Hill+Knowlton Strategies

I believe it was contemporary urban philosopher Ferris Bueller who once said ‘Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it’ (NB – on reflection, I don’t know why I wrote that; I hate people who ascribe deep significance to the throwaway utterances of fictional characters. IT WAS WRITTEN BY A SCREENWRITER, YOU CHUMP). This edition of Web Curios is brought to you by the whooosh-ing sound that time makes as it flies past your ears; it seems like only yesterday that I was writing the last one of these, talking about holidays and the end of summer and stuff. All of a sudden it’s December, I’ve not written a Curios for a month (not that any of you CARE, you unappreciative whelps), and you can’t turn on the television without a famous trying to sell you stinkwater. On an unrelated note, I am yet to eat a mince pie in 2011. If anyone would like to courier some over to H&K towers, I will be very grateful and possibly do a small happy dance in gratitude; thanks (in the unlikely event that HRH Prince Charles is reading this, I am a massive fan of Duchy Originals).

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The pretence that this blog is a weekly thing really has to stop. One month since the last one, fact fans. I’ve had THINGS TO DO. Not least going to Brussels and Croatia, where I went on holiday and did NOTHING other than read and swim and be horizontal. It was awesome, and as a result I now look less like this and more like this. No really, I do.

BUT that was then and this is now; I have returned to a world in which the internet spends all its time railing against the evil of corporations and then…er…goes incontinent with grief over the passing of the head of one of the world’s largest corporations; in which Silvio manages to somehow become even more ridiculous and offensive;  and a world in which somehow one of the members of 1980s pop combo Hue & Cry has become a consultant on games, play and ludic theory. We live in interesting times. Here are some totally insignificant bits of online ephemera to help distract you from what appears to be the total meltdown of civilisation which is going on all around us. Christ, I sound like an old man.

Socially responsible graffiti on a Croatian beach hut

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Guess who’s back? NO, IT IS NOT EMINEM! IT IS ME! (Though in fairness our level of musical / performing talent is comparable) Stop gawping at the back – I AM NOT DEAD! I wish that there was some sort of exciting reason for Web Curios’ long absence – an enthralling, Willy Fog-esque journey, an unexpected temporary career change, an unforeseen visit to chokey…but no, nothing so thrilling. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, Web Curios’ existence was momentarily uncertain – but now I am most definitely here. I think.

Anyway, there’s a lot to catch up on. Some people’s phones got hacked and everyone got VERY ANGRY; the most powerful man in the world turned 50; my new favourite rapper released a mixtape; I went to Boston and saw none of it (but did get to fly business class and thus received a pair of complimentary pyjamas – THANKS VIRGIN –  which was well worth the £3,000 that the flights apparently cost); oh, God, loads of things.

None of that matters, though. What does matter is that you immediately click on this link and donate money to stop people dying of starvation in Somalia. Thanks.

Frankly nothing that you’re going to read from hereon in matters one iota compared to the above, but it’s probably going to be marginally more cheering. Read on, and make your Friday afternoon of wageslavery marginally less soul-crushingly worthless than it might otherwise be.

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I had an opening riff all worked out for this week, webmongs, but that was before I saw this amazing news story. Poor the confused,  sweaty-palmed masturbators! That aside, though, it’s been a relatively uneventful 4-day week, apart from the British press redeeming itself slightly for Gareth Barry John Terry Ryan Giggs-gate by actually doing some proper investigative journalism – which, inevitably, led to literally nothing changing whatsoever in the no-way-at-all-corrupt HQ of world football; and perhaps from the best story likely to appear in print anywhere in the world in 2011. Oh, and if you were traumatised by goats as a child (and let’s be honest, which of us hasn’t been) then THIS IS YOUR MONTH.

The rest of you, though, for whom it is NOT your month, will simply have to content yourselves with the following collection of webthings. Apart from The Man – for it is always his month.

