The Du Fail

Image by Fenchurch! via Flickr

A wee while ago I posted a grumpy response to the campaign being run by the UAE’s second favourite telco, Du, which targeted ‘smart people’ using social media tools, including Twitter and Facebook.

As I said at the time, and yes I do know that quoting myself is dangerously close to bloganism, “The first problem with this whole thing is that you need to be UPFRONT if you're a company using Twitter and other social media. There's no point in being coy - and you're just going to annoy people if you hide your identity and purpose.”

There was quite a lot of negative comment generally about the campaign, particularly on Twitter.

The campaign didn’t actually last very long. In fact, it looked like this:

Smartpeople follower stats

31 March - FB 46 members (13 admins), Twitter 81 followers (following 192)

6 April FB 116 members (13 admins), Twitter 127 followers (following 226)

13 April FB 184 (15 admins), Twitter 138 (226)

14 May - Twitter 152 Facebook 250

18 May - Twitter 152 Facebook 252

Last Tweet from @smartpeople was 19 April

Last post on Facebook page by 'Albert Edison' was 12 April


One can only assume that at some stage, someone smart pulled the plug. But then if there were actually smart people at Du, you’d have thought they wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

You’d be wrong.

Du’s new campaign, Be Heard, is similar to the last effort in that its ‘social media’ platforms are being heavily supported by traditional advertising spend. The drive to get you along to the beheard.ae website included emailers as well as muppies (the street advertising thingies).

When you get to beheard.ae you get asked to answer a load of questions of the ‘empowering’ nature: you know, ‘Do you want better value?’ ‘Do you want to save your time?’ ‘Do you want fries with that?’

The website is basically a ‘bait and switch’ advertising-led concept, getting you to visit a website ostensibly to ‘be heard’ when the objective is actually to position Du as cool and ‘with the kids’, to collect email addies and ‘profiles’ of people.

The site tells you how many people voted yes or no to each of the questions. With an attempt to build a Twitter following and an add to Facebook button, the whole thing could be termed an attempt at building ‘social media’ in that it fakes the egalitarianism of asking people’s opinions and letting them share the feedback.

You get the option of adding your own question for people to answer. Someone I know added ‘Don’t you think this whole dumb campaign is a waste of time?’ but I haven’t seen that one displayed on the site yet. So much for the democratisation of being heard.

The feeling of mildly frustrated emptiness that is the end result of going through this process is a little like going out for evening drinks with friends except you have to mime drinking instead of having real drinks and you have to bray like donkeys instead of actually talking.

There’s an ‘about’ button on the site. Once again, as with the failed Smartpeople campaign, that button doesn’t actually say that the campaign’s being run by Du.

The conversation about this campaign on Twitter has either been breathless endorsement (by the people behind it) or irritated commentary. Few managed to voice their irritation as well as advertising website AdNation:

“This one actually manages to be worse than Smart People – at least that had some kind of gimmick. Beheard.ae seems to just be a rather fatuous series of questions, which offer no real insight into anything.”

So again, we have an anonymous site that pretends to be social media and simply isn’t – it’s a company behaving dishonestly and completely misreading the sentiment of the target audience it’s addressing. It’s a company trying to use ‘social media’ but from an old school advertising standpoint, informed by the belief that the job of an advertiser is to shout slogans at people and the role of the consumer is to be the helpless victim of the sloganeering.

The site asks a range of questions, but that’s as far as it goes. They’re not discussed, they’re not part of a serious feedback scheme or the basis for a conversation. I can’t wait for the press release which I am sure, with a crushing sense of inevitability, will be sent out with the ‘results of the survey’.

The result of all this money and effort is that consumers (particularly the Twittering ones) have been actively sniping at the campaign, mildly irritated by it or simply untouched by it.

I believe passionately that we should all make mistakes. Like some geezer said, ‘If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not innovating’. But repeating dumb mistakes, particularly when people actually explained the mistake and why it was a mistake, is a worry.

These two campaigns have arguably done more damage than good to the Du brand.

What's next? Will it be strike three?

Be honest with consumers.

Talk with people, not at them.

Stop shouting and start listening.

Get the message, Du?

(Thanks to CJ for obsessive monitoring & input)

My City. My Metro. My !!!

