Good coverage for just £74!

Not quite the PR campaign you might expect to be pushing but this Chinese Hotel has been trying a few shortcuts:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKPEK13804520080623?feedType=nl&feedName=ukmorningdigest

“The Gehua New Century Hotel, which describes itself as "China's first five-star hotel with a media-cultural theme", has promised journalists up to 1,000 yuan (74 pounds) for articles about it.”

Admittedly it doesn’t say the articles have to be positive, so perhaps you can make your £74 and be ‘honest’. The Bluewood team has media trained delegates from certain foreign nations before who felt this was the way to get things done with the media, but we don't really recommend you try it in the UK!

Expensive illness!

You know your presentation wasn’t great when it leads to $19bn being wiped off your share price. Poor old Steve Jobs came down with flu in the last few weeks and when he didn’t look too good at the new iphone presentation a few bloggers thought he was on the way out (thinking his cancer had returned). Sure enough, the blog posts caused panic and the share price took a dive – the moral of this story? Not sure there, but it might be that you shouldn’t always listen to the gossip!

Read the story on the Times site here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/chris_ayres/article4152295.ece

Sore loser?

One of the headlines on PR Week today was that “Hillary Clinton's former international media co-ordinator has hit out at the press, alleging unprecedented bias towards presidential nominee Barack Obama”.

The question is not so much of whether this is true but more whether it’s really a good idea to ‘hit out at’ or blame the press after the event (the event during which you were part of the losing side).

Is this the moaning of a sore loser whose strategy didn’t work? Or is it a valid point about the power of a ‘friendly’ media?

Read PR Week’s article here: http://www.prweek.com/uk/home/article/816166/media-bias-strategy-error-clintons-fall-splits-lobbyists/