media relations

The Philosophy of Public Relations

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Internal Communications, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , .

“The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who — with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and so forth — dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly right.

Yet there is something more to be said about this. However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it remains true that he is also trying to get away with something. There is surely in his work, as in the work of the slovenly craftsman, some kind of laxity which resists or eludes the demands of a disinterested and austere discipline.”

This  is by (as you probably know) Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929), professor emeritus of philosophy, Princeton University and is taken from his 1986 essay ‘On Bullshit’.

Something everyone should read.

Social Media – These Truths…….Self-Evident…..

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , .

Well – here’s something of a landmark – the 100th post since this blog commenced its outpouring of random musings on all things communications.

Well, that was the idea, anyway. What’s actually happened, as my regular blog snorkellers will know, is that I’ve been cunningly diverted from my original aim by this new-fangled social media malarkey, which has taken up vast swathes of this blog, big chunks of my time and a fair amount of wordcount.

The 100th post seems a good time to round it all up, briefly. To summarise the small amount I’ve picked up, the conclusions I’ve reached, the positions I took and the way that they have changed over time. The one thing that is certain, however, is that – whether you’re a social media aficionado or not – you cannot ignore it and the speed at which it (and the thinking on best practice that surrounds it) has changed and continues to change is quite – as our American friends would have it – awesome.

My charming wife – who is something big in marketing – was completely horrified when I shared my thoughts on social media as marketing tools – for the record, they aren’t. She was dreadfully concerned that I’d be seen as a dinosaur, a Luddite, and be left behind as the rest of you surfed away on the crest of the nouvelle vague.

So, once and for all, as a statement of intent, here’s where I stand on the whole social media deal.

  • Social media is here to stay. You cannot ignore it
  • Every company, large or small, should have a clear-cut, unambiguous, not-open-to-misinterpretation social media policy – properly communicated and enforced
  • Social media comes to the fore in times of crisis and is a creator of issues – every company’s crisis management document should contain a section on social media
  • Every company should have trained spokespeople whose responsibilities include responding to comments/issues generated or communicated via social media. Sometimes they might even be proactive
  • The majority of a company’s employees, however, should not be allowed to post to social media, either on company time, on company business or about the company
  • Social media are not – yet – valid marketing tools. Your budget is still better spent elsewhere
  • Social media are, however, communications tools and, as such, belong to the PR or communications department
  • Everything that gets posted to social media on behalf of a company must either go through, or have gone through, an approval system
  • You do not need to spend a vast fortune on social media strategy or social media monitoring – one is an oxymoron, the other can be carried out perfectly adequately, in-house, in minutes, via search engines
  • Social media is not the same as digital. Digital is wide-ranging, well-established and value-adding – social is but one small, unproven, part of digital
  • Social media does not have a track record, no-one has much experience with it, and no-one knows what it can and cannot do
  • Traditional media can bite if mishandled – there’s no reason to suppose that social media won’t do the same
  • No-one has found a way of making money out of social media yet – not even the social media owners
  • Inevitably, social media will consolidate – the question is which social media brand/s will survive
  • Social media is not the saviour of PR, nor is it a doorway to a new society or a new way of doing business. Engage with it by all means – understand what it is – monitor its development – but do not get carried away. If the Emperor has any clothes on, they are limited to a pair of baggy, grey y-fronts

There you go, That’s it. I hope it’s unambiguous enough and shows that I’m neither a dinosaur, or a Luddite. I’m a lean, mean communicating machine, currently having a cup of coffee and smoke on the sidelines, waiting to see how the surf develops.

Happy hundredth post – I look forward to seeing you at my next centenary.

Social Media – Approval Processes For Corporate Users

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , .

This is one of my favourite topics (and I’m only partly joking when I write that). In brief – to bring you up to speed – my thinking goes like this. Social media are channels of communication. As such, they represent an opportunity and a threat for brands, companies and organisations.

They can enhance and damage corporate reputation like any other channel of communication and, like any other channel of communication, because they are not ‘tame’ they can bite if mishandled. This is why every organisation needs a rigid social media policy, why corporate dealings with social media should be restricted to the professional communicators and trained spokespeople, and why everything should be approved so that the message – as far as possible – can be controlled. After all, that’s what we, as communicators, do.

