Categories
People

What’s the connection between 12 old folk trapped on top floor of a care home in the NE of Scotland and The Clash?

Life can sometimes throw up some very bizarre connections.

You may well have seen on the TV news at the weekend or read about the care home in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, where 12 OAPs have been stuck on the top floor since Xmas Day due to a lift breakdown.
12 Trapped since Xmas Day by lift breakdown

As it happens I have some connection with the said establishment.

First, my sister works there.

Second, I’m very familiar with the lift in question, as I have been up in it many times. I should explain.

When I was growing up, I had friend called Duncan Eddie (now the Reverend Duncan Eddie as it happens). His mother was the matron at the home, so he and his parents lived in a flat on the third floor.

Duncan and I were big music fans. Duncan had the luxury of a very fine hi-fi unit, so I used to take my LPs round there to give em a good listen. I was more of an orthodox rocker, with a liking for Queen, Thin Lizzy and Led Zeppelin. Duncan was a big Bowie fan, and introduced me to Iggy Pop. However, when punk arrived in late 76 (I read Sounds, he read the NME), all bets were off. We used to make sure our meagre resources went as far as possible for LP buying by agreeing in advance who would get what. So Duncan got The Clash’s first LP the week it came out and I bought The Stranglers. The Buzzcocks Another Music was on his list, and I got Nevermind The Bollocks. When the Sex Pistols appeared on TOTP with Pretty Vacant, we both ran round to each others place to confirm that we had seen the biggest event of our lives in a state of heady excitement.

Seeing Clashfarquhar House on the TV at the weekend brough back memories on a different time – , growing up in the back of beyond in the North East of Scotland, the arrival of punk in 1977 made two teenage boys think that we were on the brink of a revolution – and we were the only 2 people in the town that were aware of it. The sweet naviete of youth.

Uhome

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Categories
Television

Telewest TV Drive – first look

Took delivery this morning of our shiny new Telewest TV Drive. Clearly viewing habits in the Smith household are about to change forever.

We had a very helpful Telewest engineer who gave us a quick 5 min demonstration of all the new features. I’d read a few reports that said the Telewest TV Drive would not be as user friendly as Sky+ – having never used Sky+ I can’t comment on its ease of use – but the Telewest device seems pretty easy to me. And it works! Freezing live TV, etc is all very straightforward – but the ability to record 2 channels simultaneously while watching a third is very cool. A nice big 160GB hard drive should give 80 hours of recording time. And its HD ready. Obviously not much HD content available yet, but the HD picture quality is v. impressive. Roll on the World Cup!

One thing I hadn’t realised is that you can actually transfer content from the hard drive to an external DVD recorder. I’d assumed for copyright reasons, they wouldn’t allow you to do this – in fact I need to look at the back of the device to see what other outputs it has.

I’ll report back further after a few more days of road testing – but first impressions are very good.

The TV revolution has begun.

Hdtv_long

Categories
People

Richard Delevan’s new arrival

Link: Richard Delevan’s sicNotes: What I’ve Been Up To.

Congrats to Richard on the arrival of his son Fionn Fox – Richard and I worked together back at Brodeur in 2000. He is that rare breed of PR who moved into journalism and is now a highly respected socio/political commentator in the Irish national press.

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Categories
People Technology PR

New face at Object – Rod de St Croix

Good to have Rod on board.

OBJECT MARKETING EXPANDS SENIOR TEAM

…Rod de St Croix appointed as PR director…

Shepherd’s Bush, London – 7th March 2006 – Object Marketing, the integrated marketing consultancy, has hired Rod de St Croix (39) as PR director. In this newly created role, Rod will work alongside the
agency’s co-founder Andrew Smith to grow and develop the PR practice. 

Rod joins Object Marketing from Band & Brown where he was associate
board director. Prior to this he worked for several years as an
independent PR consultant advising B2B technology and online firms. He
began his PR career in 1995 with Brodeur Worldwide. Prior to this, he was an analyst with International Data Corporation.

Commenting on his appointment, de St Croix says: “I will be working
closely with the senior team here to grow the client base, whilst also
developing integrated campaigns that have a creative edge, and that
work hard for clients and generate tangible results. In addition, I
will be helping clients to reach beyond pure media relations to capture
the attention of the analyst and investment communities. I am looking
forward to making an important contribution to Object’s continuing
success.”

Object Marketing co-founder Andrew Smith says: “2006 promises to be an
important milestone in our growth and Rod will play a vital role in
helping us to achieve our targets. We welcome him as a key member of
the team.”

About Object Marketing 

Object Marketing is a fully integrated marketing consultancy, based
in London, UK, offering clients strategic and implementational support
through the entire marketing mix.

Object’s sector expertise spans technology, financial services and FMCG
markets. Current clients include business performance management
software vendor Hyperion, leading Internet security specialist Zone
Labs, and MySQL, developer of the world’s most popular open source
database.

Categories
Uncategorized

PR Agencies – under resourced and under priced?

Link: ANALYST EQUITY: PR: Opportunities, obstacles and solutions.

A forthright post from Duncan Chapple on the subject of PR.

