Better late than never?

A slightly festive post this week, that reminds us how rubbish the mail can be:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1297175,00.html

Here’s hoping all the Amazon presents arrive in time this year!

Judging the Judges?

Here's a controversial one for you.

A number of UK judges are to undergo media training so that they can speak to the media following controversial sentencing decisions:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7130616.stm

An interesting one this; I'm sure it'll help to educate the public about how and why these decisions are made, but are we at risk of putting the judges themselves on trial?

It's sure to ruffle a few feathers with judges having to explain themselves to the press...

What do you think?

Job-hunting

There are plenty of PR blunders to get your teeth into this week.

Guy Hands supposedly accused bankers of being a pack of dogs and Gordon Brown’s mob seem to mess up daily but the award for outstanding PR blunder (possibly for the whole of 2007) has to go to Matthew Marr, a chief press aide himself, who was overheard saying some less than polite things at an awards ceremony last week. Needless to say he is “not expected to carry on working in political PR”. Well done that man. Read the article here:

http://www.prweek.com/uk/news/article/768552/No-back-shamed-PRO-Marr/

Is Ratner back?

Just about every media and presentation training company out there has used poor old Gerald Ratner as an example of how NOT to do it. But it seems Gerald is turning things around and even using his catastrophic downfall as a way of promoting his new jewellery business:

http://www.growthbusiness.co.uk/expansion/risk-takers/262303/gerald-ratner-is-back.thtml

It’s always good to see someone fight their way up from the bottom but do we really think he will get back to the top?

Spraying with Confidence?

According to an article in the Daily Telegraph you can now use a nasal spray to help build your confidence before making a presentation!
Sounded a bit far-fetched to me, or at best a form of Dutch courage:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/21/wspray121.xml
Unsurprisingly everyone at Bluewood really thinks you ought to have some proper training (e.g. one of these! http://www.bluewoodtraining.co.uk/presentation_training_intro.html) to learn how to overcome and manage your nerves before a public speech but if you are willing to try the spray; get in touch and let us know if it works!

Rod Stewart - Media Trainer?

I read that Rod Stewart had offered advice to Sir Paul McCartney about how to handle the media and couldn't resist hearing what he said. His words of wisdom were a little disappointing; "don't read the papers". Luckily Rod isn't one of Bluewood’s trainers. Our experts will show you that there are a few better ways to deal with the press and make the most of your media relationships!
Listen to Rod's advice: http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31100-stewart_261006_0800,00.html

Public speaking put down from Arnie

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not known for his clear and eloquent public speaking so it must be disappointing to get some flak from him on this front...even if you are Boris Johnson. Adam Boulton on his Sky News blog caught some cheeky comments over the last week:

http://adamboulton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/10/the-bother-with.html

Top presentation training tip - always assume the cameras are on!

Careless comments, catastrophic losses.

For anyone unsure of the price to be paid for ill-considered words spoken to a journalist; try £3.5 BILLION.

BP CEO Tony Hayward sent his organisation's share price crashing down this week with comments that will also no doubt have a knock-on effect on the entire oil sector.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bfcd47a6-6b9a-11dc-863b-0000779fd2ac.html

The CEO of a £108 billion outfit REALLY ought to know better.

Belated Birthday Wishes

So it's birthday time for Bluewood Training, and I think we've just about had all the wine and cake we can handle. But what made me smile yesterday was finding out that we share our birthday with the WORLD'S OLDEST MAN.

Admitedly, 112 year old Tomoji Tanabe of Japan is probably going a tad mad, declaring that he wants to live 'indefinately'(!) but nonetheless he's is in pretty fantastic shape for someone so ancient.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7000487.stm

Happy Birthday Bluewood Training. And of course, Happy Birthday Tomoji.

Chocolate Monkey.

Viral marketing is a term that is being heard everywhere now. It is said by some marketing 'experts' to be the only way to reach your customers effectively these days.
But; what is it? Does it work? Is it just a funny clip someone uploads on youtube?
Well this is latest of them:

http://www.glassandahalffull.com/

Does it make you want to eat chocolate? Or just go and buy Phil Collins' Greatest Hits?

Mercury Microphone Shambles

Hats off to the Klaxons winning the Mecury Music Award last night, was great to see an outsider win over the more established acts.

However their acceptance speech handling left a bit to be desired?! Holding the mics so close that no-one could understand a word they were saying before then falling over the stand...

Musicians or not, I think those guys need some presentation training before their next award ceremony!

