Hill+Knowlton Strategies

Launching the world’s first snore absorption room; creating the world’s biggest shave; reinterpreting art with technology; revealing the best place in the UK to bring up a family… As 2011 draws to a close, we take a look back month by month at some H+K Strategies campaigns and work throughout the year.

January: City & Guilds Million Extra

You're hired: Karren Brady+ City & Guilds' Chris Jones

To start the new year, preparations to launch City & Guilds first ever Apprenticeship Summit went underway early on. The aim of the campaign was to help ensure one million Apprenticeship starts by summer 2013.

In January, we commissioned a report to identify the barriers employers face in hiring apprentices with the findings discussed by key political and business leaders at the Summit, hosted by Apprentice star Karren Brady.

Nearly 100 pieces of coverage resulted from this campaign as well as a request from Professor Alison Wolf to receive a copy of the full report after seeing the articles to include in her Government review of 14-19 education.

February: Intel Remastered

Shortlisted for various industry awards, our Technology team created an exciting art campaign- Intel Remastered to showcase the creative application of Intel technology. The project saw 13 modern artists reinterpret iconic masterpieces using digital technology and techniques.

Pushing the boundaries of art and creating one of the most talked about art events on the year, the stories and inspiration behind classics such as Picasso’s ‘Guernica’ and Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ were retold and presented to a digital-savvy audience.

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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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“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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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 really shouldn’t be writing this, you know. I should, instead, be continuing to whore my brain out for The Man – but instead I defy him in order to…er…waste a couple of hours knocking this rubbish out JUST FOR YOU! I expect you all to contribute to the ‘feed and clothe Matt’ fund once the near-inevitable P45 finds its way to my desk.

Perhaps, though, The Man is still basking in the warm, fuzzy, near-post-coital aftermath of THAT WEDDING (or maybe he’s still cleaning up, or possibly reflecting on the appropriateness or otherwise of letting the peons daub a car with their messages of support to the happy couple), or perhaps he’s still singing along triumphantly with most of America (but not, it must be noted, all of America). Perhaps he’s wracked with uncertainty as to the outcome of the AV vote (he’s not. Noone is. Not even this poor git). Maybe he’s at home, polishing his small pewter figurine of John Paul II. MAYBE I WILL GET AWAY WITH IT! Webmongs, I am infused with the slightly shaky feeling that you get after a sudden rush of adrenaline or a couple of grammes of plantfood (speaking of which, this is my favourite response to this week’s BIG NEWS STORY- who says drugs are bad for you?); as a result, this week’s Web Curios will most likely have the slightly sketchy, pasty feel of an NA meeting (but without the relentless, self-absorbed confessionals). I hope you enjoy it as much as I don’t enjoy the inevitable, grinding, post-Curios comedown.

Batman had met his match

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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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Contrary to what you may have feared, I AM NOT DEAD! Put away your wreaths, unveil your faces and break out the bunting, for Web Curios is BACK (I just tried doing a Google Image search for Web Curios – beautifully, several of the initial results are pictures of The Man. Hello, The Man!). Admittedly it’s only back for a week, as I am on HOLIDAY next Friday, but frankly you should be grateful for whatever you’re given at this stage.

In my absence, webmongs, I have seen things of which you can only dream. I have seen Slough and a Tesco’s so large that approaching it is like that opening bit in the first Star Wars film with the massive spaceship that goes on and on and on and (Slough FACT: there’s a pun in Slough town centre called the Wernham Hogg, named after the fictional company in The Office (which was of course set in Slough); I can’t work out whether this is a brilliant piece of self-satirisation or actually one of the saddest things ever, though I know which way I intuitively lean). I have been to Barcelona on a stag party, accompanied (amongst others) by a charming man known as ‘Big Sam’ who was recently cleared of common assault after breaking a man’s jaw on the fotball pitch (needless to say Big Sam and I didn’t really have much in common), where I danced to techno like a teenager and was thrown out of a nightclub (I came back in again 5 minutes later though).  Oh, and I’ve done work as well, some of it actually not that bad.

Obviously, though, this is all utterly immaterial in the face of the world’s continued descent into what appears to be total chaos. Better people than me have written at length about everything that’s been going on over the past month (and worse people – check out this spectacular piece of ad placement from last week’s Metro), but can I suggest that you perhaps donate some money to the relief effort in Japan? Or if you prefer music, maybe buy tickets for this? Oh, and if you’re interested in the geopolitical upheaval sweeping the Middle East and its potential implications for China you could do worse than read this piece by Francis Fukuyama in the Wall Street Journal this week (don’t get smug, though, Franky – you were still totally wrong about the END OF HISTORY thing). Or, if you prefer your commentary a little more raw, there are few people more on the money about conflict than The War Nerd.

