September 9, 2008 - Escherman

The Flackenhack Awards are back for 2008! Adopt-a-hack?

After the roaring success of last year’s inaugural Flackenhack Awards, the world’s leading alternative event for the UK’s technology PR and media community is back = this time on Weds, October 29th, 2008 at The Village Underground, 54 Holywell Lane, Shoreditch, London EC2A 3PQ.

Promising to be “bigger and messier than last year”, the organisers say they’ve come up with a genius plan to get as many technology journalists to attend without them having to put their hands in their wallets ie members of the tech PR industry can buy a hack’s ticket for them on eBay.

Make your way to the Flackenhack 2008 Awards blog for more detail about the event. You can even help decide which hacks should have their tickets auctioned.

And adding to the social media frenzy around the event, there is also a Facebook group.

Tickets are now on sale here.

Go on. You know you want to. Last year’s event was a lot of fun and a refreshing change – here’s to making the 2008 event event better. (There you go TWL, will that do?)

How to test your media pitch with a tame journalist

I note that heavyweight UK business and consumer journalists Guy Clapperton, Sally Morris and Lori Miles have lauched a new PR training service called What The Press Wants.

As the name of the venture suggests, they ought to know better than most exactly what journalists are looking for. Among the various courses provided, I also noted that they are offering a “test your pitch” service to PRs.

In their own words: “About to launch an expensive, creative and high profile PR campaign? Why not give it a trial run in the privacy of your own building before rolling it out to an unforgiving audience? With full non-disclosure assurance, we can send a journalist with relevant senior experience into your office for a test run – to spot any glitches or highlight any positives you may have under-developed.”

I know this kind of thing has been tried before and I wish them all the best with it. However, I’ve always wondered who the real target customer for such a service would be – the client who has commissioned the PR campaign – or the PR company who has created the campaign? Perhaps it would be better to get the journalist involved at the campaign creation stage rather than spend time, money and effort building something only to find out it has as much chance of working as a chocolate fireguard.