Now (he sighed, wearily) there is an opposing viewpoint. And, in the spirit of balance and fair play, I give it a bit of an airing now and then. In my travels round t’internet, stuff tends to stick to me (such is the nature of the beast) and I find myself receiving all sorts of bits and bobs, like souvenirs from the places I’ve been. In the last couple of days I received this and it’s only now that I’ve got round to reading it.

This is a very prevalent school of thought in the US. Corporate dealings with social media should be, to all intents and purposes, unregulated and unapproved. We should trust our employees, whoever and wherever, to post on behalf of the brand, company or organisation. In fairness, this post talks about those within the organisation responsible for handling social media – so it’s not a free for all that’s being recommended (which is a relief and a definite development of the argument from where it was a month and a half ago) – but it still talks about people who can speak on behalf of the organisation without getting approvals.

As far as I’m concerned, no-one speaks on behalf of the organisation without – at some point – having had their messages approved. No-one makes off-the-cuff remarks – the company’s reputation is far too valuable and the result of far too much effort for it to be jeopardised by unrehearsed commentary.

So potentially what we have here is a question of what constitutes approval. And what is, generally, being posted to social media. I agree, if you’re answering a customer query on the price of one of your products, then as long as you’re polite, and the information’s correct, you don’t need a formal approval to post it on Facebook.

But, all too often, social media throw up questions that aren’t about price, or opening hours or other anodyne stuff. (As most of this information is/should be available on your website.) No – social media either throws up people with Tourette’s, or protest groups, or litigants, or questions about matters that either are not up for discussion, or require a ‘corporate’ response. All of this stuff needs to be approved. So that everyone knows what’s being said and – if they’re asked – knows what the response is.

And if you’re in a situation where some stuff needs approval and some doesn’t – sorry – it all needs approval. This is the only way of ensuring that nothing slips through the net. Yes, it’s time-consuming, no it’s not as ‘free-to-air’ as some would like, but hey – busines isn’t a democracy or a commune. It’s a process whereby people make money from other people.

And I completely disagree – approved responses do not equivalent to ‘canned’ PR messages. And I also disagree that there is some Utopia being created where people want to have relationships with the people who work within organisations.

No. They don’t. They want their cereal, or soap, or computer, or socks – they want the item or service at a fair price, delivered in a polite and timely fashion and they want to be reassured that it is not responsible for the deaths of babies and that it’s not made from toxic waste. Occasionally they want some free stuff. Mostly, however, the vast majority of these people – myself included – want to pay our money, take our choice and be left alone to consume our item in private. Thanks a heap.

Research – Data Doesn’t Imply Understanding

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications and tagged , , .

(Your deity of choice here) bless CNN for this story. 

I’m not sure whether it’s just me, but this has got to be wrong – and on so many different levels.

  • Why did they do this study in the first place – what purpose does it serve?
  • What made the Pew Forum think it was a good idea to release this?
  • Why didn’t someone make Brian Grim change his name? To Brian All-Embracing perhaps?
  • Who wrote it? And if it was the Pew Forum, why didn’t CNN re-write it?
  • “Nearly one in four people worldwide is Muslim – and they are not necessarily where you might think” – er – where did you think they might be? (Incidentally, it’s 0.9 people in four who are Muslim. 1.3 people in four are Christian, and I’d bet they’re not necessarily where you might think either. I know I’m not.)
  • Did it not actually cross anyone’s minds that this might be – well – incredibly insensitive and insulting?

It’s not research I have a problem with – we’ve all got to know stuff.

The issue I have is with those who think that – because it’s a legitimate study and thus statistically proven and correct – it’s OK to tell the world you’ve done it.

In this case, the way the research and its findings are presented make just under 25% of the global population seem little more than a curiosity. Congratulations, Pew Forum.

(Oh – and I particularly enjoyed this quotation. “When it comes to issues of outreach to the Muslim world, these numbers will indicate that outreach cannot be focused so narrowly on the Middle East. If the goal is to create better understanding between the United States and the Muslim world, our focus should be on south and southeast Asia, not the Middle East.” So – where are we off to war next?)

Social Media – I’ll Tell You What They Want

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

So. There I was, sprawled on the couch (the grey one that used to be cream in a time Before Children) in what passes for a living room (which is, incidentally, supposed to be a Child-Free Zone, but has recently, I’ve noticed, been threatened by a slow-moving but inexorable tsunami of plastic cars, aircraft and soldiery) pondering life, t’universe and everything and waiting for the second episode of Flash Forward. 