Your humble correspondent was somewhat disconcerted yesterday to pass a number of advertisements along Dubai's Sheikh Zayed Road, multiply proclaiming 'My City. My Metro.'.

I can only assume this is 'awareness building'. In fact, according to the RTA's own press release, chucklesomely headlined 'RTA Embarks on Massive Metro Marketing Camapaign:

"This marketing campaign runs for one year and comprises three phases to cover the project comprehensively. Phase I focuses on the project introduction in terms of launch timing, shape design and message selection i.e. (My Metro). Phase II is the basic stage comprising all information related to the metro operation, fare, public services, station services, multi-modal integration, and security & safety means. Phase III is the preparatory phase that sets the stage for the launch day on 09/09/2009; also incorporating a supplement to Phase II."

Now don't for a second think that I'm being snarky about this, but the World's Largest Rollercoaster(TM) runs all the way along the Sheikh Zayed Road, occluding much of one's view to the left of said road when travelling in a Southerly direction and the view to the right when travelling in a Northerly direction. *

For well over a year now, we've been watching those pillars supporting massive yellow machines that have been slotting the whole massive Lego kit together, we've seen the armadillo stations take shape and exclaimed with childish delight and wonder when we've all seen our first train moving. We've been talking about it, we've been living with it - including the diversions and traffic jams that have inevitably accompanied a project of such scale.

WE KNOW THERE'S A BLOODY METRO THERE!

Now that we've established that, can we all please save some of the money that's being wasted and get down to the job of actually communicating information of value to people so that we can all start to make our minds up about the most crucial question that is begged by this stunning piece of engineering: will any of us actually want to use it?

*Forgive me, but I have been Irish since my health test.

Technofear

“Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development.”
Julius Frontinus
Engineer
C1st A.D.

“That any general system on conveying passengers would go at a velocity exceeding ten miles an hour is extremely improbable”
Thomas Tredgold
Civil engineer & writer
1835

“This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.”
Western Union, internal memo
1876

"I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we hear of ... I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society."
Lord Kelvin
President, Royal Society
1895

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.”
Charles H. Duell
Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents
1899

“Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.”
Marechal Ferdinand Foch
Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre
1911

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
H. M. Warner, Founder, Warner Brothers
1927


“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
Thomas Watson
Chairman of IBM
1943

“With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.”
Business Week
1968

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
Ken Olson
Founder, Digital Equipment Corp.,
1977

“If our language, our programs, our creations are not strongly present in the new media, the young generation of our country will be economically and culturally marginalized.”
Jacques Chirac

UAE Health Test

Image via Wikipedia

I did my health test. It’s got to be my top ‘most dehumanising expat experience’, shuffling around trying to find out what to do next in the warm, fuggy semi-portakabin rooms of the laughingly named Satwa Health Clinic, clasping my piece of paperwork and my passport and waiting for the inevitable grunting electric-chair-arm-strap experience to be followed by a nasty little blue-purple spreading bruise.

When I first did a health test here, they actually tested my health. Now it’s just a blood test for HIV antigens. It even says so on the label of the sample bottle they give you to clutch as you hop from warm seat to warm seat in the great Waiting Caterpillar Game. Just before you do the clutch cotton wool to your inner elbow by giving the international ‘Wooargh, wouldn’t you like to give ‘er one, eh?’ thing.

The nice security chap at the health centre, responding to my confused “What do I do?” question as there’s, as usual, no signage, information or any other hint as to what is expected of one, sent me to the typing centre where for a mere 20Dhs a chap in a hat typed my application for me. Then I went back to the health centre and paid my 260Dhs for the test. You can pay more these days if you want a fast result, including a 1-hour 'VIP' service.

I was amazed at how analogue the whole process still was until, waiting for my name to be called out by a Bangladeshi robot tannoy announcer, I noticed a line on the form, “Thank you for using DOHMS online medical fitness request service”.

I checked online when I got back to the office and, sure enough, the cheeky sods in the typing centre had charged me 20Dhs for the pleasure of typing an online form for me!

It’s simple, peeps – you got to www.dohms.gov.ae and register for a ‘temporary health card number’ and then use that to fill out the health test form and print it out – you can also pay online for the service fees.

