Hill+Knowlton Strategies

“Seasons of mist and mellow fruitfulness; close bosom friend of the maturing sun…” – or that’s what Keats said. Personally speaking, I think Keats can do one, as can September and Autumn in general. Everything smells of wet dog and regret, it’s cold and miserable and it’s now just the long, slow trudge towards another season of crass mass-consumerism and endless, interminable, incomprehensible perfume adverts (NB – anyone who works in advertising who reads this, please feel free to explain to me why perfume advertising is so oblique, as I have literally no idea).

Think, then, of this edition of Web Curios as the lightbox to your SAD, the plaster to your axewound (for future reference, an unpleasant conjunction of words to Google), the United Nations to your genocide. I’m here to help. To that end, here are some recommendations for awesome stuff you can do in London over the next few months (NB – that last link is one of the best things I’ve seen in years, very much recommended. Oh, and for an interesting take on Libya, you could do worse than read this). In the real world! NOT ON THE INTERNET! Crazy but true.

But for now it’s still all about the internet. Well, on this particular blog it is, anyway. If you don’t like it, you know what you can do (though I’d prefer it if you didn’t; I’m needy, and low-to-moderate traffic figures are all that’s standing between me and a P45).

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Oh dear, I fear I may be committing to a long, ongoing series here. But as a well-known webmong always tells me, it’s good to blog on an issue and keep going at it. That’s why, after July’s top tips for Powerpoint, this week we bring you our top tips on how best to engage with bloggers.

Blogs and bloggers are a key channel. Some are extremely well read, some of them reach exactly the audience that you want/need. Most of them however are not professional, and many may not have encountered us PRs before. With this in mind, here are our tips – with thanks to Candace, Daisy, Becca, Matt and Joey.

Blogs and Bloggers are a great channel for reaching your audience - but only if you approach a blogger campaign in the right way

1. Most bloggers aren’t professionals – yes, some are dedicated, paid-up writers, and many more monetise their sites. The fact is though, the vast majority blog out of love for their subject. Many are unlikely to have been, or want to be, pestered by PR people incessantly pushing a product or service. Assaulting their senses with marketing-speak is therefore likely to lead to an instant bash of the big read ‘D’ button. Establish a dialogue, explain and justify why you’re writing to them (without the marketing-speak) and don’t push them for an instant decision.

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As you may know from previous posts, I’m a devotee of Lucy Kellaway’s weekly column in the FT on working life. Her missive last week declared war on the use of Powerpoint by presenters. As she sees it, Powerpoint leads to boring, ineffective presentations which “lower the quality of discussion and lead to bad decisions”.

We wouldn’t go that far, but we do recognise there is a definite art to the use of Powerpoint to make sure that it’s a useful tool for supporting your delivery to an audience. So, below are a series of top tips from across the agency on how we believe you can get the best out of it.Thanks to Ed, Nick, Matt and Candace for their thoughts.

Powerpoint - making best use of it can be tricky (Image: PresentationMagazine.com)

1. Know when (not) to use it – Powerpoint isn’t Word, and similarly Word isn’t Powerpoint. Sadly, they’re often mistaken as being interchangeable. They aren’t. Powerpoint slides and lots of text are a very unhappy couple and serve to do only two things: bore your audience, and distract them from your speech as they struggle to read all the information on the slide. This is something Lucy Kellaway’s colleague noted in a defence of Powerpoint this week.

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Well all good things must come to an end, the best man won and the winner takes it all but let’s face it, it’s not the winning but the taking part that’s important. And just like our time here with Dave as his trusted advisors, Marie and I present to you the last edition of the Apprentice Awards for the series.

Drumroll please…and the winner of the….

Walking cliché award goes to the man that does exactly what it says on the tin, Jim Eastwood. Jim also contributed to the episode’s quote of the week with a CV reading, “I’m not a show pony or a one-trick pony, I’m not a jackass or a stubborn mule, and I’m definitely not a wild stallion that needs to be tamed. I am the champion thoroughbred that this process requires.” This followed by arguably the best quote of the series as Margaret turns to him and asks, “What impression does that give me? That you’re a bit of an ass?” Classic Marge.

