The Devil wears a ski suit!

What do you do after you have booked your ski trip – you buy your ski wear! Having booked my trip for next year my attention has turned this weekend to what I will be wearing when I carve up the slopes of Bansko, Bulgaria.

Having missed the previous year, the equipment I had may have been sufficient for another season. Sadly though, having lent it to my sister’s boyfriend, a travelling Australian whose lack of consideration for his own clothing is matched only by that for someone else’s, I was none too surprised when he returned minus a few items.

When I say a few I mean he brought back one glove, a broken pair of goggles (how he broke them I have no idea), no jacket and the wrong pair of salopettes. Fortunately, I didn’t borrow him my long john’s (for hygiene reasons) but having searched the garage I have found my long johns are long gone - basically rendering me totally ski wear-less.

But every cloud has a silver lining and I now have the pleasure of being able to purchase a whole new wardrobe funded by some Australian dollars – sweet! With this in mind I have made my first purchase (a ski suit) and will be reviewing it this week and giving it my Snow Angel rating – stay tuned!

If you have comments on this post, my blog in general, how I should test my new equipment or on skiing in Bansko I would love to hear your thoughts! Please use the comment box below...

The 5 Golden Rules of a successful media tour

The media tour is a vital tool in the arsenal of any PR practitioner; helping to develop relationships with journalists and putting a face to the email signature. Whilst a good media tour can secure coverage a bad one can be professionally fatal for you and your client.

With this in mind I have come up with a list of 5 Golden Rules for surviving a media tour unscathed:

1. Don’t pre-book appointments longer than a week in advance. It’s difficult tying an editor down and booking a meeting more than a week in advance leaves you open to schedule changes and cancellations. By booking it within a week the editors schedule is more defined and it also keeps it fresh in an editor’s mind.

2. Always check when an editor is on deadline and never try to book a meeting around this. If they get the slightest hint that the magazine may be delayed hitting the press, then your meeting will be the first thing to go out the window. By checking little details like this you’re showing an appreciation for their timetable, which will curry favour with the editor.

3. Ensure you take a note pad and pen. It sounds simple but often the little details are overlooked. Failure to have such basic tools will reflect badly on you and your abilities.

4. Put all relevant material on a USB stick for the editor. The average editor’s desk is often awash with pieces of paper and by taking printed releases you will only add to the pile. Not only can you include all press releases but you can also add all relevant high res images, which can often be crucial to the success of a release. Make sure you use a client or own company branded stick, as each time they use it they will think of you.

5. Bribe editors with coffee and/or pastries. Shameless as it may seem this is possibly the most important rule of media tour club and will immediately soften an editor to your cause. Make sure you find out what they like in advance though - give a latte to a cappuccino drinker and you’re on the back foot from the off.

Ultimately, the media tour is a great way to meet an editor face to face and let them get to know you and, more importantly, know your client. Good relationships built on the back of these meetings could mean it’s plain sailing for the coming year but bad ones could leave you up a certain PR creek without a paddle.

Kim Kardashian wedding: brilliant PR stunt or career killer?

Kim Kardashian is/was a star on the rise following the success of the television show ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ and various spin-off shows, which have launched her into stratospheric heights of stardom.

Being all too aware of this she may have thought she was untouchable, made of Teflon perhaps, but the recent backlash against the most prominent Kardashian over her divorce announcement has left fans with a bitter taste in their mouths, and the lingering question - was this all just a PR stunt?

Far be it from me to cast aspersions on her marriage but having lasted a mere 72 days, one can rightly speculate that the decision to marry was career and not love driven. While her manager (and mother) defends her client stating she ‘didn’t earn a dime’ from the wedding, reports in the New York Post speculate that she, and the Kardashian clan, stood to make nearly $18 million dollars, which over 72 days equates to about $250,000 a day, from the marriage and ensuing promotion and television deals.

News of the divorce was met with an outpouring of contempt from fans towards Kim, with most taking to Twitter to air their views. A trending topic on the subject listing things that have lasted longer than Kardashian’s marriage became an overnight sensation, with some of the best tweets captured in a recent Yahoo! article. If you want to have a look type #thingsthatlastedlongerthankimkardashiansmarriage into Twitter.

Numerous comments have been posted on articles written about the divorce showing a turn in the tide of support for the Kardashians and anger that it was assumed the public would not see what the marriage inherently was – a PR stunt. So much so, that E! is looking to suspend re-runs of the four hour wedding special and debating the release of the latest series of ‘Kim and Kourtney take New york’, in which Kim and Kris talk about having a break (an obviously outdated decision at this point).

Whilst the normally infallible Kardashian clan has rallied around their sister in her time of need, and Kris Kardashian has appeared on a bevy of shows refuting rumours of the wedding being a PR stunt, there is no argument that the Kardashian stock is in a recession of its own.

Whatever your opinion of the wedding, there is no denying that the Kardashians made money from the affair but at what cost in the long run? In time, the loss of scores of fans and vicious tirade against the Kardashians could far outweigh their payoff. Worse still, this story contradicts the findings of my last blog surrounding Guy Fawkes and how there is no such thing as bad PR. Apparently there is….

Guy Fawkes: No such thing as bad PR

The yearly burning of Guy Fawkes effigies is a testament to the power of a well developed reputation, seeing as 400 years after his death the person most synonymous with the failed plot to revolutionise parliament, a disillusioned soldier and a pawn in a greater man’s plot, is celebrated with a firework extravaganza worthy of a hero’s homecoming. Despite the fact he was caught, tortured and executed, in the years following his death Fawkes’ reputation has seen a transition from villain to hero – ah the power of PR.

Fawkes’ perceived failure was successful in bringing to the forefront of the political sphere, the issue of Catholic oppression and whilst following his death Catholics were persecuted more than ever, within Catholic circles the legend of Guy Fawkes was being built.

Vilified in public but exulted in private, the years since that fateful day in 1605 has seen his overall status as villain supplanted. Modern times have seen Fawkes’ transformation to hero solidified via his home town, York, running a PR campaign in 2005 to challenge perceptions of Fawkes as a traitor. Couple that with the 2006 film V for Vendetta in which the protagonist is a revolutionary attempting to incite change within a dystopian society while dressed as Guy Fawkes, and it shows how opinion of Fawkes has changed over time.

Even today, there are protestors occupying various sites across the country sporting Guy Fawkes masks (both here and across the pond where Fawkes’ legend has little weight), in a homage to a man willing to use any means necessary to disrupt an oppressive regime and who has been considered “the only man to enter parliament with honest intentions”.

The Catholic PR machine of the 1600’s (underground as it was) turned Fawkes from hero to villain following his death by detailing his heroic exploits as a soldier in Spain and over-emphasising his part in the overall plot. Popular culture and a disillusioned section of society in turn, have taken Fawkes to their breast and subsequently moulded him once more into an agent of revolutionary change.

His legacy clearly lives on today and where original views of the gunpowder plot were that it was an unqualified failure, the result it seems, is that it was an unparalleled success for Guy Fawkes (putting aside his torture and execution), developing him a reputation that money can’t buy.