May 2007

LITTLE BROTHER'S BIG KIDNEY

I was approached late yesterday afternoon by a contestant on this year’s Big Brother – civilians that is, not celebrities. I cannot even remember which series this is; it has been going for so long. After all the race row shenanigans, I hope the new series has a change of zest; its reputation is finely balanced and it certainly requires a new dimension. I am confident that C4 will have pressurized Endemol into culturally tuning it’s offering to ignite the Great British unwashed. How much more can be written about BB? Surely the new depths of programming depravity are more engaging. I am more interested in Endemol’s Dutch game show that gives away a kidney at the end of it! That’s what I want to see. More upsetting, more soul destroying, more valid, more political and much more cultural to have such a show, than wheel out Big Brother fully equipped with its half witted Little Brother as well.

With headlines like “Fury Over Kidney Give Away”, we really can’t go wrong. It’s looking good for the The Big Donor Show, which features a terminally ill woman who must choose a recipient for her kidneys. It has already caused outrage among health campaigners and politicians but Endemol refute claims that reality TV has hit an all time low, by insisting that it’s meant to highlight just how difficult it is to get a transplant. On the show, apparently three contestants vie to get the kidney, making their chances of a transplant 33.3 % rather than the 1% or 2% under normal waiting list chances. There are good points and bad and yes, you could say people’s lives are being made a lottery out of, and to watch this on prime TV is unacceptable, but, go on, be honest, you think it’s genius.

GOLDEN CEO TICKETS

In today’s competitive society, where anyone can get their fifteen minutes of fame, everyone has their price. Large bags of cash to buy opinion are likely to turn “gamekeepers into poachers” as we see today in the case of Alan Milburn. Of course PepsiCo UK would want to get Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, to sit on its newly created nutritional advisory committee. As Milburn has previously called for tough Government action against Junk Food marketing, PepsiCo may feel it’s a score to get him on board. But isn’t this just a junk food company using Milburn as a great marketing tool? Milburn will get a tidy sum (£25,000) to attend four meetings a year. The mutual benefits are obvious but seemingly a lot of people have fallen for this PR gimmick, just like they did with the tobacco giant BAT and former health minister Ken Clarke and Walt Disney and ex culture secretary Chris Smith. I hesitate to be cynical but the golden CEO ticket is what so many people strive for.

THE CUTE FACTOR

We continue to see the heroic efforts made by the McCann’s to keep up Maddie’s public profile, so their daughter’s disappearance doesn’t fade into obscurity. Undoubtedly, the “cute” factor helps to perpetuate her media presence and without it, I fear she wouldn’t have so much attention. Maddie is cute and very photogenic which always helps in media situations, and particularly in that of Victoria Hart, the 18 year old who was plucked from obscurity last week and on the verge of signing a 1.5 million recording contract.

Victoria was on a £7 an hour wage as a waitress in a cocktail bar when she was spotted singing one evening and was then invited to sing at a party at the Cannes Film Festival amongst stars including George Clooney. The pictures in the papers show a 1940’s inspired, bleach blonde cute young girl, Hart who, quite frankly, would not be splashed across the significant media had she not looked the part. Many managers see an opportunity with a pretty girl because today, if you have a great picture, it really is worth three thousand words and success in generating column inches is often due to the photogenic quality of the subject. Brands often don’t put enough money into the “image” of their product, which is misguided these days. Certainly I think this is something Gordon Brown should address, not in the sense of a photo opportunity, but more on the lines of “image couture”.

STILL STREETS AHEAD AFTER HALF A CENTURY

by FERGUS SHEPHERD
IT WAS launched at the end of 1960, and one reviewer dismissed it for "its dreary signature tune and grim scenes of a row of terraced houses and smoking chimneys".

But Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, which gave the world Ena Sharples, the Rover's Return and Ken Barlow, has again demonstrated its astonishing capacity for reinvention - achieving a near clean-sweep at the British Soap Awards, picking up seven gongs to just one for its ailing arch-rival, EastEnders.
http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=826592007

The awards for Corrie represent the TV industry's acknowledgement of compelling storylines from its Manchester-based writing team, which has delivered enormous audiences. The most dramatic example was the climax of Tracy Barlow's murder trial last month, which peaked at 13.1 million viewers.

The plot development of Barlow's relationship with bad boy Charlie Stubbs has helped to keep Coronation Street's average audience at around 10.5 million this year, making the Granada production one of ITV's solid ratings bankers.