Mind where you step:

I couldn't resist posting this one:
http://test.channel4.com/lifestyle/green/dumped/
4's newest reality show is set on a rubbish dump!
You really wonder what insane creature is coming up with these ideas...mind you, I might be too curious to miss this.

A day off for £6bn?

As August comes to a close there isn’t even a day off to look forward to for nearly four months because we’ve just had the last bank holiday till Christmas. But there is hope at hand; a leading think tank is strongly recommending that we get a day for Heroes in November:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6965053.stm

What do you think? Surely we should commemorate those who deserve to be remembered? And we want more bank holidays don’t we (especially as the Europeans seem to have hundreds)? Also, the story suggests the obligatory holiday for employees is going from 20 days to 28…some good news at last!

Online Whispas

If you were in any doubt about the power of bloggers and online campaigners then look no further than this story:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1280368,00.html
Due to online pressure the Whispa bar is making a comeback. People have been signing online petitions and starting groups on Facebook (Bluewood is still wondering if it should have a page – suggestions welcome!) to demand that the classic Whispa bar comes back to our shelves. I think this is great, not only did I quite like Whispa bars but if the online community can bring back chocolate bars what can’t we do?
Cadbury’s is probably pretty sensible about keeping an eye on the online forums, partly because of their target audience but also because of their recent crises but this shows that some corporates really do take the online community seriously.
So what next? What else should we bring back? Or perhaps more importantly get rid of?

Live on a yacht or not?

The winner of last Friday’s EuroMillions has now come forward to claim their £35m prize. Once I got over the intense feelings of jealousy I started to wonder how much I would have liked to win the cash and what I would do with it if I had.
This day-dreaming is hardly surprising and I bet I wasn’t the only person thinking how this money would change their life. But it did make me wonder whether most people would give up their job if they won.
There’s no shortage of people who say they hate their job and wish they didn’t have to work, but I don’t think it’s laziness, I think because of the actual work or more likely because of a ‘human’ element within the company. So what about those people who jump out of bed in the morning and can’t wait to get to the office? What motivates them? What makes them so happy in their work?
I think the difference is doing something you believe in and hopefully working with others who do as well. Maybe it’s not that simple but surely even winning £35m won’t stop you believing in something you think is right?

£35m - that's a premium-rate call:

The latest phone-in scandal has hit ITV with resignations and confessions that up to £35m was spent by the public; calling competitions they could never win.
This story seems to keep on growing and we wonder who will be in the spotlight next. But have we really seen any decent handling of this crisis?
When you hear that the swindles had been going on for ages and that the companies in question were making millions of the back of it, it's very hard to be forgiving; however the crisis was handled.
The initial response from the service provider behind GMTV was that the allegations were nonsense (they probably should have got some PR advice before making this comment). But we have now had some apologies and one heavy-weight resignation. Telling the truth during a crisis is always recommended but sometimes it's just too late.
Can't say I'll be calling GMTV any time soon...

Is all publicity good?

As always there have been a few stories this week that have promoted products/companies/stars for less than positive reasons (e.g. Sting being sued for sexual discrimination, Asda stopped from selling the new Harry Potter book or Kenmare Resources and their 'naked Director' scandal) so I'm curious...is all publicity is really good for you?

It might look like Asda wouldn't come out of this too well, except for the spin which says the real reason they aren't allowed to sell the book is because they were going to put too low a price on it (i.e. the positive message for us=Asda is cheaper than the competition).

And Sting; it can't do you any good to be found guilty of discrimination but the last thing the star would want is for record sales to drop because he been forgotten.

As for Kenmare; who knows maybe some investor who hadn’t heard of them will have a look at their website and think their shares are worth a punt.

Can't say I am convinced about all publicity being good for you but if even the bad stories remind us that a star/company/product are out there then that can't be all bad.

We don't need your stinking badges:

There was a time when the BBC was held up as an example of honest and quality broadcasting but now their good name seems to be tainted on an almost weekly basis by mistakes and misfits. The latest comes in the form of a ‘deception’ by Blue Peter, yes, I know it’s hard to believe. But it looks as though no broadcaster is above dirty dealings and the media watchdog – Ofcom – has fine the Beeb £50,000 for what it called “serious breaches” of the broadcasting code.

More on this can be read here on the Sky News site (perhaps not the most neutral site to read it on) http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1274307,00.html

Will the Beeb recover from this knock? Yes, without a doubt BUT is this a sign of more problems to come at White City?

