Sunday for Monday - Jay Williams tells PRCA why they are a win for clients
"Why do so many PRs rule out ‘Sunday for Mondays’? We routinely get pushback from clients when the slot is suggested. I don’t understand it. It seems that it has somehow become ‘received wisdom’ – perhaps on the basis of a project that failed to launch. But rejecting it out of hand is actually evidence of the disconnect between PR and the media. A misunderstanding of what the media wants".
Read more about how Sunday for Mondays are a win for clients here.
Test Your Ideas
As well offering plenty of opportunities for lying about in the sun (if you can stand the heat), summer is also a great time to take stock and think about your future. Don’t worry, we are not suggesting you actually do any work, just think about what you want to achieve.
For Jay Williams, director of strategy, the only thing that really matters is making sure your creative skills are up to scratch: “Never mind a 'career audit'. Anybody who takes creativity remotely seriously should be constantly open to the review, improvement and innovation of our stock-in-trade – ideas.
Test your ideas
“We’re in the ideas business and serious stock-taking needs to be hard-wired into the process. We need to test our ideas to destruction, because if we don’t, the media surely (and gleefully) will. Too many PR projects fail because they were not subjected to enough difficult questions in the planning process.
“As Edward de Bono said in his 1992 masterpiece Serious Creativity: ‘Creativity is not simply a way to make things better. Without creativity we are unable to make full use of the information and experience that is already available to us and is locked up in old structures, old patterns, old concepts, and old perceptions.”
Get excited
If this is making it sound that being creative is a lot of effort, Williams points out that coming up with ideas isn’t a chore, it’s invigorating: “A new idea can be the most exciting thing in the world.
“In the latest season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Netflix), one of Jerry Seinfeld’s guests is Neal Brennan, who writes for the peerless Dave Chappelle. When asked what he values most, Brennan replies, without a beat: “New ideas are the only thing I care about.”
Taking time out is one way to boost your creativity, so a lot of summer lazing could be just the thing. Whilst relaxing on a lounger, your thoughts may also turn to other aspect of your job, such as getting some training.
Banksy blunder - The benefit of hindsight
It’s not quite as bad as being the man who failed to sign the Beatles but sometimes, as I crawl to work through Bristol traffic on a dismal Monday morning, it feels that way.
In the late 90s, I began to notice funny and subversive graffiti emerging around the city. A rat here, a clown there, a thought-provoking stencilled slogan amid a scrabble of tags.
One particularly striking image appeared overnight on the side of a pub next to our old office on Hotwells Road opposite the SS Great Britain. It was of a screaming clown with Kiss-style eye make-up, toting two pistols. For some unaccountable reason it cheered me up every time I saw it.
While talking one day with a pal who owned a skateboard store off Park Street, I learned that the artist responsible was known as Banksy. I filed the information away and continued to enjoy his work as it cropped up throughout Bristol, experiencing a kind of old school ‘I Spy’ thrill every time I found one.
Fast forward to 2000, and the announcement that Banksy was making the move towards the more traditional medium of canvas, and marking this with an exhibition at the Severnshed restaurant. I went along. Although many of the paintings bore red ‘sold’ stickers (prices were in the high hundreds, rather than today’s astronomical figures) the event itself, it seemed to me, was sparsely attended.
I met and chatted with Banksy’s then manager Robert Birse, in the course of which I was invited to visit the man’s studio, which I jumped at.
If memory serves, the near-derelict space was tucked away in Bedminster. I’d persuaded my news editor that there was something very interesting going on here, although the Banksy phenomenon was still a long way off.
During the course of the visit, I enthused as was shown various canvasses, including one particularly strong image – an elephant with a missile strapped to its back, against a vivid pink background.
“The frame on that one is slightly off,” said Robert. “If you hold it up you’ll see it’s a bit skew-iff.”
It was. It meant it wouldn’t hang completely flat. “Still amazing though,” I replied.
Robert thought for a moment and then said: “Well, you could have that one for a reduced rate, if you like.”
“So … how much?”
“Say £300?”
Now, at the time I was a pretty hard-up reporter with three children to support and another on the way. Three hundred quid bought a lot of nappies and Wet Wipes. But still …
“Yes,” I said. “But is it OK if I give you a cheque for £100 now and pay the rest over the next couple of months?”
He agreed, and I loaded the piece into the back of my battered Peugeot 205.
Back at the office, I phoned my wife and – having spent the journey back planning the best way of pitching the purchase (investment/it’s beautiful/it’ll cover that dodgy bit of plastering in the front room) – recounted the tale.
An ominous silence. A reaaaalllllllly long, ominous silence. Then: “You know we can’t afford it, so I don’t even know why you’d consider this. It’ll have to go back. And you need to get the bloke to tear up the cheque before he banks it.”
The channel for negotiation had clanged shut. I muttered something about a loan, or perhaps borrowing some money from a parent or a mate, but we were already overdrawn to the hilt, and this was met with a dangerous snort.
So back it went.
I’ve tried to “take a positive” from this over the years, but I can’t. I experience a pang – actually it’s more of a stab – every time I read about a Banksy selling at auction, or something like the wonderful Dismaland opening its rusty doors to the public.
If there’s anything I learned from my own very personal Banksygate it’s this. If you love a piece of art for what you believe it to be – something you love – then buy it, if you reasonably can. Absurd as it sounds now, I genuinely didn’t have the spending power at the time, but I guess I could have rustled up the cash somehow.