Some quick excerpts:

"PR’s inability to produce valuable results is reflected in underresourcing and underpricing by agencies. Most agencies’ pre-tax margins are a miserable 3.6%. Twenty percent of agencies price below cost. Their sales growth conceals forthcoming ruin. A further 44% of PR companies barely break even. The remaining one-third of agencies deliver real value, but their profitability is also threatened by consultancies that price below cost."

I was curious to know where these figures were derived from – if Duncan has his hands on a decent size sample analysis of PR company’s financial peformance, then I’m sure many others would like to investigate further too. 3.6pc pre-tax margin is indeed miserable – and of course, post-tax margin is what really matters – and that means the real margins are even slimmer. Have to say the claim that "most" agencies are making these margins suggests that the PR industry isn’t really the best way to get rich…

And as for those 20pc of agencies apparently pricing at below cost, it beggars belief. Or perhaps they think they’ll make up the difference on volume 😉

"Advertising failed when it drifted from its scientific roots. It became a creative art form."

Not sure advertising ever had scientific roots – though certainly the data available on which to plan campaigns has been more detailed than that for PR. Having said that, good PR companies will always have the numbers on which to justify an approach.

"PR seems so easy. Almost anyone can do it and, if journalists’ complaints are heard, it seems almost anyone does. Most leading PR consultancies are perpetrators of catastrophic errors. Their industry is seen as an ethical wasteland."

I’m sure we’d all like to know more about those catastrophic errors!

"The reality is that few PR managers even align their campaigns to the corporate marketing plan, let alone aligning their campaigns to customers: in-house PR managers know how few agencies ask for the marketing plan; PR agencies know how few clients offer it."

Few clients may offer it, but any PR company worth its salt should always ask for it –  PR in isolation is indeed a wasted effort.

Categories
Weblogs

No stamina at the FT?

Link: FTMAGBLOG: THAT’S ALL FOLKS.

After only 5 days, the FT has closed the blog it set up to comment on their Feb 18 story by Trevor Butterworth. Which is a shame.

As Glyn Moody has already pointed out in 10 Things To Build A Blog Readership, one vital attribute is stamina.

Categories
Weblogs

Dennis Howlett on innovation for professional accountants � The mouse and the elephant – or how mainstream media censored a reader

Link: AccMan Pro – Dennis Howlett on innovation for professional accountants � The mouse and the elephant – or how mainstream media censored a reader.

A small firestorm is brewing over at Dennis Howlett’s blog over the apparent censorship meted out on the AccountingWEB site. The explanation given by the publisher – "We don’t allow self promotion – It’s not in our commercial interests to send people away from our site” – is the thing that seems to be stirring up the ire of various commentators.

Although not familiar with the fine detail of the case, from the outside it does seem a rather curious stance. The web, by its very nature, is designed to assist travelling to various destinations rather than stopping at one.

Also, surely readers will be able to evaluate for themselves whether something is a gratuitous plug – and thus refrain from clicking on a link away from the site?

Providing a comment isn’t offensive or libelous, common sense says let the community decide for themselves.

Categories
Web/Tech

MySQL.com Web Traffic – more than Oracle

Link: TheOpenForce.com: MySQL.com Web Traffic.

Interesting post from MySQL’s Zack Urlocker – namely:

"Last year we actually surpassed Oracle’s web site in terms of traffic, as measured by Alexa.  However, not to pick on Oracle, in the tech sector we also generate more traffic than Red Hat, Novell, SAP, Apache, JBoss, Eclipse, BEA, Borland, Gartner, eWeek and InfoWorld.

Beyond tech, we actually have more traffic than some popular "mainstream" brands including the Nike, United Airlines, AT&T, Honda, Toyota, Ford, Porsche, Shell, GE, Princeton University, Fender Guitars, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and Hooters.

Ok, I admit, this was not a scientific analysis (especially the comparison with Hooters), and we have less traffic than some household names like Apple, IBM, Microsoft and Intel.  Nonetheless, MySQL’s web traffic is larger than many of the top best-selling brands as reported by InterBrand.  For an open source database company, that’s pretty good!"

Categories
Weblogs

10 Things to Build a Blog Readership

Link: open…: 10 Things to Build a Blog Readership.

Sound advice from Glyn Moody.

Categories
Business Intelligence Business Performance Management Technology PR Web/Tech

IT Week – James Murray interviews Hyperion CTO John Kopcke

James Murray – IT Week – interview with Hyperion’s John Kopcke

The trackback facility for stories on VNU’s website has set me thinking that this is another avenue yet to be fully explored (exploited?) by those of us working in the Web PR 2.0 world. In the past, once a story appeared, you had no further means of continuing the conversation around it – or at least not in a way that was open to public scrutiny. For example, what if someone felt they were misquoted? Rather than write an angry letter to the Editor asking for a correction, you can put your case in the open and let people make their own minds up.

And before anybody asks, James has written an entirely faithful record of his conversation with John at the Gartner BI Summit of a few weeks ago. For those interested, more of John’s insights into the whole subject of business intelligence and business performance management can be found here:

Hyperion Executive Thought Leadership Perspectives