(For those who haven’t been exposed to this meisterwerk of the television producer’s art, Flash Forward, and its cast of thousands, deals with the premise that everyone on earth suffered a two minute and 17 second blackout – at exactly the same time – during which they all experienced some sort of glimpse of their individual futures. The rest of the series, I’m presuming, will be spent finding out why, who, how and – most importantly – how to stop the future happening.)

Now, Flash Forward isn’t a bad programme, but I’m getting the feeling that Channel Five are absolutely desperate for it to achieve cult status. It’s the irritating voiceover you see. Just when you think it’s safe to sit on your sofa and watch your programme of choice, you get some voiceover lovely (on behalf of the station) telling you just how marvellous the programme is going to be. And, by implication, what a wonderful human being, a paragon of taste and style, you are for watching it. Indeed for discovering it in the first place. You are well and truly sat in one of the very frontest seats in the tip of the pointy end of the vanguard. And then Irritating Voiceover Woman starts asking rhetorical questions! As if you hadn’t noticed the f***ing kangaroo hopping down the street and the strange person in black who should have blacked out but didn’t!

Thing is, this is a blatant sales technique. It’s not adding anything to my enjoyment. It’s simply hyping something that I’ve already bought into. It is uneccesary puffery – preaching to the converted – a waste of resources. It does not bring the consumer in – in fact, speaking personally, it alienates them (me). Worst of all, it’s pitched at a very low level – I recognise it for what it is and find it mildly insulting. And if I do, then, speaking as no Einstein here, so do thousands of others. (And finally, in this instance, unforgiveably, Flash Forward ain’t no Twin Peaks – don’t even think about drawing a parallel. )

Briefly – very briefly, because I didn’t want to miss any programme (I’m terribly respectful of my audience, but I’m afraid, dear blog snorkellers, you’re not as important as Flash Forward) – I was minded of stuff I’ve read and conversations I’ve had about the nature of content. Specifically, obviously, content posted to social media by brands (companies or organisations) as part of a social media strategy.

It’s one of the main tenets of the big US argument for letting employees post to social media, without going through the PR department. As I understand it, the (US) feeling is that anything coming out of the PR department is like the Irritating Voiceover – full of needless promotional puffery, recognised for what it is, and – truth be told – slightly insulting  to the consumer. This, obviously, is not what the social media consumer wants.

Unfortunately, in their mad rush to get away from what the social media consumer doesn’t want, the social media gurus seem to have lost track of what it is that the consumer ALWAYS wants – always has done and always will do.

There’s this belief that the consumer wants a say, wants a conversation, wants to be asked questions. Well some of them probably do – and they’re the ones who are tweeting Starbucks or Facebooking Domino’s Pizza. (Is it just me or is there something rather sad and depressing about Facebooking a global pizza company?) But I’d be willing to bet that most of them don’t. From my experience, there’s one thing that consumers want from a brand (once they’re vaguely satisfied that the brand doesn’t kill babies or manufacture its products from toxic waste).

Consumers want Free Stuff. They don’t want an Irritating Voiceover – although they’ll put up with it, if there’s some Free Stuff at the end of it. They want Free Stuff, given to them in a non-threatening, non-patronising, non-strings-attached manner. They don’t want to be told they’re brilliant, they (mostly) don’t want to be asked their opinions, they don’t really want to have a say.

They want Free Stuff. And if it’s good Free Stuff, they’ll probably come back and buy it next time. The moral of the story, therefore, is:

  • PR people – stop doing irritating voiceover – be genuine, be honest and, occasionally, tell people how to get Free Stuff.
  • Social Media Gurus – stop asking for opinions, stop trying to start conversations and keep them going – acknowledge those who want to say something and tell people how to get Free Stuff.

Tell me I’m wrong.

Social Media – Not the Internet and Vice-Versa

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

At last week’s PRWeek Global Conference, there appeared to be some confusion between digital strategy and online management and use of social media.

Reporting on the conference, PRWeek itself quoted one Mark Adams, co-founder and partner, The Conversation Group, as saying “Most firms use avoidance strategies or lip-service strategies. ‘Let’s get some monkey in the basement to run a Twitter account and then we’ll review it in a year’s time.’ It’s not uncommon.”

