“Smashing pumpkins,” a passing Chinese man commented to me recently. Unfortunately this was not a paean to Western girth but merely yet one more re-affirmation of his enduring love for American AOR. The same passing Chinese man is also wont to sidle up to our new teachers and whisper conspiratorially: “Axel Rose, he is a very beautiful man, no?”
However, the stir his gourd-related interjections create here in Westernmost Beijing is naught compared to the wave of vegetable buffoonery that has of late infected the North West PR scene in general (and How-Do correspondents in particular). Admittedly, it has not been a vintage week by How-Do news standards but surely Attik turning Japanese or Mediacom going Bryant Homes-less might have merited more of a mench than the demise of a parachuting pumpkin?
For those in need of statistical trivia Slam PR’s (a subsidiary of Weber Shandwick) pumpkin-related puffery notched up some 13 on-site comments (topped only by on-going ruminations on the Media Mission-ary Position with a whopping 23 (many more unpublished Tony - Ed) – but more of that later), whilst Mediacom losing a big stack of cash to a Southern-based media buyer raised nary a hackle.
The amount of chatter on the site, however, seems inversely proportionate to the amount of involvement of Manc’s PR luminaries – with grumpy old Brian Beech, managing director of Biss Lancaster, nixing their interest in taking part and telling How-Do he’d told Slam: "We won't be taking part in your pumpkin challenge, preferring to use our creativity on behalf of our client ASDA for whom Halloween is a massive trading period.”
Was it only me who mentally willed the following quote to be then promptly issued from Rob Brown of McCann-Erickson PR: “And of course WE won’t be taking part either, preferring to use OUR creativity on behalf of our brand spanking new PR client MFI, who regularly supply self-assembly kitchens round this time of year to facilitate the impending festive bout of ritual pumpkin dismemberment – so suck on that Beechy!”?
Ah, only me then.
Despite the amount of comments generated, one couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for poor Chris Dolan of Slam as he lamented: “Seems our counterparts are all mouth and no trousers. SKV is ‘too busy’ and we've not heard a peep out of Brazen, Crush, Communiqué, Mason Williams, Vertigo, MC2 or The Bird Consultancy...so we're waiting with baited breath to see what surprises await.”
Doesn’t it make you want to reply: “Ah don’t worry Chris, you’ll probably get an account all of your very own soon. Then you’ll have something to occupy your time rather than Fed-Exing edible plant stuff to your more commercially pre-occupied competitors.”
The truth is though, Chris, not all of your competitors were free to take part. Brazen’s ongoing “project-work” with the Sunday Sport contractually obliges them to only indulge in “melons-related” mischief, whilst Communiqué has a policy – dating back to Paul Carroll’s’ stewardship of the consultancy - of only dispatching vegetables Weber Shandwick-wards rather than receiving them. “They usually make them account group heads,” I remember the mischievous Mr. Carroll quipping at the time.
Mission Un-tenable
So onto the other issue that has inspired How-Do-ers to anonymously e-bile their thoughts in – Media Mission’s absorption into AWA , an agency still sipping its post-prandial brandy after digesting MAP nearly three years ago.
Well, it’s been billed as an acquisition of Media Mission, but, in reality the move actually represents more of a return of the Gov-Net contract publishing business to the agency. It was previously handled by MAP prior to the merger with AWA and, at the time, its abrupt departure to Media Mission heralded a difficult period for Mel Harding’s agency and, ironically, set it on course to become the merged agency the account has now returned to.
How bizarre.
You don’t have to read between the lines of the appended comments on the Media Mission acquisition to suspect that in its dying days the publishing company (as it had become) was not an entirely happy ship (in fact I suspect that altogether cheerier craft may have featured centre stage in Viking funeral rites!)
Publishing companies, in my experience, are seldom pleasant places to work – I remember working for one where the managing director couldn’t manage, the sales director couldn’t sell and the editor in chief was too scared of the MD (also his missus!) to chiefly edit much of anything, but that’s an altogether different and far more libelous column….
Still the many (or few) staff that have made the move over to AWA may find their lot improving rapidly and considerably. In the ill-fated “Scamp” days I squatted in a back office at the agency’s then Old Trafford headquarters and it seemed to be, by far, one of the more civilized and humane places to work about town.
Graeme Wood, AWA’s managing director, is undoubtedly one of the nicest blokes in the industry. He is not quite as larger than life as his dear old dad, Arthur (who founded the agency), but he does have a warmth and a business acumen that has won him wide respect in the North West and beyond. So maybe the Media Mission story has a happy ending after all.
If only more How-Do stories had happy endings or maybe, indeed, just endings. It is ironic that just a fortnight after How-Do celebrated 1.2million page impressions (over 1.5m now if you don't mind Mr Murray) , some stories from its earliest days – notably the launch of Time Out Manchester and the increasingly preposterous Chimp magazine, have failed to impress with a single page whatsoever.
To this number, will we have to now add Australian publisher, Derwent Howard who this week told How-Do of its plans to launch in Manchester, under one time News International staffer, Jeremy Palmer?
I met Palmer a number of times before he headed down under to work for Emap. Whilst he seemed a perfectly affable bloke, the most striking thing about him was his missus, Helen, who headed up Capital Advertising in Manchester. Is she back in town too?
Now she was a driven woman – I remember her wringing every penny out of Capital’s ₤7,000 sponsorship of the first Manchester Cream Awards. If she’s part of Derwent Howard’s Manchester offering, then their publications will be at the printers long before Chump magazine even gets to ozalid stage, (and probably even before it’s would-be publisher finds out what an “ozalid” is or, indeed, was!)
Un-Holy Trinity
Staying with publishing and I see that away from the critical eye of How-Do, the Liverpool Daily Post is lauding its widely maligned “crowdsourcing” (lack of) initiative. According to the Trinity Mirror tabloid, public spirited individuals acted on the paper’s initiative to embrace input from its readers and “grassed up” shortcomings in a local budget airline operator, resulting in a front page splash.
Public spirited “people with intimate knowledge of the aviation industry” as the paper suggests? Or public relations people with an intimate financial relationship with the airline’s rivals? I know where the smart money is going on this one!
Fair play to salary-obligated hacks on the Post who had to dutifully bash this bollocks out, but a big hairy wooden spoon award to the Press Gazette for blithely and uncritically endorsing this arrant nonsense as a “major scoop”. When the journalist’s journal of choice unquestioningly prints media owners’ press releases – no matter how preposterous - then we really are in trouble.
Ending on a cheerier note and congratulations to John Williams and Rita Rowe on the longevity of Mason Williams , one of the NW’s finest PR consultancies. Anyone wishing to ever win a PR award and (though obviously less importantly) do a great job for their client should read the paper the consultancy submitted way back in the 90’s on Batchelors Mushy Peas Week – an exemplary blend of creativity and strategy that I never saw topped.
To honour their 21 years of success, I have opted not to re-tell an almost certainly apocryphal and libelous anecdote about the two of them, the Subbuteo world championship and a bugged hotel room once told to me by a former MW account manager. I won’t tell you his name, but if you Google “Doctor Who” and “Peter Purves” it will point you in the right direction…
Tony Murray has spent the weekend asking Chinese six year olds to “show me monkey” in a bid to ascertain their worthiness to be deemed Rising Stars in his school’s annual speaking competition in West Beijing.
In a previous life he spent his time “networking” (or “notworking” as his more insightful colleagues then termed it!) his way across the North West marketing communications scene. Anyone wishing to berate him for any of this week’s gratuitous offensiveness or apply for one of the five teaching jobs he has to find people for by January 2008, can email him ontonymurray37@hotmail.com
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