Hill+Knowlton Strategies

What sort of training do you think someone needs who is working in PR today?

It’s on my mind as we’re in the middle of developing new training modules for TheHub, our internal training programme. And I got to thinking about just how different the agency workplace is to when I started in the mid-1980s.

For those of you who remember those days we wrote press releases by hand for someone else to transcribe on a golf ball typewriter. (I wish I’d had shares in Tipp-Ex.) The fax was a dazzling new gadget to provide media with content ‘instantly’. And we were all just a little more carefree – and badly dressed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of nostalgia in film and music; but not the workplace. Agency life today is so much more challenging than we could have imagined but its dynamism, variety and the continual expansion of our scope of work is a real rush.

From the days of being a ‘people person’ and a newshound we’ve rocketed into the cloud. And we’re still newshounds.

But we’re more business savvy, more expert. Our insights are deeper. We’ve become business experts not just communications experts – the division no longer exists (if we’re honest, never really did).

So what skills need to be acquired to operate in this brave new world? Digital expertise goes without saying. Client service ditto. But those are just for starters. We’d really like to hear your thoughts.

I am still chuckling from last night’s Funny Women 10th Anniversary Charity Challenge. 

Funny Women  encourages women to make careers in comedybut last night’s dinner had a twist.  Ten high profile women from business, the media and academia were challenged to try stand-up comedy for the first time to raise funds for 10 charities.

I was there to support journalist Rowan Pelling  who was raising funds for Children in Crisis, and who I am delighted to say was voted the winner.

While Rowan drew on her time as editor of The Erotic Review, some of her fellow debuting stand-ups treated us to stories of being the translator for verbally-challenged teens; embracing a career in computer technology; the wonders of Twitter; and battling with other people’s misconceptions. 

My personal funny moment was winning a raffle prize of a chance to host a fashion brunch for up to 10 people with The Fold London and 50% off a dress of my choice.  Needless to say I am passing this opportunity on … I’m running a mini charity auction among my colleagues today.

Funny women will also have a stall at this weekend’s Women of the World Festival on London’s South Bank, so if you’re about, why not pop by.

A post on the Londonist blog, this week, posed the question: “Should King’s Cross have an apostrophe?” Now I know it’s not in quite the same league as the debt crisis, but it set me thinking about the power of language and saying what we mean.

Fast forward to today’s Daily Telegraph and we read that there are plans to penalise pupils for poor use of grammar, punctuation and spelling in exams, according to an education White Paper to be published next week. I must say, I completely agree.

Why do many people shudder at the mention of punctuation? It’s unfair to say they’ve never been taught it. But clearly many don’t engage with it. After all, in this freewheeling, text-based, neologistic free language economy why should we let an old-fashioned thing like punctuation hold us back?

Well, some builders in East Lothian, Scotland, might disagree. They demolished a railway station in the early 1980s because a comma was missing from a planning document. Ok, it’s an old story. But it’s a fair point. More recently Lynne Truss makes an even more compelling, and amusing, case for punctuation in her best-seller “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”.

But perhaps one of the best examples of the power – or restriction of power – that use of language can exert is in Mark Dunn’s quirky, short book, “Ella Minnow Pea” that appeared at the start of the ‘noughties’.

On a monument in the island town of Nollop is an inscription containing all the letters of the alphabet: ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’. As letters fall from the monument, due to natural causes, the authorities ban their use in all spoken or written communication. Eventually all that remain are L, M, N, O and P.

Leaving the political aspect of “Ella” to one side, clearly we must embrace language as a living medium – we cannot hold it back. Sometimes precision gives us greater freedom. (Just remember how irritated you were the last time someone misspelled your name or your company’s name).

So apostrophes matter; though perhaps not so much in place names. Punctuation matters. And restricting the use of language is not something any of us want to experience.

I really felt for Rosamund Pike at the BAFTAs last night. An autocue malfunction that led to her almost revealing the category winner, before the list of nominees, had a distinct “There but for the grace of …” whiff about it.

Of course Rosamund Pike is an actress not a presenter. And to be fair I thought her on-the-spot improvising began fairly well but ultimately the nerves seemed to win through.

And yet it’s not technology we need to worry about. It fails a lot less than we’d like to think). No, our problems in presenting are actually more primeval. Like breathing.

Yes, we can forget to breathe in stressful situations like pitches. I’ve done it myself on a couple of occasions You are so focussed on what you have to say that your brain forgets to remind you of the need for a little oxygen. The result is an embarrassingly loud intake of breathe and pause, before continuing.

Don’t underestimate the physical demands of presenting. Just as actors and athletes need to keep in shape and warm up for a performance, so do we in a pitch presentation. Here are some preparatory tips:

Mr & Mrs Bojangles: Jangling bracelets, earrings, and loose change in pockets are distracting to the audience, and magnets for nervous hands to play with.

Hydration: keep up your water intake so that your vocal chords don’t dry out and to help your concentration.

