It’s funny how national news often reflects, mimics or merely re-imagines news from the reality within our own dear How-Do World. Take the run on confidence at Northern Rock, with customer concern growing with every mounting loss…

BDH

Surely a similar phenomenon must be facing our very own “Northern Rock”, the one-time immaculately robust BDH. Its current run on senior management must have surely sent tremors through the marketing communications blagasphere, with the (bizarrely) unreported-on-How-Do-departure of chairman, Martin Kemp being but the latest
Whilst 781 Wilmslow Road is yet to see a hoard of concerned fishing-stool squatting clients queuing in the wee small hours to be the first to retrieve their latest pdfs and stash them under the relative safety of their mattresses, it can surely be only a matter of time.

Murray

How well, though, will the boys from Crain’s fit in? Looking at the US Publishers portfolio (Detroit, Chicago, New York) I am somehow put in mind of a now defunct agency that used to boast on its letter-head “New York, Milan, Berlin, Rotherham”. I always thought this represented more a list of places the agency’s proprietor had heard of than a serious assertation of global affiliation.

“Detroit, Chicago, New York, Salford” sounds slightly less incongruous, but I wonder if the new publication will nestle between the publishers mid-West portfolio or instead be bracketed between Crain’s less-lauded publications (“Waste News” “American Coin-Operated Laundry” and “Urethanes Technology International magazine—widely recognised as the most useful source of information on developments in the global polyurethanes industry.”

So why has Crain’s chosen to launch its UK offering in the North West. Complex theories as to economic “analagousnessness” and sympathetic cultural co-incidence may abound, but I suspect the truth is a little more prosaic – publisher Arthur Porter wanted to come home after five years of missionary work introducing lunch-time drinking to our colonial cousins.

Quite how the pairing of the affable Porter and newly announced editor, Steve Brauner will work is another interesting question. I’ve met both of ’em and, in the words of Private Eye, it strikes me very much as a “match made in Neasden.”

Brauner has been characterized on these pages – and I précis freely – as something of a grumpy old sod. Mind you, as any PR person, will tell you, any business journalist inevitably evolves into a miserable git who has a typical phone conversation dwell time of somewhat less than 15 seconds. However, what these PR people don’t tell you is that this persona is the direct result of fielding 38 calls an hour on a serial basis from PR companies asking: “Have you got our press release? Are you going to use it?” (Answer: “Yes I have. I have put in a high profile position – it is in between my toasted sandwich and my desk and proving most absorbent. Thank you.”)

Communique and Bagnall 

Staying on the subject of our friends in PR, is it me or is my old mucker Communiqué managing director, Nigel Sarbutts, devolving into something of a taxi driver of late, with his latest outburst concerning the allegedly dilapidated state of the consultancy’s Canal Street base? His insistence that the area is a bit of a “dump” surely is unrelated to two totally unpertinent facts:

1.    The landlord of Communiqué’s offices is none other than Communiqué’s former MD and proprietor, Paul Carroll (with whom Sarbutts had an acrimonious parting during his first stint at Communique).
2.    The new tenants replacing Sarbutts’ Communiqué team are none other than Vertigo PR, managed and owned by Mr Carroll’s partner Nathalie Bagnall.

So no bad blood there then.

I can hear Nige now: “I remember when I were nowt more than an account exec. The roads round here were paved with new business briefs, entering the IPR NW awards cost half a shilling and you always got a gold for everything. And there were people here that had worked for Communiqué for more than six weeks… It ain’t right, is it governor? I had that Julia Heineken in the back of the cab once…”

Pennine Lancashire

Of all the tricks in the PR pantheon, playing the Death Card is perhaps the most shameless of them all, but that doesn’t seem to have deterred Pennine Lancaster and Creative Concern from extensive bandying of the late “Anthony H Wilson” name in all the publicity surrounding the launch of new “contour” graphic that comprises the latest bit of regional branding to raise its sorry head.

It is perhaps significant that pictures of the late Mr Wilson are far more in evidence in the publicity surrounding the launch than pictures of the “ panoramic fusion of multi-coloured contour lines” that the hard-working tax payers of the region have ultimately (if unwittingly) coughed up for.

I’ve always hated these regional and city branding attempts and am always relieved when these half-baked schemes run out of cash and get filed away under the heading “Well it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Inevitably these schemes are always under-funded and kick-off with a “hearts and minds” campaign or what the more cynical might term “cheap local advertising that shows people in the area that we’re doing something and is just about within our miniscule budget.”

Who now remembers Manchester’s dreadful “up and going” campaign of the late nineties (that’s right hang your head in shame, McCann-Erickson Manchester)? Or the terrible London-sourced campaign that set out to establish Birmingham as “Europe’s meeting place”:(whose only visible marketing activity, as far as I remember, was as 48-sheet at Heathrow saying the equivalent of “Come to Birmingham – it’s not quite as shit as you remember it…”)?

But even among these ill-starred endeavours, the Pennine “contour” stands out a particularly “strategically and creatively-challenged”. What exactly is it saying: “Come to Lancashire – it’s considerably more wavy than most regions in need of development” or possibly “No, don’t even think of going to Yorkshire –it’s hardly wavy at all.”

Still in the spirit of its criticism-deflecting launch, and as my old mate Tony H.Wilson (a great supporter of this occasional column by the way) might say: “That’s all for me. I’m off for me tea.”

In another life, Tony Murray, edited marketing communications magazines by day and caroused extensively by night. Now he sits quietly in a suburb of Beijing and cites passages from Waugh’s a “Handful of Dust” to passers-by for money and beer.

If something has caught your attention on how-do, you can email him on tonymurray37@hotmail.com

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