The Brand lives on award- From wild stallion to ponies in a field. For those following conversations on Twitter last night, you would have noticed The Brand trending worldwide. It seems like we just can’t get enough of lovable Stuart Baggs. Not only has The Brand hired himself a PR company to look after his reputation, he’s also heading to Scotland to perform a one-off stand up comedy show at this year’s Edinburgh Festival. God help us all.

Commiserations award goes to all work and no play (nor imagination) Helen Milligan. One has to question the value of tasks in this series. With Helen winning a total of ten tasks, compared to Tom’s measly three, Helen could well have been a potential winner had the series been following last year’s format; probably the most gutting form of solace anyone could have been given.

Adding to this, Marie’s ever-literal and practical hubby-to-be pointed out that actually we didn’t need to go through 12 weeks of this nonsense to get to this conclusion. If they looked at the business plans and CVs in week one, Tom would have been immediately anointed as the top of the ‘entrepreneurial elite’. However on that basis, the reluctant accountant with an allergy to verbs and prepositions, who left in the first week might have actually stood a chance given that numbers, balance sheets, and P&L were the downfall of most of the interviewed finalists (even the winner) in week 12.

But let’s face it, without the process we would have missed out on a lot laughs, cringes and reasons to feel good about ourselves.

Junior Apprentice in autumn – bring it on!

Disaster, absolute disaster. Melody Hossaini, a woman whose voice sometimes made me want to crawl into a box six feet under ground, was unceremoniously booted off The Apprentice last night. The reason I mourn, is because it’s goodbye to yet another of the more entertaining characters from this year’s show.

It was clear from the start that she riled most of her fellow ‘entreprenurial elite’ up the wrong way, but that’s what made her so entertaining. Of course, if we were in the jungle, or the BB House, there might be a way to bring her back, and uber-confident Vincent as well. But sadly, this is business, and in business, there is no coming back apparently.

Melody, but no harmony. Lord Sugar gave her the chop this week (image: Inspirengage.com)

Yet again this week, we’re treated to my colleague Marie’s round-up of all things good, bad, and downright terrible from the episode. So without further ado…

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We’re getting ever closer to the end Apprentice fans. Just six candidates/entreprenurial elites/useless shouty people remain in the fight to be Al Sugar’s next executive note taker, and the competition is really hotting up. Personally, I was sad to see Zoe get the boot this week as I admired her no-nonsense, northern style. Then again, I was sad when Alex Epstein left last year, so I’ll say no more.

This week happily sees the return of our own Apprentice critic Marie to provide her take on the episode’s events. Over to you Marie…

Biscuits - the new popcorn. Er, no Melody (image from Telegraph.co.uk)

Is anyone else not convinced by Helen? Now surely on the fast track to victory; what is it about her? I just don’t get it. Maybe she is badly (or from her point of view, superbly) edited to show some of her snappy decisions, her non-BS pitching technique and – ta-da – her making a million for Daddy. The most I can say about her is that she is not an idiot but I suppose in the land of idiots, the non-idiot is king.

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Having had somewhat of an Apprentice day yesterday, running around London looking for a cloche, fresh oysters and a sourcing a rather exotic looking durian fruit, I feel it’s only apt to edit this week’s Apprentice Awards.

You should handle one of these with care

With thanks to the ever wonderful Dave Chambers, we present to you…

Miss Modesty award – Melody – “I used to be able to speak six languages, which I taught myself”. Clearly modesty and plain English weren’t two of them, Miss Woman of the Universe? Ho hum.

Shining star award- After last night’s performance, we’ve taken a real shining to Helen. She delivered one incredible sales pitch and clearly understood the target market and unlike Edna, she connected with the buyers from La Radoute (even without leather gloves).

Shining star award 2- From the ever ambitious Susie, “I want to put myself forward because product selection is my thing”. Closely followed by, “I know nothing at all about France”, you got to give her credit for almost getting there with her stream of inquisitive questions. On the plus side, Susie can say ‘Bonjour’, but that’s the only French word she knows apparently, which leads to the intriguing question of what happens when she has to say goodbye?

Novel suggestion of the week - Tom – “Guys, can you do some market research independent of your own thoughts?” Leon and Melody’s face after that utterly bizarre and frankly ridiculous request was priceless. Then again, their faces in the boardroom as Al’s pal’s Nick and Karen bollocked them for not doing market research were equally good.