The other thing I take comfort and joy from is that I can still see and enjoy Banksys every day, in the streets here in Bristol. He even painted a commemorative flower over the trigger-happy clown on Hotwells Road, which always raises a smile. I see them every day, and they’re free.
Watch this space: the meteoric rise of video content
“Got video with that?”
It’s a question that’s put “at least once an hour, every day” to the picture desk at SWNS, the UK’s biggest independent press agency.
It comes from decision-makers at some of the country’s busiest web sites.
If we do, and it’s media that’s been produced in conjunction with our PR clients – punchy, around 90 seconds and not over-branded – there’s a fair chance it will appear online in support of their story.
If not, well then the publisher will simply go away and find something else that fits – generic material at best, or at worst, media supplied previously from a rival in the same industry.
Message muddled. Control gone.
It seems absurd to commit time and resources to a PR project – let’s say a survey – build a story around it and prepare to distribute it on a given day only to sit back and watch in dismay as the message become diluted as busy news gatekeepers add off-brand pictures and videos to fill the void you left.
Content editors don’t care about keeping things on-message for you. They’ve got ever-increasing reams of space to fill, and their aim is to keep visitors engaged on their site for as long as possible. If you haven’t supplied a video to complement your story, they’ll simply assign someone else to find material that fits.
Data from TNS Global last year showed that 79% of UK consumers who go online at least once a week watch digital videos. The figure is 78% in the US and even higher elsewhere – 84% in Canada and 89% in China.
Syndacast’s Video Marketing Statistics & Trends 2015 report predicts that by 2017, 74% of ALL internet traffic will be video.
It doesn’t need to be a magnum opus with Hollywood-style production values. A simple vox pop will suffice, so long as it’s relevant, entertaining and not overly branded. Below are a few recent examples which have kept everyone happy – you (the client) and, just as importantly, the content editors. You’ll notice that the branding is kept to a minimum, as a logo burst at the end of the vid.
How patient are you? Our video for Interparcel was part of a larger integrated campaign, and can be seen here on the news section of the MailOnline.
What is your morning routine? Our vox pop video for Simon Jersey seen here featured on the MailOnline.
ASDA’s ‘pocket tap’ story and video as published on the Mirror and Yahoo. View further media coverage here.
Like to know more about our own video, content and media distribution services? Email the team at hello@72point.com
Eschew All Those Beastly Adjectives
Sorting through a chest of old letters and photos recently, I came across a yellowing envelope marked ‘Roald Dahl’.
Memories flooded back as I opened it. This was a hand-typed reply I’d received from the great story-teller to a letter I wrote to him when I was 17, pleading for feedback and advice on an A level project I was doing about short stories. I’d included one of my own.
I remember how I felt when he replied – astounded, and then, with the callowness of youth (see pic!), a bit peeved that he’d been so terse:
Dear Jay,
You are asking too much of me. You must realise that I get an awful lot of these letters and you can’t expect me to write your thesis for you. It should be fairly obvious to you what the role of the short story is in modern literature. It’s a big one. Study particularly the American short story writers like O’Henry and Runyon and Hawthorne and Poe, and lots and lots of English ones.
If you want any dope on me there have been an awful lot of profiles in English magazines over the past year starting with the February 1979 issue of Vogue.
I have read your story. I don’t think it’s bad, but you must stop using too many adjectives. Study Hemingway, particularly his early work and learn how to write short sentences and how to eschew all those beastly adjectives. Surely it is better to say “She was a tall girl with a bosom” than “She was a tall girl with a shapely, prominent bosom”, or some such rubbish. The first one says it all.
Yours sincerely,
Roald Dahl
Heeding his 35-year-old advice, I tweeted a snap of the letter with the message: “In 1980, as a spotty teenager, I wrote to Roald Dahl asking for advice on writing. Here is his priceless response”. Yes, I know that contains two “beastly” adjectives, but I felt they were justified.
A week later, and with no additional ‘push’ from me, the post had been retweeted over 1,000 times and favourited by more than 1,500 people, making it my most popular tweet by a country mile.
Obviously its popularity could be attributed to Dahl himself; his books are a part of so many of our lives. But for teachers and writers (and so many of the retweets have been by them) what resonates is the advice, specifically that passed on so memorably in the final three sentences. It sank into my teenage brain and led to a mantra when I worked as a reporter and then in PR: ‘keep it tight’, whether it be an intro or a pitch to a news editor.
I remember a team of in-house PRs coming into the SWNS newsroom many years ago to see their story being pitched to national newspapers news editors one morning. The PR director and two wide-eyed interns (I think they were from a rail group) watched as I made the call to desk after desk with the same 10-second spiel: ”Oh yeah, and we’ve got a fun one – a list of the weirdest items left behind at train stations this year, including a wooden leg, a stuffed gerbil and a jar of pickled eggs. With pix.” After the call, the PRs were mortified. ”You didn’t even mention the name! Or how many stations were included in the round-up! Or how amazing some of the things were!”
Of course, that wasn’t the point. It was about the story, and you’ve got about 10 seconds to tell it to a busy news editor. These people deal every day with the absolute extremes of story-telling – terrible human tragedies, major sporting achievements, business disasters – so to oversell or ‘overtell’ our/your survey would show we had no understanding of the way it goes. The mention of the client in the pitch would have been a switch-off. And to have called the results of the survey “amazing” would just have been beastly.