helped give these stories a shelf life far longer than would have been the case in years gone by.
Each one of these stories has held great images. The visual element of most of them has been gripping to say the least.
Bar the missing Malaysian flight every story, even Harris’s trial in the shape of his arrival at court each day with his wife Alwen and daughter Bindi, and his final trip to court by boat, enabled the media to splash photographs across the pages to accompany the copy.
And each one of these stories has been what we call a ‘runner’; a tale which focuses attention on a ‘day two’ and a ‘day three’ and so on, leaving us PRs facing an uphill battle to snatch a page lead or two.
So – as I write we have around three and a half weeks to go before the PR industry begins to focus on Christmas.
Perhaps there is still time for some good news – or even a shark or two,
I live in hope…
Hang on, seems a global Ebola epidemic may be brewing.…