Results tagged “PR” from Birmingham Post - Business Blog

How do YOU decide what is and what isn't news?

A web media company I work with did some analysis recently on why articles had been rejected by Google News. Whereas just about anything can go on to the web search, Google vets sites before it will include them in the 'news' category. It then checks each article against a set of pre-determined criteria to decide if it's a genuine news article - we can't have bloggers masquerading as journalists now can we?

Whilst browsing the web the other day I happened across a fairly innocuous-looking story that, at first glance, seemed nothing more than one of those "strange but true" tales that you mentally file away to impress your mates with down the pub after work.

However, something about it set a few alarm bells ringing for me and, on further inspection, this throwaway story turned out to be a nugget of pure viral marketing gold.

It also prised open a family-sized can of worms in my hardened TV researcher's brain and set them wriggling in the part of my cranium that exists to remind me that the web can also be a truth-hunters worst nightmare.

The story concerned Ralph Hardy, a 13 year old kid in Texas who had been arrested after he swiped his dad's credit card and embarked on an epic $30,000 spending spree. This misadventure wound up with him and his mates holed up in a hotel room with a pile of junk food, a brand new Xbox and two nubile $1000-a-night prostitutes procured from the local whorehouse. It also landed Ralph in the arms of the law when the hotel room was raided by the local Texan constabulary after being tipped off by a delivery guy who'd supplied the boys with snacks.

Apparently our young hero claimed he was funding this escapade through the winnings of a World of Warcraft video games contest and, when the high-class call girls questioned his age, he convinced them that he and his friends were in fact "people of restricted growth" who worked for a travelling circus. Even better he went as far to inform them that, if they refused his custom, they would be in direct violation of the state's disability discrimination laws. Only when the boys seemed more interested in playing Halo than getting to grips with their "hired help" did the penny finally drop.

In a strange twist of narrative the poor, misinformed sex workers were released without charge whilst young Ralph was slapped with a three year community order for fraud, presumably ruing the day he figured out his dad's pin number.

Unsurprisingly the story turned out to be complete hogwash. It was later revealed to be the result of a viral marketing experiment by Cornish social media marketer Lyndon Antcliff (aka Lyndoman) who unleashed the story on popular finance site Money.co.uk.

Lyndoman deliberately laced his Munchaussen-esque tale with every conceivable narrative trigger point needed to ensure its viral success.

A teachers' union this week has been discussing how the cult of celebrity is damaging children's education and there are not enough 'ordinary' positive role models.

Is it really any worse than it has ever been? Or is it simply that with the opportunities for publicity offered my a multitude of global media we now turn our ordinary heroes or villains into celebrities much quicker?

When I was first being schooled in journalism I was told about the 'five Ps' to help decide on news values: princes, people, pay, power, policies. When I was being interviewed for a job in the museum many years ago I once added a sixth: princes, people, pay, power, policies, paintings.

Our job in PR is often to take stories clients give us that clearly fit in the fourth, fifth (or sixth) category and try to win news coverage by moving them up the interest ladder. That's why we look for a human-interest angle or sometimes even pay for a celebrity to cut the ribbon.

So to today's newspaper front pages.

While the world's financial markets are see-sawing between Armageddon and "Asian bounce back" and a couple of papers use the fifth anniversary to try and revive interest in the Iraq war, the popular press devote their front pages to celebrity stories.

They are dominated by Heather Mills, now the target for popular hatred, with the McCanns and Shannon Matthews' family also featuring strongly.

The comparison between the parents of Madeleine McCann and Shannon Matthews is an interesting one.

The Independent notes how the rewards offered at the same time in the hunt were £20,000 for Shannon compared to a celebrity-endorsed £2.6m for Maddie.

"Has class influenced the rewards offered and publicity given to two campaigns to find missing children?", it asks. It certainly took a lot longer before the media started to turn against the McCann family.

So the front of today's Daily Star is worth filing away for study by future PR and media students.

Top right is an amazing apology: "Kate and Gerry McCann: Sorry"

Middle banner: "Amazing fantasy world of warped Mucca - pages 4,5 & 6"

Main picture: Someone from Coronation Street

Splash headline: "Shannon mum is quizzed again"

What's so despicable about spending money on PR?

If you take any large organisation and analyse its spending you can almost guarantee finding something to single out for criticism. Find someone to complain and you've got yourself a news story.

It works particularly well with public sector targets, where the spending in question has come from our taxes.

In days gone by there used to be a period (nicely scheduled for the 'silly season') where Birmingham City Council's accounts were opened for public scrutiny and a few individuals did a good job of digging. Nowadays of course we have the Freedom of Information Act.

You can bet that with any organisation the size of Birmingham City Council - it claims to be the largest local authority in Europe - you can always find a huge figure to provide suitable ammunition. The statistics will generally have enough zeros after the pound sign to make all sorts of things sound extravagant enough to feed a juicy news story. "They spent how much on bottled water?"

News is news. That's what readers, viewers and listeners worry about.

The quality press - more prone to navel-gazing - and the media's own trade press are also interested in how news is made? Is it real news? Or manufactured news? And does it matter?

There has been a lot of discussion in the trade press recently - as well as in the blogs of our locally-based CIPR President Lis Lewis-Jones - about what's been dubbed 'churnalism'. This is the notion that journalists working in the media are now so lazy, under-resourced, over-stretched or just plain untalented that they spend most of their time churning second-hand news delivered by agencies and press releases.