Graham Lovelace, a media analyst, said: "The writing teams are able to constantly reconnect with a younger generation. It's maintained that mix of serious drama when needed plus a bit of light relief ... it provides a talking point at work the next day."

EastEnders - which picked up only the award of best dramatic performance - has suffered from poor ratings, despite spending an extra £1 million on a storyline involving Phil Mitchell.

Last Thursday, it drew just 4.2 million viewers, losing out heavily to a bumper edition of ITV's Emmerdale. The London soap that created Dirty Den has come under criticism for being unrelentingly depressing without the spark of its early days.

However, Mark Borkowski, a marketing expert, last night said that the arrival of EastEnders in 1985 had proved a wake-up call to other soaps. "EastEnders gave Coronation Street permission to change. It brought in gay characters and was much more multi-racial as a soap format," he said.

However, Mr Borkowski said the longevity of Coronation Street was based on a classic formula: "Its history is based on fantastic acting and wonderful scriptwriting. It is promoted well, has great storylines and has quite a hold on the nation's psyche."

While sometimes derided by its critics as being a stereotypical picture of northern life, in recent years Coronation Street has touched on more topical issues.

It has developed plots around characters such as Dev Alahan (played by Jimmi Harkishin), and in January last year it was even referred to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom when an Asian character, Sunita Parekh, said she refused to live like "poor white trash".

It has also introduced gay characters in the form of camp knicker factory worker Sean Tully, played by Antony Cotton. Cotton was in tears as he picked up his award for best actor on Saturday.

"I absolutely love Coronation Street, so for me to get this is a real treat," he said.

Coronation Street is not only a guaranteed ratings puller - ITV has on occasion moved it around the schedule to prop up underperforming shows such as Celebrity Love Island. It is also a cash-cow for peak-time advertising rates and sponsorship.

For the past decade, Cadbury has sponsored the show in a deal reportedly worth £10 million a year. While the chocolate-maker is ending its sponsorship later this year, the race to replace it will be hotly contested.

Names including the supermarket chain Asda and Premier Foods, the owner of brands such as Branston pickle and Angel Delight desserts, are said to be among the front-runners.

Despite its strongly British feel, Corrie is also making inroads into the lucrative world of overseas programme sales. Foreign buyers include Belgian television - where it broadcasts with Flemish subtitles - and the Middle Eastern network Showtime.

THE MADDY MCCANN MEDIA CAMPAIGN

There is still no news of the missing toddler Maddy McCann. Here is an extract from BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast. I comment on the success of the campaign to date and the pressures that it will face over the coming weeks, as the media loose interest.

Click here to listen to podcast

WHEN STUNTS GO BAD

The Warehouse, New Zealand’s largest general merchandise retailer, says it deeply regrets a 25th birthday publicity stunt which has turned into an environmental nightmare.

It celebrated its birthday earlier this month by releasing 13,000 red balloons.

But two weeks later, hundreds of the shrivelled remnants washed up on Great Barrier Island, causing fears for the island's marine life.

General manager Phil Jamieson says The Warehouse is working with the Department of Conservation to reduce the environmental damage.

http://www.tv3.co.nz/News/tabid/184/ArticleID/26781/Default.aspx

A PHARMACEUTICAL HIGH

There is another row over the pharmaceutical industry and EU reforms, in today’s Guardian. With drug companies being faced with declining sales, they seem to be making headway with their plans to enlist the patients themselves, their greatest allies, in the struggle to make more money.

After drug companies were given permission to advertise their prescription medicines on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers in the U.S., their sales soared. Now they want to be able to do the same in the UK and are strongly challenging the current ban on direct consumer advertising in the EU.

In 2002, an attempt was made to persuade the European Parliament to allow drug companies to launch “disease awareness campaigns” which were basically vehicles to instil fear in the public, make them think they were sick when they actually weren’t in the hope it would lead to an increase in demand for new and different drugs from doctors. In the same year Merck Sharp and Dohme paid for a 30 pages supplement distributed with the New Statesman, which included full page adverts in favour of changing advertising rules. One was signed by 15 European patient groups coordinated by Rodney Elgie, president of the mental health organisation, GAMIAN Elgie rejected obvious criticism that patients’ groups would be biased in favour of the drug companies as they accept vast percentages of their working costs from those drug companies.