Has anyone else read about the government plans to introduce lessons on personal finance as part of the curriculum?

It made me smile.

Nice idea, teaching the youngens how to open their own bank accounts. Even better, teaching them how to pay back the increased debt they'll be owing as a result of the bumped-up price of almost everything:

'Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove told The Times: "There is a certain irony that, after presiding over changes to student finance, tax rises and a massive increase in housing costs, the Government is now lecturing the next generation on how to handle debts which ministers have saddled them with." '

Excellent.

New Brown, old Blair.

Blair faced his last Prime Minister's Questions this afternoon and apart from a few predictable jokes he didn't get off too easily, in fact he looked like he aged a little more during the event.

Will Brown do a better job as PM? Only time will tell but with Cameron snapping at his heels he needs to work hard to win over the voters, whether with his actions or more likely (sadly) with some cunning media handling (a former journalist I spoke to a few days ago had some less than positive things to say about Gordon!).

Blair rewrote the book of PR and spin in politics - somehow I don't expect any such innovations from Brown but perhaps that's a good thing.

Managers - Want to keep your staff happy? Just talk to them.

As part of a team that trains people to be the best communicators they can be (we really do) I would say that communication is something I a) think about rather a lot and b) consider to be highly important. This week, however, my attention has been drawn to the importance of good internal comms - namely in the workplace.

The strength of communication between employers and employees could, I believe, well be the make or break of any organisation. Talking to your staff, and allowing them the freedom to respond openly and confidently has got to be the most basic yet most powerful way to a happy workplace. And, in stark contrast, an environment in which staff are not properly addressed has to be a sure-fire way to lose their trust, their loyalty and confidence.

Learning to be better communicators, and better still, learning to manage staff through the aid of good communication will produce something priceless for any employee at any level; a feeling of respect and of integrity.

We offer various courses that help turn people into better communicators, and one in particular that addresses communication as an imperative feature of good management. However one tip that I would offer to all managers for immediate affect is this; make sure you talk and really listen to your staff; after all, they are what makes your organisation.

Does communication matter to you as an employee? As an employer? Have you had any particularly good/bad experiences of communication in the workplace? Feel free to discuss without fear of retribution..!

Falconer, Jail Bird.

The Government seems to have performed a U-turn over the release of prisoners this week. A ‘Whitehall source’ has stated that the Government has run out of options (having only 481 prison spaces left) and so up to 2,000 prisoners could face early release.

Now the point here is not the fact the Government can’t keep criminals locked up. Instead it's the fact (that Sky News are particularly keen on today) that on May 6th, Lord Falconer, in a Sky News interview said "I am not going to announce early releases because of prison overcrowding. It's simply wrong". So, firstly did Falconer lie to the media to keep them off his back? If so, he won’t be trusted again and his reputation and the reputation of the Government will be damaged. Secondly, if he wasn’t lying and the events that have happened were unexpected, what should he do to rectify this blunder?

If it's the first; the fact is that you shouldn’t lie to the media EVER, it is done fairly often and those that get away with it, don’t for long – sooner or later they get found out and whether they are in PR or are a spokesperson they find it very difficult to rebuild the trust of journalists. If it's the second; what we'd recommend is some quick thinking and crisis handling (if it’s not a crisis yet it could be soon). By explaining the situation to the media and outlining why the position has changed, or the fact that new information has arisen you will at least go some way to justifying what happened. The last thing you should do in this situation is ignore it and pretend nothing happened.

We await a response from Lord Falconer and it may turn out that the ‘Whitehall source’ was incorrect but either way this situation has all the ingredients to make a very sticky mess for those involved.

See the Sky story here:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1271123,00.html

A drop of French courage?

One of the dos and don'ts we never thought to include in our media training courses seemed to be rather obvious: 'Don't speak at a press conference when under the influence'.

Now you may wonder what I am getting at but a video of Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 Summit has been posted on You Tube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1uxb0JHqzlA and the French President seems to be quite drunk. The matter has been explained away by the French as the effects of a sleeping pill but is it a coincidence that Sarkozy had just had a 'long meeting' with Putin?

So needless to say we wouldn't recommend a bit of Dutch courage (or anything else that makes you stagger and mumble) before you go on stage; your journalist audience are unlikely to see the funny side!

Not so Cold War.

The war of words between Putin and well, everybody else, has continued this week after Vlad threatened that the world is likely to return to the ‘Cold War’ days. Blair is due to meet with him at the G8 summit and promises a “frank discussion” with the Russian leader. In the BBC interview Blair went on to say that many people were “concerned about the direction Russia is heading.