The site’s basic and could be more flexible (for instance, no option to edit your profile information once it’s entered) but it seems to work just fine. Why the staff at the health centre don’t tell you it’s online, I don’t know.

The actual, on the day experience is still awful, of course. But now you know. I paid 20Dhs so you won’t have to...

The Journalist and the Machine

Image by bunky's pickle via Flickr

Nigel is a journalist on a weekly magazine. He’s good at his job, which means filing two or three incisive and highly readable features a week plus a good handful of news stories. For these, he relies on a mixture of good contacts, a lot of Google alerts, the local papers and a quick scan of each days’ inbox full of press releases, most of which are dross but some of which can be followed up. On a bad week he might even use one or two with no follow-up, purely because time has a habit of running out now and then.

The features take up most of his time, often requiring a number of interviews and meetings for background as well as more for opinions and quotes. He’ll crack some of these features off quite quickly, others can be on the boil for a few weeks.

Bob is a busy executive with a major US security company and he’s visiting the Middle East to review the company’s 60-strong and growing operation. Security systems for corporates are a big and growing business in the region and Bob’s company has taken the region seriously enough to send him in: he’s global VP of a $3 billion company. The Middle East reports through London and the local GM and marketing manager have already had several conference calls with the slightly panicky communications team in London. They have never had Bob in the EMEA region before and they want to make sure nothing goes wrong. And the corporate team have already let London know that this is a big one for them. The team in Dubai, as a consequence, have really been feeling the heat about Bob’s visit.

Nigel takes a call from a local PR company offering an interview with a real hot-shot executive who’s visiting called Bob Bobbus. Apparently he’s a player in the security market and is here to talk about opening regional operations for a really big security company. Nigel agrees to take the interview with Bob as it sounds interesting. The PR guy is slightly more annoying than usual, asking him about his background and intended story angle.

The symptoms of big executive fear are always the same: it’s the fifth time this particular PR company has asked him for his background and, what’s more, Nigel does feel the request for his story angle in the same call as the interview’s being sold on is hardly reasonable. A subsequent call, three days before the interview is due to happen, confirms that Bob can only meet Nigel at 7pm in Jebel Ali. Nigel lives in Mirdif and won’t be home to see his young son until way past 9pm. Dinner will be in the dog. Again. Nigel considers canning the whole thing, but he’s got an issue to put to press and nothing else in the bag right now.

The PR company is asking about his story angle again: the exec actually asks him for a copy of his questions. Nigel is polite, but firm: that’s not happening.

The PR company hasn’t actually had any meaningful dialogue with Nigel before, let alone about Bob, his company or its market and so has no idea of what Nigel’s views, interests or approach are likely to be. This is now turning into a problem as London is insisting on full information about the journalist, the publication and a market briefing for Bob.

The Dubai office gives the PR company a hard time and they finally deliver the documents the day before Bob Bobbus flies in. They’re sketchy and London is concerned as a result: they insist that the Dubai GM and his marketing manager sit in on the interview.

The day of Bob’s visit dawns and everything goes pretty well: a customer event in the morning, a number of customer meetings following and a visit to a major site in the afternoon. The major site, a very sensitive customer, is a significant account to Bob’s company and the customer is really interested in some of the new things that the company is bringing out and so Bob and the group are delayed.

Nigel, who arrived a little early, waits at the hotel they’ve arranged to meet at – he’s joined by the PR guy, who arrived a little late. The PR guy tries to be friendly, but Nigel’s irritated and concerned about getting home now and just stares into his coffee.

Bob arrives 35 minutes late. He’s got his GM and marketing manager in tow and they all file into a meeting room together with the PR. Nigel waits outside, checking his skin for signs of leprosy.

After another ten minutes, Nigel is called in to the room for his audience with Bob. He’s sat at a boardroom table facing four people in suits. A normally relatively mild-mannered man, Nigel is really quite irritated by now, but is professional enough to put this to one side and get on with the interview. It quickly becomes obvious that Bob knows nothing about the Middle East and precious little about the world outside the continental USA. He is evasive regarding any financial information, future plans or disclosing details of any large deals or customers.