A new survey has been compiled by Consumers International claiming “a shocking lack of publicly available information about the 60 billion dollars spent annually by the industry on drug promotion”. The drug companies refuse to call it advertising, merely the giving of information. Surely that shouldn’t cost 60 billion dollars a year! The report examines the real marketing practises of 20 of the world’s biggest drug companies. It alleges that the drugs companies are promoting their products through patient groups, students and internet chatrooms to bypass the ban on advertising to the public. Having obligations to shareholders, pharmaceutical manufacturers have to promote their own drugs rather than other preventative or treatment options. As a result, they are utterly incapable of providing accurate information about the safety and efficacy of their drugs.

They offer information about modern lifestyle illnesses to encourage people to ask their doctors for medicines. Many companies have been implicated in anti competitive strategies and regularly offer incentives to doctors to prescribe and promote certain drugs. Companies are targeting patient groups more and more as a means to get their products to the public. This “nice and friendly” marketing is often disguised as corporate social responsibility manipulating the consumer into developing a certain trust in these companies.

The drug companies are already spending vast amounts of money on somewhat underhand publicity for their products, so the European Commission’s recent decision to look at the ruling on advertising again, will mean the drugs industry could probably have free rein to “give information” or whatever other euphemism they can come up with to make even more billions by making us all sicker before making us better again.

MARS APOLOGIES TO VEGGIES

Mars apologies to Veggies Mark discusses the PR issue on BBC Radio 5 Worricker on Sunday. Broadcast on Five Live - Sun 20 May - 10:00

Click here to hear the podcast

A PHARMACEUTICAL HIGH

There is another row over the pharmaceutical industry and EU reforms, in today’s Guardian. With drug companies being faced with declining sales, they seem to be making headway with their plans to enlist the patients themselves, their greatest allies, in the struggle to make more money. After drug companies were given permission to advertise their prescription medicines on TV, radio, magazines and newspapers in the U.S., their sales soared. Now they want to be able to do the same in the UK and are strongly challenging the current ban on direct consumer advertising in the EU. In 2002, an attempt was made to persuade the European Parliament to allow drug companies to launch “disease awareness campaigns” which were basically vehicles to instil fear in the public, make them think they were sick when they actually weren’t in the hope it would lead to an increase in demand for new and different drugs from doctors. In the same year Merck Sharp and Dohme paid for a 30 pages supplement distributed with the New Statesman, which included full page adverts in favour of changing advertising rules. One was signed by 15 European patient groups coordinated by Rodney Elgie, president of the mental health organisation, GAMIAN. Elgie rejected obvious criticism that patients’ groups would be biased in favour of the drug companies as they accept vast percentages of their working costs from those drug companies.

A new survey has been compiled by Consumers International claiming “a shocking lack of publicly available information about the 60 billion dollars spent annually by the industry on drug promotion”. The drug companies refuse to call it advertising, merely the giving of information. Surely that shouldn’t cost 60 billion dollars a year! The report examines the real marketing practises of 20 of the world’s biggest drug companies. It alleges that the drugs companies are promoting their products through patient groups, students and internet chatrooms to bypass the ban on advertising to the public. Having obligations to shareholders, pharmaceutical manufacturers have to promote their own drugs rather than other preventative or treatment options. As a result, they are utterly incapable of providing accurate information about the safety and efficacy of their drugs. They offer information about modern lifestyle illnesses to encourage people to ask their doctors for medicines. Many companies have been implicated in anti competitive strategies and regularly offer incentives to doctors to prescribe and promote certain drugs. Companies are targeting patient groups more and more as a means to get their products to the public. This “nice and friendly” marketing is often disguised as corporate social responsibility manipulating the consumer into developing a certain trust in these companies. The drug companies are already spending vast amounts of money on somewhat underhand publicity for their products, so the European Commission’s recent decision to look at the ruling on advertising again, will mean the drugs industry could probably have free rein to “give information” or whatever other euphemism they can come up with to make even more billions by making us all sicker before making us better again.

MARK BORKOWSKI ON BREAKFAST TV 18 MAY 07

Mark Borkowski talks about the campaign to raise awareness for Madeline McCann

Click here

WHAT'S A PRINCE TO DO?

When a stunt works it goes global, even the Russian media are talking
about the chocolate billboard. Weeks after the stunt..