Alice Was A Lot Less Innocent Than Is Often Presumed

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HELLO! This Friday marks what, as far as I’m concerned, is the end of the last working week in April. Next weekend we have death, resurrection and ceremonial chocolate sweats; the weekend afterwards we have a nation descending into drunken, vomitous chaos in the name of a patriotic spirit long-forgotten (oh, and there’s a wedding happening too). As a result of people indulging in this sort of behaviour, it’s unlikely any of us will have got over the jaundice before May at the earliest (NB – Web Curios does not condone excessive drinking unless it’s as an expression of royalist fervour, in which case go for your lives webmongs).

But that is all before us. Here, we look back – back at the week that was on the internet, a week in which people got very upset about a 17 year-old London woman’s *ahem* full and frank discussion of her personal life on a rap freestyle (NB – it really is full and frank and very NSFW); in which, through listening to this man’s voice, I learnt that I occasionally get this; in which I totally failed to get on a plane to Amsterdam to deliver a presentation at a conference (thus incurring a debt to The Man unto the bargain); in which it was proven that £50million does not always guarantee quality;  that it’s entirely possible to make clothes from blow-up dolls; and in which a former boss of mine was bathed, naked, by a strange, bearded man in the name of art. It’s been interesting.

As a result of the imminent HOLIDAY, this week’s Curios is going to be relatively light on work-related stuff. Obviously, though, it’s all still GOLD. ENJOY, DAMN YOU.

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Following this afternoon’s Budget, H&K’s head of Financial & Professional Services, Ben Curson, provides his initial thoughts on what today’s announcements will mean for businesses, big and small.

Ben Curson - Head of Financial & Professional Services

“Making things happen…not making things up”. So said George Osborne in a business friendly budget delivered from Parliament today. Well, we’ll see about that in the fullness of time but it seemed clear to me on first listening that the Chancellor was pitching particularly to small business and entrepreneurs. He proposed a range of tax simplification measures, tax breaks and additional enterprise zones to encourage starting and growing businesses. Should this initiate a surge in enterprise and economic growth, the Chancellor will have every reason to trumpet his success as a man doing everything he can (with very little room for giveaways) to stimulate the economy.

Not everyone will be pleased of course, especially not the banks. One can’t help but feel they will be slightly irritated by the fact the bank levy will be increased despite an understanding that their tax treatment would remain stable in return for  increased lending to small business – 15% according to the Chancellor today and detailed on page 76 of the Budget docs.

George Osborne - "A Budget for making things, not making things up"

The other big business losers in tax terms are the oil companies, who will pay a lot more in tax in order to fund the cut in fuel duty – perhaps the ‘rabbit out of the hat’ moment in today’s announcement, and something that it seems the Opposition weren’t really expecting judging by Ed Milliband’s immediate response.

What else? Personally, I’m very pleased to see an open acknowledgment that Britain has been dropping down the league in terms of competitiveness (4^th to 12^th according to the Chancellor), and that the Government is doing something to address educating and upskilling the workforce. There appear to be specific steps to make Britain a more viable, cost effective place to do business in an increasingly global marketplace to attract business from overseas, which as Britain comes to terms with its place in the new world order is absolutely fundamental.

I do believe simplifying and incentivizing business rather than just cutting spending is the way that Britain will recover from the financial crisis of the last few years. I was enormously reassured therefore, as you would expect in my position, that there was a clear intent for the “City of London to stay a leader in financial services”. For their part, the markets have seemed largely unmoved by the Chancellor’s proposals, though bank shares have dropped slightly as you’d expect from the bank levy announcement

While the devil is always in the detail and many of our clients will be analyzing the budget book in-depth on behalf of their own business and their clients’, it seems the Chancellor made a very pro-business speech. Whether the consumer will feel as positive as they become increasingly squeezed by rising inflation and commodity prices will remain to be seen, especially in the forthcoming elections in May. I suspect not.

The terrible scenes in Japan have rightly dominated the media landscape over the weekend, but I thought it was worth highlighting this piece from Saturday’s (12th March)  Financial Times, by Alastair Campbell on London’s role as PR Capital of the World.