Eye candy award- Slim pickings this year and while Dave was slightly obsessive over Jamie Lester’s style and good looks from the last series, this year we’re stuck with the likes of Vincent Disneur, Alex Cabral (who?) and everyone’s favourite accountant- Ed Hunter. Now with pretty-faced Leon gone, we can tell Lord Sugar means real business.

Quotes of the week

“It’s very classic but quite contemporary at the same time”. Melody manages to destroy 2,000 years of art history with 10 little words.

“Do the French like their children?” I don’t know Susie, perhaps they like other people’s children instead? Is France a strange, adoption-based culture maybe? Do their children like their parents? Who knows, maybe we should phone a Frenchman and ask him.

“I think they’re great products. Just not for us” says one shop owner. In other words, your weird foldy phone stand which looks suspiciously like it was constructed out of spent cotton buds is crap and my grandson could make one for 20p.

Apprentice Final Five predictions

With just weeks left of the Apprentice, we gathered some Apprentice fans around H&K towers to get a lo-down on who they think will make it into the final five. Who’s in your top five?

H&K Apprentice Final Five predictions from Hill & Knowlton UK on Vimeo.

Joy of joys, this week’s edition was all about creating media content, specifically a magazine – cue much interest from us PRs, and no doubt from journalists across the land. Sadly (on a personal note) it was Glenn who got the boot this week – given his hilarious management style two weeks ago, I was desperate for him to stick around as it’s fair to say he was well on the way to being this year’s Alex Epstein.

Anyway, enough sobbing, here are the awards this week courtesy of  Apprentice starlet, Joey.

Fired. Should have been fired. Whiny, whingy but might win it. This week's grovellers (image courtesy of the BBC)

The new favourite? It’s fair to say we haven’t been massive fans of pint-sized screecher Suzie to date. To sum her up in three words – Complains. Moans. Constantly. However, this week she ditched the soprano whine and got on with some proper fighting, Rocky-style, in the boardroom. She’s got a lot to learn, and she’s barely out of nappies, but we’re starting to wonder if she might just stick around at least until the final five.

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What a rubbish task, quite literally in every sense possible. Five weeks into the Apprentice and Old Shugs sent the two teams, Venture and Tragic Logic with one-tonne tippers to patrol the streets of London and look for unwanted bicycles, old sinks, old radiators, spare scaffolding poles and the odd credit card bill to subsidise the task at hand and turn trash into cash.

As always we have H&K’s resident Apprentice fan Dave Chambers offering a critical eye with this week’s Apprentice Awards:

The Johnny Bravo PLUS brains award- hellloo? Can this award go to anyone but firee Edna Agbarha, who had three degrees and more letters than a can of alphabet spaghetti? Being the natural brains of the team (apparently), the HR professional offered her consultancy advice and flexed her guns to pick up the odd bit of trash, whilst spending the majority of the day barking orders at the rest of the team and patting herself on the back for all her great work. Quite frankly she was useless and deserved to get the digit of death.

Repetitive phrase award- “I gave 110% throughout the task”- ‘nuff said

‘Welcome to the Real World’ award – Sulky Suzi because let me spell it out for you: LIFE’S NOT FAIR (apologies- feeling rather shouty today). Suzi with her permanent whiney set of vocal chords and on-the-verge-of-tears eyes each time she says ”It’s not fair” makes me almost want to switch channels (almost). I can’t really see Al going into business with her, unless they are going into a babysitting company of sorts.

Low key duo award- Close one between Jim and Leon. Leon did practically nothing in terms of last night’s task, which incidentally is much more fun when three crazed, arrogant women are left in there together. And Jim? He played low key after last week’s public bollocking by east-end Al.

Jedi-Jim yet again survived another week and is one step close to becoming Lord Sugar’s business partner. To that point, do any of these candidates have any idea what this business might be? Yea…me neither.

Next week sees the candidates setting up a free magazine. From the preview it looks like one team has gone down the trashy lads mag route and the other – a magazine aimed at pensioners. Did I mention the word pensions? Dave’s already emailed to say he’s bagsy-ing the next post. Until then…

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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