View enlarged image

JODIE MARSH V UNA WHITE

This link arrived in my inbox today. I was astonished at the stupidity of this naïve PR stunt.
"Celebrity Jodie Marsh is looking for a husband - and if you think you're up to the job, you can apply online. Marsh, who in her own words is "very demanding", is planning to hold auditions to find her perfect man. However, if you cannot make it along, you can fill out an application and submit a photograph online. If she is interested, she promises to let you know. The former page three girl is keen to emphasise that she genuinely wants to settle down, and this isn't just a publicity stunt. "I'm desperate," said Jodie on the website "to settle down with the man of my dreams." However, Web User has learned that the audition process is to be part of a television programme that will appear on MTV. "
Of course, it is a shameless and desperate stunt. It will not be long before MTV and its hapless PR outfit are going to discover that nobody cares about this double ZZ list cretin.
I was in Birmingham last night for the Fierce Festival's Name in Lights opening. The opening shot of the festival is most explicit about making the audience the star. The winner was Una White, an extraordinary Mother and Grandmother, nominated by her daughter. I was on the judging panel with Mark Lawson, Trevor Beattie and Jonathon Shallit. Her name went up in lights, illuminated in 12ft letters above Birmingham Public Library. The artwork is a broadside at our absorption in celebrity. Joshua Sofaer, the artist who devised the work said, "It asks who we want our role models to be."

Give me a thousand Una White's who have contributed to the community rather than a thousand desperate parasites like Marsh who sustain a feckless lifestyle in pursuit of narcissistic glory.

GREAT PR DISASTERS

I recently came across what can only be described as one of the greatest PR disasters of our age. It happened in the U.S. on May Day in 2003 when George W Bush gave a speech aboard the USS Lincoln declaring that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended”. He stood in front of a banner with the slogan “Mission Accomplished”. Bush landed in a fighter jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier. The events of that day were praised at the time, but have come to be regarded as a very embarrassing publicity stunt and premature declaration of victory when, as we know now, the war had only just begun. But on November 6, 2006 a blogger posted a video clip on You Tube entitled “white house caught doctoring Mission Accomplished video” The video takes the viewer on a journey through the process of discovering how the White House has rewritten history, or at least tried to! Even the White House photo gallery for May 1st 2003 no longer includes the “Mission Accomplished” in the banner. This isn’t Soviet Russia and we are not in the habit of airbrushing out pictures of deceased generals from the halls of the Kremlin simply because they’re out of favour now. In this digital age, it’s harder to rub out the memory of someone or something. The Mission Accomplished picture just goes to show that we certainly can’t try to web scrub as that makes it worse. It was a premature and rushed publicity stunt that made the White House and George W look extremely foolish, but by trying to doctor the historical evidence, it made the story much bigger. The internet keeps memory alive, it doesn’t delete it.

BROWN TO PLAY TO HIS STRENGTHS

London - British finance minister Gordon Brown will portray himself as a sober, intellectually rigourous politician of substance in his campaign to succeed Prime Minister Tony Blair, analysts said.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2112575,00.html

Blair announced on Thursday that he would resign on June 27, and over the next seven weeks Labour will be carrying out an election to select his successor as leader of the party, and prime minister.

Though Brown may well be the only candidate who runs for Blair's post, his campaign will help the British public learn more about a man who, despite spending a decade as chancellor of the exchequer, remains a relative mystery.

The 56-year-old is seen by the public as dour, uncharismatic and a nail-biting political obsessive compared with Blair, who is considered by many to be the greatest British political communicator in a generation.

But some analysts believe that because his personality may never be his strong suit, Brown will play up his reputation as a conviction politician with more experience than the comparatively fresh-faced leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, 40-year-old David Cameron.

Voter-friendly

Patrick Dunleavy, a politics professor at the London School of Economics, told AFP that Brown is never going to compare with Blair for voter-friendly charm.

"His strong points are always going to be, he's a highly intelligent person, he works around problems non-stop, he doesn't give up," he added.

Brown has always been bright -- he started university in Edinburgh aged just 16, and after gaining a first-class honours degree in History, he went on to receive a doctorate.

Though he has been trailing Cameron in most polls in recent weeks, a recent survey commissioned by the BBC also showed that voters regard Brown as tough (59%) and principled (54%).

But he still has work to do, despite attempts to give him a softer, more publicly appealing image.

A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times this weekend suggested if Brown takes over, support for Labour would slip to 32% - 10 points behind Cameron's Tories.

Brown remains a fiercely intellectual politician, one with strong loyalties to the Labour party, which he first canvassed for when he was 12, and officially joined as a member at 18.