Nigel knows a little bit about Bob’s company and asks about the big customer that Bob visited that afternoon. Bob denies the meeting. Nigel’s wife works for the company and so he continues to probe regarding the relationship between Bob and his customer.

The local GM interrupts Nigel to tell him that it would probably be better to drop this line of questioning. Nigel points out that he’s perfectly entitled to pursue the line of questioning. The PR guy steps in and suggests a change of topic.

Nigel disagrees. He wants to know why Bob is lying about the customer site visit. The atmosphere is by now quite electric. And then Nigel asks about the Saudi bank that’s filing a case against Bob’s company in London. It’s common knowledge in the regional market and has even popped up on a couple of websites. However, it’s news to Bob and all hell quietly breaks loose. Bob handles the question badly, his GM steps in and makes it worse and the marketing manager jumps in, too, and refers to the Saudi incident as merely one of a number of issues that security companies have to deal with in a difficult region like the Middle East. Nigel, who is taping the interview, is told that this comment was off the record when he asks follow up questions.

Nigel’s wife calls to ask where he is. In the circumstances, he takes the call, leaving the room briefly. He returns and finishes the interview as quickly as possible. It hasn’t been an enjoyable experience.

The next day, Nigel has the tape transcribed. It contains Bob and his team complaining about Nigel as he was out of the room and also the whispered briefing that Bob was given by his team on the four lawsuits that had been filed by unhappy customers in the region, totalling millions of dollars.

Does he use the material in his subsequent feature?

(I'd completely forgotten about this feature wot I wrote for ArabianBusiness.com until Shufflegazine's Magnus commented on it, which lead to me re-reading it. Having done so, I thought I'd post it here, because I think, in hindsight, it's actually an interesting question!)

Sentiment on the The Arab Tweet

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I didn’t attend the ‘New Media’ session of The Arab Media Forum yesterday ( I served my time in the morning, alright?), but then I didn’t need to. Several people I respect were in the audience and were Tweeting highlights throughout the session. One of them was a colleague, one was another PR person I chat to and two were media people I know well.

I can wait for further analysis of the session, I can take my time. I got the high points, the headlines, as they happened – and from several different sources and viewpoints at that.

The people whose commentary on the proceedings was influencing hundreds, in fact going into the thousands, of people were not the ones on the stage talking at the Forum, they were in the audience. Between them, the Tweeters were talking to an audience of more people than the guys onstage with the microphones. Sure, the BBC will broadcast the session in a while – but we’ve already discussed it, deliberated it, shared it ‘on the record’ with the entire Internet and moved on.

And if that doesn’t give you pause for thought, I give up.

Incidentally, the Twitter users were likely the only people in the room full of hundreds of media people that knew, as they sat down to the session, that Roxanne Saberi had been released from the terrible, feared Evin prison in Tehran – that her father was actually on the way to pick her up at that very moment. The breaking news was flying around Twitter as the conference session started. Oh! And also the news that not only had the Pope called for a two-state solution in Palestine but that the Palestinian Authority press centre had been forced to shut down by the Israelis.

And it doesn’t take a newsroom of hundreds to do that. Or a ‘publishing house’. Or a ‘printing press’. Or an ‘editor in chief’.

Oddly, our little band of Twitterers probably represented the few people in the room that actually, genuinely cared about news like Roxanne Saberi and the PA media centre. Freedom is an Internet thing – the ‘old world’ is more reconciled to its lack.

So what did happen in the ‘new media’ session?

The 'traditional' media, debated their credibility and asked The Lone Blogger why he blogged ("Did you always want to be a journalist?"), comforting themselves with the fact that 'citizen journalism' wasn't as reliable as a 'real journalist'.

They, and Seymour Hersh, appear to have missed the point. The world is changing - it's not about bloggers wanting to be journalists. It's much, much bigger than that and it's time that many of our media woke up to the smell of coffee.

BTW, a Gulf News (600g) survey today, commissioned from IPSOS of some 2,000 people, showed that 76.2 of respondents strongly agreed with the statement 'The Internet helps me to keep up to date with the latest news'. GN's headline for the piece?

"Gulf News Stays Ahead of the Pack"

Which is fine, as long as your pack's not heading for the edge of a cliff...

