It's been a pretty busy week at mission control and all outlying regional offices ;-).
We've been working on the West Midlands ICT Cluster newsletter, generating interest in the new Yuuguu for Skype integration, promoting Rapide Communication's enhanced text booking confirmation service and working on telling more of our contacts about Magic Software's application platform.
Being 7 miles out of the centre of Birmingham and running a small but thriving PR agency with clients ranging from listed companies to small start ups, I believe that the work we produce and the work of the many PR agencies in Birmingham, Coventry, Solihull and Wolverhampton is just as good and sometimes dare I say better than London based agencies. We've turned out some great work for companies from the US, Manchester, London, Bracknell, Germany and Israel...and many other agencies here have national accounts where they gain great coverage and raise brand awareness without having to sit in London.
Last night saw the first of a three-part series from the Money Programme that looks at the revolution in newspapers, TV and book publishing called Media Revolution, Stop the Press. Info from BBC site: "Former national newspaper editor Janet Street-Porter investigates how papers are coping with falling circulation, advertising revenues and the growth of the internet, and asks if newspapers can survive in their current form.
This is probably a strange question for any PRs reading this, but sometimes we do get the request to have full access to the press lists that we create on behalf of our clients, especially at the end of a project or contract. By full I mean including contact details. Of course like other agencies we agree a tiered press list up front, with title of publication and name of journalist, but not with their numbers, emails, Twitter account and blog details.
Here's a roundup of our favourite Valentines Day stories. We believe that they've been dreamt up by PR agencies or companies.
The stories of doom and gloom abound: as we start 2009, we are seeing job cuts and businesses going out of business and a general economic slow down. Public relations services as with any marketing services can be the first to be trimmed, subjected to frozen budgets or cut completely. However, PR can benefit companies in a downturn by keeping their profile high, maintaining customer and investor trust, communicating positively with their audiences and keeping the company name in the headlines without the associated high cost of other marketing communications methods. Now is probably the perfect time to reassess any 2009 PR campaign.
Today I went along to the West Midlands IT Showcase at Millenium Point in Brum. Lots of dynamic companies and some interesting public sector initiatives were there to help Midlands SMEs make the most out of technology to improve their businesses. The following were worth a visit...and the event is still on till 7pm tonight, so not too late to attend.