Labour links

His strong link with the Labour government, and party which he helped reform in the 1990s, may be something he will have to distance himself from, according to one political consultant who has worked with Labour on national election campaigns.

Because of the government's declining popularity, after the country joined the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the so-called "cash-for-honours" police investigation, Brown will have play a balancing act, countering his experience with a desire to appear fresh and new.

"On the one hand, he needs to play up his experience, but at the same time he has to represent himself as the candidate for change," said the consultant, who did not want to be named because of professional sensitivities.

"What the Conservatives (the main opposition party) will be trying to do is illustrate the fact that Brown has been part of the same administration" as Blair, the consultant said.

If Brown does decide to try and reinvent himself as a more personable and charismatic politician, however, he should do so carefully, warned Mark Borkowski, who founded Borkowski PR, a public relations firm that counts various celebrities among its clients.

"True image change is about stealth... The powerful image changes are those that aren't spotted," Borkowski told AFP.

"The British public, and also the global public, are not fooled. It's now whether or not this image change has substance, and has integrity, because that will come through."

Whatever Brown decides to do to enhance his appeal to voters, one thing is certain -- he should be well placed for advice: his wife, Sarah, was a public relations executive and remains a consultant for a major London PR firm.

"I suspect he's getting some top-quality advice that people who are floating a company on the stock exchange or trying a massive merger have been given, and that's good advice," Borkowski said.

THE TRIVIA TRAIL

One of the perils of being a publicist, for me at least, is having to go through the papers thoroughly every single day. I’ve been doing it for years and years, but instead of it getting easier, it’s fast becoming a chore. The reason for this is the sheer amount of trivia that clogs the arteries of the news. I really don’t care whether Trudy Styler and Sting lost their industrial tribunal against their cook, nor do I care about Callum Best and Lindsay Lohan frolicking like rabbits.Whether Gordon Brown wears a tie or not when he gives a speech simply bores me rigid, and Paris Hilton’s inevitable prison sentence is drivel. I don’t care about sacred cows and whether they have TB or not, nor do feel the least bit of anticipation about who will be kicked out of The Apprentice. Whether it’s Kiera Knightly deciding to cover herself up or Harry and William wearing bowler hats, I simply don’t give a damn. But what’s worrying is that an awful lot of people do. So what does that say about me?

BORKOWSKI ON BROWN

If Brown does decide to try and reinvent himself as a more personable and charismatic politician, however, he should do so carefully, warned Mark Borkowski, who founded Borkowski PR, a public relations firm that counts various celebrities among its clients.

"True image change is about stealth... The powerful image changes are those that aren't spotted," Borkowski told AFP.

"The British public, and also the global public, are not fooled. It's now whether or not this image change has substance, and has integrity, because that will come through."

Whatever Brown decides to do to enhance his appeal to voters, one thing is certain -- he should be well placed for advice: his wife, Sarah, was a public relations executive and remains a consultant for a major London PR firm.

"I suspect he's getting some top-quality advice that people who are floating a company on the stock exchange or trying a massive merger have been given, and that's good advice," Borkowski said.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_2112575,00.html

Brown waiting in the wings

Brown launches PM campaign

Blair formally endorses Brown

London - British finance minister Gordon Brown will portray himself as a sober, intellectually rigourous politician of substance in his campaign to succeed Prime Minister Tony Blair, analysts said.

Blair announced on Thursday that he would resign on June 27, and over the next seven weeks Labour will be carrying out an election to select his successor as leader of the party, and prime minister.

Though Brown may well be the only candidate who runs for Blair's post, his campaign will help the British public learn more about a man who, despite spending a decade as chancellor of the exchequer, remains a relative mystery.

The 56-year-old is seen by the public as dour, uncharismatic and a nail-biting political obsessive compared with Blair, who is considered by many to be the greatest British political communicator in a generation.

But some analysts believe that because his personality may never be his strong suit, Brown will play up his reputation as a conviction politician with more experience than the comparatively fresh-faced leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, 40-year-old David Cameron.

Voter-friendly

Patrick Dunleavy, a politics professor at the London School of Economics, told AFP that Brown is never going to compare with Blair for voter-friendly charm.

"His strong points are always going to be, he's a highly intelligent person, he works around problems non-stop, he doesn't give up," he added.

Brown has always been bright -- he started university in Edinburgh aged just 16, and after gaining a first-class honours degree in History, he went on to receive a doctorate.