This seems to be at odds with another of the speakers, Dominic Chambers, who said digital strategy was ‘too low down in companies’ and that ‘online management often continued to sit within a client’s IT department’. I’m not going to continue quoting from the article – you can find it yourselves here.

I suppose they’re both valid points, but they’re talking about two completely different things. Social Media – which Mark Adams is dealing with – is but a small and not-terribly-well-understood piece of the online jigsaw, one that shouldn’t be ignored but, as yet, is probably not worthy of massive investment in terms of budget, time and human resource.

Dominic Chambers appears to be talking about online in its fullest sense – the corporate website, SEO, PPC, online research, online media relations (story placement, media release distribution), email marketing, online promotions and advertising – and he cited British Airways as a company which has made its website a fundamental part of its business. He suggests that online should sit with marketing and comms, with IT as a support function.

Be that as it may – they are both valid points (one on a smaller scale that the other, mind) – but they highlight a real issue which is that the social media evangelists are slowly and insidiously taking the terms ‘online’ and ‘digital’ for themselves. As they do that, so it becomes easier for those new to the disciplines to believe that you can’t have a digital strategy without some sort of social media element.

You can. Digital marketing and digital communication has been around much longer than Facebook and Twitter. A good corporate website is, arguably, one of your most powerful communications tools – with it you can build customer/stakeholder loyalty and community, engage their interest, build their trust, share their opinions and give them something in return. Permission-based marketing – via email – is ncredibly powerful. Proximity communication – via bluetooth – has novelty (still) and delivers an effect. The internet is a boon and is both cost and time efficient.

The same cannot be said – yet – for social media. It’s a shame, therefore,  that at a key event for the industry, the organisers (and the participants?) can’t seem to make the distinction. Apparently, we (the communicators) are the ones who are supposed to own digital strategy, and its subset, social media strategy. Why’s anyone going to take us seriously if we don’t understand what we’re talking about and how to differentiate the two?

Finally, who thought it was a good idea to let the editor of PRWeek (UK) publish this? As statements of the obvious go, it’s a work of genius and it will definitely get my nomination for this year’s ‘Sorry I’m Late – Have I Missed Anything?’ award. (Note to Danny – if you’re going to join a debate of this size, make sure you’ve got more than 200 words and do a bit of research first. There’s a good chap.)

Spin – Knowing When to Say Nothing

Posted on by in Communications Strategy and tagged , , , , .

That Lord Mandelson. Sadly, not down with the kids (metaphorically speaking). And, just possibly, misjudging his moment and his audience. I refer, of course, to his (quoted) reaction to The Sun withdrawing its support for Labour. This from The Independent:

“Lord Mandelson, speaking in Brighton to publicise tomorrow’s increase in the national minimum wage, said: “The proprietor might have changed his mind but I don’t think the readers want The Sun to set on New Labour.

“The last thing Sun readers want is to see their newspaper turned into a Tory fanzine. They want a newspaper, not a propaganda sheet.”

Is it me, or do I hear the echo of a million Sun readers voices, like something out of Monty Python, “yes we do, that’s exactly what we want, a Tory fanzine!” And why? Because what they really don’t want is some urbane, pink, weaselly spin-merchant second-guessing their wishes. Even if he is accompanied by some increasingly-less-relevant union spod.

And, while I’ve got a nice head of steam worked up, here’s a few things. Peter Mandelson – looking at him, isn’t he just the archetypal – possibly sterotypical – Tory? And wouldn’t it be fair to surmise that today’s Sun reader- after the economic catastrophe of the last 18 months – actually quite fancies nothing more than a return to the Thatcher years, when everyone (apparently), on merit (so they said), had the chance to get rich, not just a few Fat Freds at the top?

And, putting these two together, would it be beyond the realms of possibility to speculate that Mandelson is actually intent upon facilitating the rise of a New Toryism, for whatever reason, at the expense of the party he professes to love?

It is truly fascinating – and it means my first paragraph is probably completely wrong. Ho-hum. Not for the first time.

Anyway – for your delight and delectation here’s a couple of bits which made me giggle. As usual – do your clickety bits here and here.

Social Media – More on Corporate Social Media Use and Policy

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Just as I’m seeing chinks of light – OK, maybe social media can be used in localised and focused fashion to boost the fortunes of smaller concerns (see here, no apologies for linking you to the US and all that goes with it, we have a special relationship, get used to it), although I’m still a bit fuzzy on the bit that gets the punter to the Twitter – up pop the creatures.

