PR and the Social Web

Around 20 years ago I met Max Clifford for the first time at  an industry lunch in Manchester at which he was the guest speaker.  A few years before he had been responsible for bringing about the public disgrace of the British government minister David Mellor. Max Clifford had touted the story that Mellor, a well known Chelsea football fan, had asked the actress Antonia de Sancha to make love to him whilst he was dressed in his Chelsea football shirt.  The story made the front page of The Sun newspaper.  In my book ‘Public Relations and the Social Web’ I described our conversation when Clifford told me that the story was invention.

During lunch, I took the opportunity to ask Mr Clifford whether the story had in fact been true. He laughed and admitted it was a total fabrication. He added that he had tried the same tactic with the colourful left wing labour politician Derek Hatton, five years earlier. That time the story was “leaked” to the press entirely with the politician’s consent as a way of getting publicity in order to raise his profile in advance of a hoped for TV career . The other principal difference was that Derek Hatton was a Liverpool fan. The story didn’t make the front page but according to Clifford it did appear in The Sun. After lunch and after Clifford had given a short address, questions were thrown open to the floor and a guest asked the same question that I had. Bizzarely Clifford responded by saying that he didn’t know if the story was true “but who would you believe” he asked, spinning for Britain, “David Mellor or Antonia?”  

Yesterday I spoke at the Freshtival event in The Lowry Theatre at MediaCity UK just a stones throw from where I work.    I talked about PR in the last ten years and gave some predictions about PR in the next ten years.  I also made the argument that in 2013 Digital PR is Dead, which also happens to be my opening chapter in the newly published Share This Too.  Here are the slides from the presentation.

If you want to see into the near future you are unlikely to have a better chance than at the Insight Thirteen one-day seminar in Manchester this Friday (25th January).  It”s a day of looking forward to the likely developments in PR, Digital, Design, Search Marketing, Advertising, Corporate Communications and Social Media.

The Insight seminars are the real deal.  The organisers ‘Don’t Panic’ did their first conference on PR and social media in 2006 – that’s the same year Twitter first appeared – so they know about the future.  I was flattered too be asked to Insight Twelve last year.   It was  a stimulating experience, amongst the many insights were predictions on the online threat to personal privacy, the rise of non-broadcast video and domestic 3D printing.

The line-up this year is as good as ever: Stephen Waddington, European digital and social media director at Ketchum, Nicky Unsworth, MD of  the the UK’s most awarded ad agency outside London, BJL and Dawn Holmes, Head of Business Intelligence, Brother UK will all be speaking.    The Insight events are unusual in that they are difficult to categorise but I can sum up my perspective in three words. You should go.

You discover some extraordinary things at conferences and the CIPR Social Media Conference at Microsoft’s UK HQ was no exception. Big Ben is a major influencer on the subject of drugs, apparently. Hat tip of course to Richard Bagnall.