Though he has been trailing Cameron in most polls in recent weeks, a recent survey commissioned by the BBC also showed that voters regard Brown as tough (59%) and principled (54%).

But he still has work to do, despite attempts to give him a softer, more publicly appealing image.

A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times this weekend suggested if Brown takes over, support for Labour would slip to 32% - 10 points behind Cameron's Tories.

Brown remains a fiercely intellectual politician, one with strong loyalties to the Labour party, which he first canvassed for when he was 12, and officially joined as a member at 18.

Labour links

His strong link with the Labour government, and party which he helped reform in the 1990s, may be something he will have to distance himself from, according to one political consultant who has worked with Labour on national election campaigns.

Because of the government's declining popularity, after the country joined the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the so-called "cash-for-honours" police investigation, Brown will have play a balancing act, countering his experience with a desire to appear fresh and new.

"On the one hand, he needs to play up his experience, but at the same time he has to represent himself as the candidate for change," said the consultant, who did not want to be named because of professional sensitivities.

"What the Conservatives (the main opposition party) will be trying to do is illustrate the fact that Brown has been part of the same administration" as Blair, the consultant said.

If Brown does decide to try and reinvent himself as a more personable and charismatic politician, however, he should do so carefully, warned Mark Borkowski, who founded Borkowski PR, a public relations firm that counts various celebrities among its clients.

"True image change is about stealth... The powerful image changes are those that aren't spotted," Borkowski told AFP.

"The British public, and also the global public, are not fooled. It's now whether or not this image change has substance, and has integrity, because that will come through."

Whatever Brown decides to do to enhance his appeal to voters, one thing is certain -- he should be well placed for advice: his wife, Sarah, was a public relations executive and remains a consultant for a major London PR firm.

"I suspect he's getting some top-quality advice that people who are floating a company on the stock exchange or trying a massive merger have been given, and that's good advice," Borkowski said.

LORD OF THE FLIES 2

An interesting treatment for a new reality show was emailed into our office today. I urge you to read the treatment. Can it be real

THE SHOW:
“The most nail biting, adrenaline soaked game show on earth”

Ten kids aged between 11 and 14 are marooned on an exotic island thousands of miles from school, friends and parents. They compete to be the first to conquer the island and learn how to escape from it.

The island is a fantastic place to be stranded for the short term. It’s a paradise for kids. There are no silly rules, no fussy adults and a shipload of games, challenges and treats to indulge in.

But the Island is also a mischievous force and plays with the ten adventurers, pitting them against each other; twisting and turning; manipulating the relationships within the team and daring them to overcome the various exhilarating challenges and dare devil stunts it has created to test them.

The challenges and stunts the kids must tackle are like nothing the audience will have seen on children’s TV before. These are peak time adult games – they have not been simplified, softened or ‘kidified’. The games have been devised by experts from the world of ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here’ / ‘Mission Implausible’ / ‘Fear Factor’ / ‘Dog eat Dog’ and ‘Big Brother’.

This is not a reality show. It is not about deprivation or hardship. It’s a game show and it’s all about entertainment. This show is fun – to be on and to watch.

There will be 3 shows a day for 3 weeks in the 2007 autumn schedule on the following channels:

BBC1 - Every weekday 1700PM (tbc – the Blue Peter slot)
BBC2 - Every morning @ 0730AM (tbc)
CBBC - Every day 1730 + 2 shows on Saturday’s (tbc)

Escape from Adventure Island (working title) is being targeted at 7 – 14 years old and obviously loads of parents will watch, especially the pre school show on BBC2.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR…
We are currently looking for prizes to give away on the series. These can be anything from DVD’s, Games Consoles, Cameras, Skateboards, Extreme sports gear, Bikes, CD’s, Concert and Theatre tickets, Exclusive backstage pass tickets, money can’t buy prizes, Cinema passes, toys, MP3 players, speakers etc etc. Most of these would be needed in multiples of 10 so we can split them over a number of the shows. It is also our intention to display the donations either on camera by handing the prize to the winning
contestant(s) or have the prize dropped into the relevant show(s) using a pack shot.

For more information please email Jasen Grindrod on jasen.grindrod@gmail.com

I thought it was a spoof until I realised that this is an attempt to make lord of The Flies come alive for the 21st century. I feel the lumbering outrage about to loom into view.