The Arab Media Forum

Image by madmonk via Flickr

Today marked the start of the 8th Arab Media Forum. I'm quite fond of said forum, if only because it marked the start of this blog, back with this post which has always made me smile when I read it.

So I'm a simpleton. Get over it.

The keynote address at this year's gig was given by the Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. He said a number of interesting things and, thanks to the simultaneous translation, a couple of slightly strange ones. There was one passage about dark oceans and creatures feeding on each other that had me slightly bewildered, but we soon found the track again.

(Offtopic, Moussa said that he was impressed by the life and verve he found in Dubai after having read so many negative reports in international media. He got a laugh out of his host, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, which was nice to see to be honest.)

Moussa set the scene for the rest of the forum, making the point that the Arab World faced challenges in the evolution of its media, particularly with the transition taking place between online and print media, "The Arab World is still launching newspapers while elsewhere in the world, newspapers are failing" he said, talking about the movement of paper to electronic media.

Its funny that this thinking persists - that we're going to stop using paper and just move into being nicely regulateable and licensable entities, identifieable online media houses. It denies the very real atomisation that is taking place as a result of the boom in consumer generated media and content. The concept of media ownership is being redefined.

Just before Moussa came onstage, a panel session had taken place with, among distinguished others, Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Editor in Chief of Gulf News (540g), who pointed out that venerable, 150-year-old institutions like the great American newspapers were shutting down and wondered what would take their place.

As if the process of their decline wasn't being driven by their replacement.

Portentous statements will be made, great declarations will be delivered, many issues will be debated. But the winds of change sweeping around the world, the process of disintermediation and the tools that are driving new ways of sharing information, thoughts, collaboration and innovation are not going to be among the many things the Forum considers seriously. The Middle East media, remember, is still launching newspapers.

It's as if we're making a virtue of being behind the curve - a curve we continue to lag ever more as we fail to teach online skills in schools and retard adoption through protectionism, mad pricing and content blocking.

I get the feeling that this is going to be something of a theme for this forum which features just a single session on online media, tucked in at the end of day one's proceedings. This panel (led by the BBC's Hossam Al Sokkari) will feature Google's regional manager and is the reason the forum will get to hear from its one, lone, blogger - an Algerian called Issam Hamoud.

One social media figure among all those media glitterati in this two-day media-fest. One 'public voice'. One ambassador for the 'new media'.

It reminds me a little of Michael Moorcock's excellent Brothel In Rosenstrasse (The book is, incidentally, most certainly NSFW, part of its quirky charm). The enemy army is on the borders of the city, but life goes on inside the brothel, unchallenged for the moment by the changes taking place outside, a bright burning of licentiousness in negation of the great and inevitable truth that's all around.

Until, suddenly, everything is rapidly, inevitably swept away along with the world that existed before it.

Legacy media is not going to be killed by social media, despite the much-publicised declines and closures. But it is being transformed by it - and those who are not driving that change are likely going to be swept aside by it.

The Arab Media Forum has, IMHO, missed a trick. So, arguably, has the Arab Media.

But Amr Moussa knows what's going on, at least...

Donkeys and The Media

Image via Wikipedia

Gulf News makes donkeys of us all today.

Back up to 640g after some recent disastrous forays into the 500s and even 400s, your favourite newspaper trumpets 'Awards Muled for English Media' on its front page earpiece.

Something being muled is certainly a change from 'on the anvil', the favourite phrase among GN sub-editors for 'not ready yet'. So what is taking so much muling?

The answer is to be found in a page 7 interview with Mariam Bin Fahed, the Director of Dubai Press Club. Apart from confirming some Great Truths:

"There are some issues we don't want to discuss."

"If we see that the x-marks are higher, we avoid discussing the subject."

"There was an article that was too sensitive in 2006 and it was scored number one by the judges When it came to the senior panel members, they had to hold it back and the award went to the second candidate."

"You don't want to encourage negative acts."

The interview also contains the suprising assertion that "journalists are even writing articles specifically for the award now."

Needless to say, with many journalists in Egypt, for example, holding down two jobs to make ends meet, many of the region's vastly under-paid press would write articles about the pleasures of keeping bunny rabbits and making daisy chains if you offered them $15,000.

They'd probably write about bloody Modhesh for that much money.