Alastair argues (full version here) that London can rightly be regarded as the international centre of reputational management, due partly to its geographical location, but also due to the maturity (I use the term in its broadest sense) of the British press and media landscape. His remarks come in response, in part, to recent accusations that some British PR firms apparently do little more than help despots from around the world buff up their images (which of course is nonsense).

Alastair also goes on, quite rightly, to highlight the role social media is playing in developing a new dimension to the role of international communications – as social networks and therefore new communication relationships become more widespread, it is harder for central governments to simply shut down this comms process. The events in Egypt and Libya are of course the most recent examples of this.

I’ll leave you to read AC’s comments in full, though offer this final thought. If PR companies help their clients (whether they be overseas governments or not) understand the nature of the 21st century communications landscape, and the need for multi-dimensional engagement with all of their audiences, and demonstrate that, actually, transparency is the way to go forward, isn’t that a good thing?

The answer of course, is no, it didn’t, although some mainstream commentators are getting a little excited about it. There’s no doubt that new media and digital channels like Twitter and Facebook certainly played an incredibly influential role in the events in Tunisia and in the downfall of President Mubarak, but a little perspective is probably needed.  

Social media is invaluable as it offers a new spectrum of platforms, or channels, for communication with either local, regional or global networks. Not easily shut down and offering immediacy transparency and exchanges of information, it allows an easy flow of information, both good and bad.

Charlie Beckett, Director of the POLIS think tank at the LSE offers some words of wisdom on the subject here. He argues that when looking at the Middle East, social media could actually now be a really useful indicator, or even predictor, of political change. He also rejects the causal link arguing real important pre-conditions for any revolution will always be socio-economic.  

Mr Twitter himself, Biz Stone, also argues that social media plays a supporting role but not a starring one. “How a revolution comes to be is a mystery to me. It’s important to credit the brave people that take chances to stand up to regimes. They’re the star. What I like to think of services like Twitter and other services is that it’s a kind of supporting role.”

As I write this piece, Colonel Gaddafi is now refusing to stand down in a defiant speech being shown live on Libyan state television (shown in UK thanks to the BBC!).  So let the social networks in Tripoli play their role – but just please don’t call your next born ‘Facebook’.

I’m not in a good mood today. This blog might reflect this. Apologies in advance and all that. Oh, and to the three people who read this who aren’t somehow involved in advertising / marketing / PR / etc, feel free to skip down to where the first picture is, as the next few paragraphs will probably mean very little to you. I mean, feel free to read them if you want – my prose, after all, is captivating – but don’t expect to get too much out of it other than a feeling of slightly grubby disappointment.

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This is to be the worst of times in the hope of a return to the best of times. The long awaited Comprehensive Spending Review was as brutal as the Coalition Government had prepared us for: £83 billion worth of cuts.

 Let the John Redwoods of this life point out that in cash terms public spending is still rising. Over the next four years it won’t feel like that with an estimated half a million public sector jobs to go.

The Chancellor – with business backing – claims that this is the medicine Britain needs. Labour have bet their economic credibility on the cuts being too fast and too deep and halting the recovery. Outwith that domestic political split, there is another context in which this should all be seen and another voice heard.

This week, Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, warned that a failure to agree a common path globally on how economies are re-balanced could lead to a decline in world output and a 1930s style global depression.

George Osborne’s plans must be seen in this context. The UK economy does not function on its own and whether this plan works or not will as much be influenced by global pressures as domestic concerns.

The USA, which is still pursuing the path of stimulus, is in direct opposition to China on currency policy and that disagreement is replicated all over the globe.

This is a roller coaster ride on a sharp downward incline with no one really certain when the car will start to lift again.

If global conditions do not improve, the UK will not be able to expect the level of growth which will make up for the cuts in government spending to re-build the economy, or bring in the necessary revenues to cut borrowing.

What can be said for definite then?

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