THE OUTRAGE FACTOR

I noticed in today’s Guardian, Owen Gibson’s article about how adverts these days are attracting a record number of complaints. The advertising industry watchdog’s annual report is published today, and it lists stylised violence, same sex kisses and religious offence as some of the top ten most complained about adverts for last year. An advert placed by the Gay Police Association depicted a Bible and supposedly intended to highlight that a rise in homophobic crime was due to religious motivation. This was the most controversial advert attracting 553 complaints. The list is endless.

In my opinion this is really no surprise these days. It’s the “outrage” factor which makes a commercial, according to advertisers. It amplifies the advertisement just to get publicity. The advertising planners all too often seem to believe that they actually understand PR. Shame.

CRIME AND THE MEDIA

This morning we heard that the mother of Madeleine McCann, the missing girl who was snatched from her parents’ holiday home in Portugal last Thursday, has made a desperate appeal to whoever is responsible not to hurt her daughter.  The British public take it for granted that the Police use the media, but what they don't understand is that it's a necessary relationship between the two that could generate a conclusion to an investigation. In cases such as Madeleine McCann’s, our legal system can oxygenate publicity enabling the public to know what’s going on step by step and hopefully turn up a lead.  But in Portugal, their legal system does not allow for this relationship between media and police and therefore there has been a lot of speculation and misunderstanding of events leading up to the suspected kidnap.  It’s appalling for the tabloid media in the UK, as they can’t get any real information on this case, and in truth, the media does play an important part in keeping the hunt for killers, kidnappers and criminals alive, especially with programmes like Crimewatch which is dedicated to this alone.  In some cases, of course, those relationships between the police and the media are abused, and perhaps this is why in other countries that kind of relationship is illegal.  Whatever happens, the parents’ tearful pleas to the public today through the media makes it feel a lot more raw and intense and it plays on everyone’s fears about those individuals who prey on children.   Never under estimate the steatlhfull activities of the various PR folk littered around the constabularies in the UK.

SCANDAL

The papers are really feasting on the disgrace of Lord Browne for lying to the High Court about where he met Jeff Chevalier. The real disgrace, in the eyes of the homophobic media, was not the perjury, but the fact that Browne had delved into ‘seedy’ gay websites and hitched up with an entrepreneurial rent boy. But is it unusual for prominent, highly successful people to try to find love? Some papers have drawn parallels between Browne and Lord Profumo who spent years on the charity penance for his misdemeanours. But that was the 1960’s, nearly fifty years ago. Let’s not write Browne off just for this. Five million a year is difficult to replace and perhaps Browne should give some thought to his new found celebrity status. Of course he will have to atone somehow, but afterwards, a whole new world could open up for him and we may even see him on the next run of Reality TV shows in the not too distant future. And as for Jeff Chevalier, his entrepreneurialism will certainly make him a player in tabloid land to come.

THE GOAT AND THE VAGINA

Publicity stunts that cause indignation stretch back for hundreds of years, but this week media indignation continued to heap on Sony Play Station, in fact it has soared to Number one for a stunt to outrage all outrages. A row has been ignited over animal cruelty and the ethics of the computer industry by Sony’s use of a freshly slaughtered goat to promote a violent video game.

The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console. I am not sure if Sony sanctioned this stunt, it did have the dabs of a renegade software partner.

On the one hand Sony seems to be trying to get the Daily Mail reading middle Englanders to jump up and think, wow, aren’t Sony on the edge, but on the other, isn’t Sony being a little naïve in thinking that consumers and the public alike haven’t moved on from what can only be described as a Spinal Tapesque stunt? A geeky gamey pal emailed me the following overview “the Play Station brand isn’t in a position to just be making people like me think, aren’t they edgy. They need to position themselves as an inclusive, family/social brand and this stunt fails big time. Whoever thought this up isn’t thinking post-Wii and has no regard for where Play Station should be heading”. Another less connected soul loved the old skool shock and awe, particularly the act of snookering the bible of white middle-class shires. There is so much debate still raging, so keep them peeled.

The artist Duro Tomaato has constructed an interactive art piece in the form of a 19ft vagina. Viewers are invited to put their head into the vagina to stimulate the noises of cunnilingus. It is not surprising that in some circles, this has caused consternation and is under threat of being censored. Artists are trying to so hard to be “cutting edge”, but there is a certain repetition in the way they go about it. On both occasions, no matter how old the idea, these stunts will generate column inches, but what effect do they really have? What seems a good idea at the time could prove damaging to a brand or an artist in the future?