![\"silly_season2\"](\"https:\/\/www.72point.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/silly_season2-300x217.jpg\")
Well, that was that\u2026<\/p>\nWell, that was that\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2018Silly season\u2019, by far and away the best time of the year to deliver PR content to the UK\u2019s national newspapers, passed by in a blur of war, death, phone hacking and paedophilia.<\/strong><\/p>\n (By the way, they are not in order of seriousness, they merely read quite nicely in that order).<\/p>\n No room for tales of great white sharks being spotted off the Cornish coast this year \u2013 and subsequently very little room for PR stories.<\/strong><\/p>\n Last year was very different<\/strong>, the country was enjoying a feel good factor, the birth of the young Prince and Andy Murray\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n In PR terms the summer of 2013 was the summer of love.<\/strong> Positivity flowed through the streets of Britain and through page after page. \u00a0Boasting tans and clutching a glass of Pimms, the media opened their arms to light-hearted content.<\/p>\n 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\u2019.<\/strong><\/p>\n Fast forward \u2013 and this year could not have been more different.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n This summer has been flat. A bit like arranging a posh barbecue, inviting 22 friends, \u00a0spending \u00a3300 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.<\/p>\n Time and time again I have seen good quality PR content<\/strong>, which would have sat nicely up the front of papers, being given a smallish show in the later pages<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Whilst this time last year was the summer of love, we are now in the midst of our very own annus horribilis<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Thinking about it \u2013 why didn\u2019t we see it coming?<\/p>\n Should have gone to Specsavers, perhaps.<\/p>\n The tone of the year\u2019s news seemed to be set quite early in March when within six days three massive global stories kicked off<\/strong>, pushing PR-based content off the news list.<\/p>\n First the Oscar Pistorius trial<\/strong> began in South Africa, and the world hung on every piece of evidence put before the court.<\/p>\n Page after page of coverage followed for days on end as the grim final moments of Reeva Steenkamp\u2019s demise were made public.<\/p>\n The trial of publicist and all-round Mr Fix It, Max Clifford<\/strong>, dubbed the showbiz trial of the decade, followed and again took up page after page of the papers.<\/p>\n An art and sub desk\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And so the greatest mystery in the history of aviation was born.<\/p>\n Never before has a packed passenger jet just vanished without a trace \u2013 but it did this year.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, carrying 12 Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers from 15 nations, left Malaysian airspace with a casual \u2018good night\u2019 from the co-pilot and is still missing.<\/p>\n Search and rescue teams from around the world joined the hunt for the doomed airliner, hundreds of ships \u2013 including dozens of naval vessels were scrambled to the area where experts pinpointed as a possible crash site.<\/p>\n Harrowing photographs of friends and relatives of the missing passengers collapsing under the sheer weight of their grief filled the pages of the world\u2019s media.<\/p>\n Around a month later Britain was stunned by the initially mysterious death of Peaches Geldof<\/strong> at her home in Kent, hours after she posted a photo of herself as a child with her late mum Paula Yates.<\/p>\n From grief and disbelief, the nation\u2019s emotions quickly turned to disgust and deceit and even the feeling we were all duped, when the trial of Rolf Harris<\/strong>began.<\/p>\n Surely at some point there would be some respite for the PR industry, a shard of light at the end of the tunnel \u2013 or even a triangular-shaped fin off the coast of St Ives.<\/p>\n But no, the death destruction and mood of media misery continued, this time when after a thoroughly public laundering of the industry\u2019s own dirty washingAndy Coulson was found guilty of conspiracy to hack phones<\/strong> of celebrities, royals, grieving families and even fellow staff from the now defunct News Of The World.<\/p>\n Sandwiched between the Harris and Coulson cases came the sad and untimely death of comedian and all-round good guy, Rik Mayall<\/strong>.<\/p>\n More recently \u2013 and right smack bang in the middle of our beloved \u2018silly season\u2019 \u2013 came another potentially fatal blow for Malaysian Airlines.<\/p>\n The mid-air annihilation of MH17<\/strong>, 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.<\/p>\n Again, alongside stories of those who died, subsequent tributes and heart-breaking family photographs, those who should have been on the flight but weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/strong>.<\/p>\n 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<\/strong> with which to fill their pages and illustrate the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding before us.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Each one of these stories has held great images. The visual element of most of them has been gripping to say the least.<\/p>\n Bar the missing Malaysian flight every story, even Harris\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n And each one of these stories has been what we call a \u2018runner\u2019<\/strong>; a tale which focuses attention on a \u2018day two\u2019 and a \u2018day three\u2019 and so on, leaving us PRs facing an uphill battle to snatch a page lead or two.<\/p>\n So \u2013 as I write we have around three and a half weeks to go before the PR industry begins to focus on Christmas.<\/p>\n Perhaps there is still time for some good news<\/strong> \u2013 or even a shark or two,<\/p>\n I live in hope\u2026<\/p>\n Hang on, seems a global Ebola epidemic may be brewing.<\/strong>\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, that was that\u2026 \u2018Silly season\u2019, by far and away the best time of the year to deliver PR content […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":38383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[269,277,278,305],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pr-insight","category-featured","category-pr","category-just-saying"],"yoast_head":"\n