Category Guru in a Bottle

July 8, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

It’s often very difficult to know what makes a news release work and what doesn’t if you haven’t been doing it for that long. For those of us who do it for a living, we’ve witnessed some major changes in the art and craft of getting the message across to desired audience and customer segments. Today, PR is a very different business to what it was even a couple of years’ ago.

For me it comes down to taking a hard-nosed approach and increasingly that means understanding what we’re trying to achieve with using PR as a business tool rather than leaving it to chance and Lady Luck.

PR used to be about what I call the “transmit” mode of communication...

July 7, 2013,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update  No comments

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the furore over the UK phone hacking scandal in 2011 engulfed the owners of News International as well as politicians of all political parties, the Government and law enforcement officers, the issue of privacy and electronic communications has become a national obsession.

The public revulsion that followed the disclosure of the hacking of private phone messages of murder and terrorist victims and war widows didn’t just rip apart the UK’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper the News of the World but also raised serious questions about the legal safeguards in place to protect an individual’s right to privacy whilst at the same time protecting freedom of...

July 4, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

In my 20-year plus career within journalism, public relations, marketing and social media I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with some of the most successful global organisations in the world including Andersen Consulting (Accenture), Disney,  BBC,  The Scout Association, Shell, Ferrari, the International Cricket Council and the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom.

Very often it’s been my job to train chief executives on how best to put across their messages to audiences ranging from several hundred employees and millions of TV viewers.

Whilst all of these communication skills are very important – what we aren’t taught either at school or indeed when we work wit...

June 30, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  2 comments

Keir Starmer QC, the Director of Public Prosecutions has just published (20 June 2013) the finalised guidelines on circumstances under which prosecutors may pursue a legal action against those who post comments on social media.

What’s clear is that the CPS guidelines don’t create some form of ‘litigants’ charter’ where the police and the CPS are automatically involved in every instance of social media comment considered as rude, distasteful or even painful to those on the receiving end.

The guidelines indicate that there may be mitigating circumstances under which those making unguarded and grossly offensive comments on Twitter or Facebook but repent by taking them ...

June 29, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

This year has seen the blurring of the traditional line between marketing, PR and communications.

In the past, they were once stuck in their own silos.

But 2013 is changing all that.

Research for High Impact Marketing That Gets Results shows that the industry is in the throes of reinventing itself.

Making the customer, client, prospect or supporter the centre of the communication process is still some way off for many organisations but the signs are that marketing and communications are moving in this direction at a much faster rate in 2013.

The reality is that the customer doesn’t care where the info is coming from, just that they can get that info easily...

June 24, 2013,  Guru in a Bottle  No comments

In the good old days, brand marketing looked like a piece of cake, didn’t it?

All a brand owner needed to do was to use what we used to euphemistically call “mass media” which meant using the loudest volume level possible in order to be heard above the white noise of the competition.

Fast forward to today and that’s hardly a recipe for success!  Successful brands need to find ways of creating an enduring and mutually rewarding relationship with customers, clients, prospects and supporters.

As I’ve written in my latest book, The Art of Influencing and Selling, real relationships are difficult to form and even much more difficult to sustain...