Looking forward to Dark Side of Social Media – it sounds even more interesting!

Newmania, PR has to change to be more transparent, and companies – and politicians alike – have to work that way, they can no longer rely on spin or message control,they have to listen and interact with customers and the public alike. The times, they are a changing…

A pleasure to finally meet you last night. Not too much time to talk, as you noted, with so much going on. I was actually taken aback by the sheer number of people who were there, close to 150 by my estimation.

A clear indicator, if we needed one, that the broad topic under discussion is one which many of our colleagues in the PR profession want a bright light shining upon.

PR firms are relating to politics .

On the own hand there is the growth of soft funding. This is when a Party is subject to rules but a separate body that is supportive of a given Party like Doughty Street can be financed without any limit
It is going to be exceedingly hard to control moneys swilling around this nebulous terrain .A recipe for graft and the PR companies are bound to use the loophole to please important contacts . . At local level the standards board would be having apoplexy.

PR and the Constitutional and societal debate of Politics are becoming confused . Focus group lead policy and even legislation have cursed the Blair years and the malign influence of a Hilton or Campbell is the Evil Grand Vizier to every handsome Prince .

If PR, marketing and their attendant evils of amoral follower-ship have seeped into the polity then I fear an equally grave problem is money that seeps out of the Public purse into the hands of the PR gurus . As before it is not quite straightforward sinecures but rather related income streams .

The NHS consultation “Your health, your care, your say” which closed in November 2005 had a total bill to the taxpayer of £1.39 million out of the department’s running cost budget. £1.05 million of that went to Opinion Leader Research. That is the same Opinion Leader Research headed by long standing Labour Party consultant, member of the Smith Institute, and friend to Gordon Brown, Deborah Mattinson. She of the bogus pro Brown Surveys conducted with 100 people and placed in the Sun, Guardian and Newstatesman The NHS running cost budget is ultimately in the hands of the Treasury .Subtle

.Consider this new example . Mike Lee the PR director and special adviser to Lord Coe on the Olympic bid has picked up a sexy beast of a new contract to advise “ Visit Britain� formerly known as the Tourist Board on how to use the Games to attract Tourists ! Public money in other words is building Good will in PR companies (in the technical sense). They make their money elsewhere but rely on political contacts. Well if that’s stays straight it will be the first time ever.

Conservatives should retain untwisted knickers . We accept I think that business works on contacts and that personal recommendation is a benign corruption with much in its favour.
We must on the other hand be wary of Public Money indirectly funding political campaigns and the insidious creep of aforementioned Followership and media before principle.

I also though Mark Rogers from Market Sentinel had a lot of interesting things to say. I quizzed him on their product after the Q&A session and it sounds like it’s worth investigating. I also felt that Jacqui White from Edelman did herself lots of favours by being so honest and upfront about their past cock-ups. And she blushed when she was talking about it – fair play – could’ve been the heat though!

All things being equal the podcast should be live on our iTunes feed (there’s an RSS one, as well) in the next couple of days.

Hope to see you at a future event. Our next PR-related one is on the Dark Side of Social Media looking at all things nefarious (June 19), well be posting details on Chinwag Live website in the next day or so.