Oh, and one last thing before I wang on about the internet and cats and stuff. I was reminded this week about the way in which Facebook is used as a tribute site when people die, particularly in the case of the young. This is, of course, perfectly fine. As someone who relatively recently had to administer the page of someone young who died, though, can I please point out that WHAT YOU WRITE MATTERS. I don’t mean to come across as stuffy (HEAVEN FORFEND) but I’m not entirely convinced that the term ‘RIP’ benefits from an exclamation mark (hey, kids, punctuation changes emphasis. You idiots) or indeed that a sad smiley is an adequate response to death. Just saying, like.

Ahem. Oh, and one last thing – Web Curios this week contains no Rebecca Black whatsoever. You can thank me in the comments.

One of a series of posters designed to commemorate the Fukushima earthquake. Click for more.

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The power of Four in traditional business...

Investment bank UBS turned the spotlight onto supermarkets this week with a report claiming food inflation is higher in the UK than anywhere else in the OECD. The report inferred this was the result of the ‘Big Four’ supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s & Morrisons) using their market dominance to inflate prices above the actual increases stemming from food inflation.

By contrast, in other European markets where the food market is more segmented, prices haven’t risen as fast – strong stuff, which led to a swift response from trade body the British Retail Consortium, as well as a wealth of media comment.

This issue got me thinking though, for it’s not only in the supermarket sector where four big players hold sway in the UK. Accountancy is dominated by a Big Four (Deloitte, PwC, KPMG & Ernst & Young) and so is mobile telecoms (Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-Mobile, now joined commercially as ‘Everything Everywhere’).

High street banking was similarly controlled by Four (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyd’s and RBS) until Santander went on its recent spending spree. Four then, seems a very powerful number in the business world, even if the positive impact of it on consumers remains up for debate.

But what about the power of Four on the internet?

As my Issues & Crisis colleague Duncan Gallagher pointed out yesterday, the evidence for the power of Four on the internet seems scant to non-existent. Instead, it increasingly seems to be the power of One.

...versus the power of One on the internet

Look at the big internet success stories – Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Twitter. Yes, some of them have competitors but they have much smaller market shares and/or offer a more limited suite of products.

Governments historically tend to get quite nervous about monopolies developing in traditional offline sectors and so do consumers. Curiously though, there doesn’t appear to be a similar feeling about these dominant online brands yet. Nor have there been sustained questions about whether the power of the digital One is good for consumers.

Will this change?

Maybe, although who exactly would initiate a monopoly ruling on a transnational, digital company is unclear. There is one other question though.

Last week we blogged about a possible bubble forming amongst social media and online companies as investors queued up and valuations soared. So here goes – if you were an investor considering a stake in one of these companies, how much risk would you attribute to a potential monopoly investigation and would that affect your decision to take the plunge?

So this was the week that the UK decided to go ‘a bit French‘. Not in terms of Gallic chic (for which this is the first Google images result, proving that a) the Daily Mail are really good at SEO and that b) they are idiots in most other respects), but in terms of popular protest (NB – Web Curios in no way condones the dropping of fire extinguishers onto the forces of law and order). Far be it from me to opine on the rights and wrongs of the student demonstrations – other than to say that VIOLENCE IS NEVER THE ANSWER, KIDS – but to those who are drawing parallels between this week’s demonstrations and the poll tax riots of the late 80s: well, you’re wrong. It wasn’t riots that got the poll tax abolished, you idiots; it was the fact that everyone refused to pay it and, much as she would have liked, Maggie couldn’t put everyone in jail. These student protests (and I’m willing to bet on this, should anyone fancy a wager) will change about as much as the demonstrations against military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sorry kids, but it’s true.

[An aside: someone I know was once punched in the face by their dad for daring to suggest that the French had the right idea when it came to protesting about stuff. Now that's a family dispute]

What else? Oh, yes, the British judiciary demonstrated that the law is an ass yet again yesterday, as Paul Chambers’ lost his appeal agaist conviction for telling a joke on Twitter. Take a moment to consider that, webmongs – you can say something to someone in jest, and now be liable for it. It’s just mental, frankly. There’s no way in hell that this won’t eventually get overturned – it’s just a question of the law needing to catch up with the world – but it’s a bit of a scary thought nonetheless. Let’s all go and bomb an airport in protest (NB – Web Curios in no way condones or encourages terrorist activity against airports or indeed any other locations. Except, perhaps, Swindon).

Sorry, that was all rather worthy, wasn’t it? Erm. Let’s take a moment before delving into the past week’s webthings to relax, purge our minds of all this SERIOUS STUFF, and contemplate the best news I’ve heard in ages – i.e. that Pulp are reforming. Go and read this essay dissecting Common People, and come back when you’re done. Or, er, don’t. Sorry, that was very bossy of me.

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