Anyway, in the interview Mariam Bin Fahd didn't rule out an award for English language media that serve the region, hence the claim that the Press Club is muling an award.

It'll be interesting to see what wins this years Arabic awards given the clear signal in the piece that anything controversial, the result of great, ground-breaking journalism for instance, likely won't be muled at all...

Weird Phish

Everyone’s favourite telco sent me an email. PHISHING WARNING! Hollered the subject line.

Lovely. I opened it. I mean, at least it wasn't a blasted text at midnight...

Phishing emails are them what pretends to be from a bank or someone and that get you to give up personal information so that the evil phishers can steal your identity, children, things and money.

“Etisalat will never email links” said the mail in reassuring green as it warned me of the dangers of phishing emails in stentorian, warning tones.

There then followed a series of six pointers for those wishing to improve their internet security.

You guessed it – item six contained... a link.

A Comment for Tala al Ramahi

As a journalist I always disliked PRs intensely. They were all too frequently dumb, annoying and often tried, in some way, to manipulate me. I do so hate being manipulated, too. But I rarely, if ever, refused to listen.

Listening is so important to journalism, I always thought.

I'd like to think that the experience and attitude I gained from working as a writer and editor informs my work today as a PR practitioner. I like working with people, journalists, whom I respect. I enjoy working with people, journalists, who respect me in turn. It's often something won, on both sides, but can only be won where someone is open to talking to people, not closed to them, to start with.

That respect, perhaps lacking in this piece if you don't mind me saying so, is something built on an understanding between us. I will endeavour to be useful, relevant and helpful wherever I can so be. I will even aspire to being insightful. I will at all times be truthful. But I work within constraints set by my status as being retained to work in my clients' best interests - as my client and I define them.

On the journalist's side, it's much simpler. It's simply to give me the chance to make a case for my client based on respecting my track record, experience and knowledge of the market and the role and restrictions of media enough to give me the time of day. I like to think that, where I am given that freedom, I can help to deliver useful results for the media I work with. If that is not the case, then of course I would expect to fail, in future, to have a similar opportunity to argue my case.

Where my clients' interests and those of the public combine, I can usually 'sell' a story quite easily. Sometimes I find myself encountering a journalist that knows better and isn't buying. Then it's my job to convince that journalist that I've actually got something of relevance, topicality and interest to that readership. This should be a pleasant process, not a mindless drone of shirt-tugging and nagging. I think we both recognise that.

I often find that I can do that with people, journalists, who are willing to listen to an alternative viewpoint. Typically, those are people that afford me enough respect not to just brush me off as an annoying flak or 'another PR' - those unwilling to fall prey to the sickness of generalisation that is the enemy of any 'seeker after truth'.

A touch of humility, you see, often makes a good journalist a rather brilliant one, IMHO. But an arrogant refusal to listen to someone on the grounds that they serve an organisation with a vested interest is blocking one side of the story.

An organisation promoting something new isn’t automatically irrelevant or worthy of your contempt, by the way. Every innovation around you today, everything that informs and empowers your life in this modern world, was created by an organisation that had to promote that innovation.

If you don’t mind, I’d like to offer you some advice from an old man. You have to keep your eyes and ears open if you want to serve the public with the truth. Closing yourself to those who are employed to help organisations communicate more effectively does not, in my humble opinion, advance that public service. More effective communication is in my interest, my client’s interest, the public’s interest and, yes, your interest.

I’m sure we would also recognise that I’d rather you took the information from me and used it as part of a broader story that presents the market in an informed, insightful and illuminating fashion. That I would rather see experience, insight and research going into stories that I work with media on. I have no issue with you taking what I provide, testing it, comparing it with competitors and using it as part of a larger story that talks to the issues and circumstances that surround and drive the market. I'd love to see great journalism that truly informs the reader. I’d personally like to see a great deal more of that than we see in much of our regional media today.

Incidentally, I am amazed at how many journalists have not the faintest idea of, or interest in, what professional PR practitioners actually do get up to with clients. I'll give you a clue - it's not actually about writing press releases and calling around media to make sure they've received them.

Perhaps a touch of humility and basic, human respect might serve you as well as it would serve the PRs you deride and hold in such obvious contempt.