But what is more interesting is why Putin is causing this confrontation and media frenzy; is it to cause a distraction from the Polonium poisoning which he or some of his ‘mob’ have been blamed for (no doubt Blair will raise this one with Putin) or is he just using the media to make his voice heard and build global-support?

The media are no fools and they know when Putin speaks it will get an audience (and rightly so, as he is the leader of one of the planet’s largest nations), so who is using who?
Used correctly, the media can help you build support although threatening the world with weapons may not be the way to go about this. So this brings us back to the above question – what is Putin up to? I don’t pretend to be an expert on Russian politics but I think we can expect some more PR activity from Moscow over the coming weeks. Watch this space…

Have Endemol gone too far…again?

This week the news has been covering Endemol’s latest production (no, I don’t mean Big Brother which, sadly, is due to start again this evening), in which donors compete to win a kidney. The show, being broadcast in the Netherlands, will give people, desperate for a kidney transplant, the chance to win one from a terminally ill donor.

Endemol, claim that the show will highlight the severe lack of donors available but instead it is likely to make them come across as a media organisation looking to profit from suffering. References to the botched handling of the race-row at the last Big Brother show have already been made and you can’t help but wonder if the organisation behind are just stirring up more anger and resentment.

So have the media gone too far this time? Personally I think they have. We can’t have a situation where ratings are obtained at any cost but when media organisations are trampling all over ethics to get to the top surely things have gone too far. Endemol’s spokespeople have been keeping their heads down during this and don’t seem to be offering comment – maybe they are too busy looking for some training on how to handle the media in a crisis!

Read the BBC’s view here…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6699847.stm

Pushing our luck? We certainly amused the Daily Telegraph...

Love or loathe him (and i'm sure it's the latter) you have to admit that Tony Blair has his media 'handling' down to a fine art. Ok, so with the ever-present cup of tea for that 'common touch' he's probably gone into overkill to be fair (but more on that in a separate blog...), but with expert techniques like that how could we resist offering him a job as a Bluewood Trainer?!

And so, standing by our 'Our delegates want to become experts so we use experts' belief, we thought we'd let a few people know that we're hoping there'll be another expert trainer on the Bluewood block come the end of June.

The result? Well it seems we managed to amuse the Telegraph's Simon Goodley enough to get a piece in his City Diary; Hate the spin but love the spinner? I'm glad to see our efforts haven't gone to waste, even if we still haven't heard anything back from Tonio...


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/05/24/ccdiary24.xml

A cry of pain for the Cutty Sark.

It is tragic that the Cutty Sark has been so badly damaged by fire and it will be all the more sad if it turns out (as suspected) to be arson.

Living and working quite near Greenwich means that the Cutty Sark has been one of those characteristics of London that you get used to seeing over the years and perhaps even take for granted - I had often meant to go onboard, do the tour and see what she was like but I always put it off till the next time. Sadly there may never be a chance to see her in her glory again as the damages may now cost too much (£25m was the pre-fire restoration figure).

I hope that she can be saved but it will only happen if the public show their support - donations can be made at www.cuttysark.org.uk.

And if it does turn out to be arson perhaps, in honour of the Lady's 19th Century heritage we should bring back hanging.

Do the scientologists need some communication skills training or just the BBC?

The scientologists seem to get quite a lot of flak for their ‘religion’. And they’re are about to get some more as Panorama documents them tonight on BBC 1.

In response, however, they have released a rather embarrassing video on you tube of a BBC journalist losing his rag in a big way with some scientologists (who seem to keep fairly calm). The guys he is interviewing do seem quite sinister in a sort of Men in Black kind of way so perhaps he was justified in blowing his top – of course we don’t get to see the first bit on their video.
But a broadcast journalist from the beeb really ought to have known better than to start hurling abuse at someone when there are cameras about – one top tip in media training is ‘always assume the cameras are on’ and I suppose he forgot about that one. Not sure the beeb would be all that keen on Bluewood providing their journalists with media training…maybe I should give them a call…

New blog...

Hi,

This is our new blog. I have set this one up before I actually showed it to Gemma so it is entirely likly she won't like it, will complain about the colour scheme and won't like the font but what can I say? I'm impatient.
The aim of this blog will be to talk about everything and nothing and kings and fools but hopefully we will give it a bit of an amusing slant or two as well!
More coming soon...