Facial muscles: loosen your facial muscles by rubbing your cheeks or try the facial part of the ‘Roaring Lion’ yoga pose:

Articulate and breathe: Avoid getting ‘tongue tied’ you need to take several deep breaths and you need to work on your plosives (p / b; k /g; t / d) – tongue twisters can really help with this.

Feeling grounded: And if you tend to have ‘nervous feet’ or rock on your heels, find somewhere to grind into the ground first the ball of your foot, then the heel. Then slap the ground with the flat of your foot. That helps you to feel more grounded.

Have you been thinking about buying a new pencil case lately? Or imagined tying a really fat knot in your tie? Well you’re not alone.

Today is the start of the new school term for most of the country and even if you don’t have kids the seasonal change will have a discernible effect. (I can’t be the only one.)

Just as, every Sunday, millions of people experience that ‘have I done my homework’ feeling, so the start of the autumn term prompts a mental gear change. Summer’s over (even if we hope it isn’t just yet); fun and frolics are past and the rest of the year is about serious work.

No wonder so much of art and literature depicts autumn as a melancholy season. It’s inevitable, inexorable roll towards winter makes us all feel a little low sometimes. Though perhaps not quite so low as Christmas shops opening in August!

And yet I don’t see autumn as melancholy at all (well, only if I am feeling a bit romantic or self-indulgent). That back to school feeling is actually a good thing. It makes you want to focus.

It’s an attitude seemingly at odds with the season itself which is about things coming to fruition. For me, and I suspect many others, autumn is also a time for new challenges; an upsurge in energy and ideas.

It’s a different energy to the start of the calendar year. Not quite so dynamic because we know we’ll feel like hibernating, come November. But it’s a vital energy for all of us, on a personal and professional level.

Coaching my colleagues on their presentation skills recently I’ve been thinking a lot about good and bad narratives.

 And two more 80s remakes hitting the box office, Karate Kid and The A Team, brought this into perspective; in particular the relationship between content and delivery.  C.C. Colton couldn’t  possibly have imagined the negative impact of his aphorism ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’.

To be fair I’ve not seen either of these movies, but in my experience most remakes simply don’t work (and I’m being polite here). They are never as good as the original, in fact they don’t even come close. Usually they’re just a case of form over substance.

Of course that only annoys oldies like me, or younger retro fans.  After all, for those who haven’t seen the previous movie isn’t ‘my’ remake ‘their’ original?

And yet I’m not against adapting stories. One of my favourite guilty pleasures is Cruel Intentions, the almost verbatim teen adaption of Dangerous Liaisons.  It’s clever, witty, has a great cast and tells the story in its own compelling way.  And that’s the clue.

A great story can be retold thousands of times, depending on how you tell it.  Take Shakespeare, an inspiration to narrative makers the world over. I’ve seen everything from toe-tapping musicals to a gangster movie (Joe Macbeth) based on Will’s works.  The quality may have varied, but I’ve found something in them all.

Where so many ‘take two’ blockbusters fall down is that they try to tell the same story in the same way.  No amount of special effects can cover that up.

And that’s where so many pitch narratives fall down, failing to achieve a more individual, compelling, and memorable way to take the audience on a journey. Adaptation, not imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I don’t want to compound centuries of misquoting Marie Antoinette but when our charity committe said ‘let them eat cake’ yesterday it was a right royal bun fight.

The cake bake was in support of Kids Company, the charity we are working with this year.  Our budding bakers made – and sold – 365 cakes in all.  And delicious they were indeed. Sweeter still, this raised £199.00.

So that’s the cakes, what about the ‘wail’?  Well today sees the first rehearsal of Pitch Perfect, H&K’s answer to Glee.  We’ve never had a choir before, so here’s hoping it really takes off.

I’ve been limbering up my baritone and am looking forward to a good old singalong.  Watch out for further developments.

Business communication is suffering from a bad case of obesity.

To a degree we are victims of history.  Post-conquest, Norman French was the language of government and the law for centuries.  Plenty of time to develop our taste for Gallic gourmet language and its mouth-watering Latinate filling.

But why, six hundred years later, are we still in thrall to a three-syllable sandwich?  Are we so embarrassed by a healthy diet of good old Anglo Saxon?  It seems we are.  We’re a nation of Hyacinth Bouquets using ‘nice’ polite words because they are so much better than those ‘oiky’ small ones.

In my research for a series of writing workshops I found, time and again, the advice to use Anglo Saxon words in place of the Latin wherever possible.  It makes for more direct, personal, clearer writing, which has greater impact.  So why don’t we do it more often?

Local councils have often been criticised for using jargon.  But you read any typical company e-mail and you’ll see things ‘commencing’ instead of starting (“Eastenders commences at 8.00pm; don’t be late!”) And don’t even get me started on maximising, optimising, accommodating, requirements. (Is ‘needs’ so weak?).

Now I’m not demonising Latinate words, just pleading for a balanced diet.  We all need to think more about who we are writing to, what we want to say and why.  Serving a four course dinner to someone who only has time for a sandwich is a recipe for indigestion.

If you want to lose some verbal flab, why not take a look at the Plain English campaign: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/