The post in question dates from last week and, because I know you, blog snorkellers, and you can’t be bothered to do clickety-dickety, it’s yet another take on the reasons why corporations don’t embrace social media. I am, surprisingly enough, not going to pass judgement on it – I’m going to limit myself to a few observations.

1) Employees will waste time with social media.

Yes. They will. But let’s not confuse the internet with social media. The internet is, broadly speaking, a Good Thing in the work place – a source of information and ideas that can assist the company in the achievement of its goals. Social media are simply bits of the internet, choices if you like, which may or may not be benign, and if they benefit a company only do so if approached in a planned, strategic and carefully monitored fashion. Policies on social media usage by employees should be draconian and companies are within their rights to block usage of social media sites.

2) Haters will damage our brand.

Yes. But haters will damage your brand whether or not you have a social media strategy or presence. This is about whether your brand’s any good. If it isn’t, word of mouth will damage your brand. Get it right, however, and people will like it (simple. eh?) – and no-one goes out of their way to say nasty things about a brand if it isn’t nasty. You don’t need the followers of a Twitter feed to do your crisis containment for you. Trust me, you don’t.

3. We’ll lose control of the brand

Of course you won’t. But that’s because a brand’s essence is controlled by the brand guardians, its equity is protected by law and its appearance enshrined in the brand guidelines. – not because people are talking about it on-line or off-line. Of course people talk about brands – always have done, always will do – doesn’t change the brand unless the brand guardians decide it should.

To say, however, that message control is an illusion is either laziness or a failure to grasp one of the most basic principles of corporate communications. Message control is about the messages you, the brand communicator, and your brand spokespeople, put out there. Your output, over time, should change the tone of the general chit-chat in the way you want it to. That’s message control. It takes time and effort. It is not suited to social media but, hey – if you want to be constantly at risk of being backfooted and you want to increase your investment manyfold – go ahead.

4. Social media requires a real budget! It’s not really cheap or free.

Yes, it does. No, it’s not. And as social media doesn’t deliver a quantifiable ROI and has yet to make anyone any money, just, exactly, why would you put your limited marketing budget against it? I merely ask.

5. They’re scared they’ll be sued.

And rightly so. Employees + unregulated access to social media = Risk.

6) They’re scared of giving away corporate secrets or that information on social networks will affect the stock price.

Yes, you do need to create a social media policy. But policies aren’t foolproof. The FSA (in the UK) has serious rules on disclosure – doesn’t stop people playing fast and loose with financial information, and these are professionals, not naive and untrained employees.

Some employees are hired to represent the brand and talk to customers, others are hired because they have  a specific and specialised skillset. Not all of them would be comfortable being a brand ambassador. Others suffer from a sort of corporate Tourette’s when confronted with message boards and suggestion boxes. It’s not a question of trust, it’s a question of horses for courses.

Someone actually said – and I’ve quoted it in a previous post – that the very nature of social media leads to inadvertent disclosure. Which scares the living crap out of me.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with another post. This time about a company that gets mentioned quite a lot in connection with social media (along with Starbucks, Dell, Zappo, Amazon and Dominos – always these six, strange really), Best Buy. They asked, on their Facebook group, whether they should have the Best Buy website in Spanish. Cue negative, even racist comment. (Actually, in fairness, how were they to know? But it does say something about the type of Facebooketeers attracted to Best Buy.) So what were they to do? Well, as I understand it, if you’re a social media head – a company hippy – then you join the conversation. You motivate your online community to rally to your defence.

Horsesh*t. If you’re sensible, you do exactly what Best Buy did. You pull the plug and hope that it goes away.

This is the wonder of social media – you never know what it’s going to do and whether it’s going to take a big chunk out of your bum. If it does, however, just turn it off.

Join the conversation, my *rse.

Social Media – Really Worth the Risk?

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, Crisis Management, External Communications, Internal Communications, Public Relations, Social Media and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Came across this paragraph this morning. I’m not going to go into the context – suffice it to say it was the conclusion of a commentary on Barack Obama’s ‘off-the-record’ comment that Kanye West is a ‘jackass’. (Which he is, but that’s another song, as they say.)

 Anyway – it’s not new – it’s what every comms practitioner knows, simply updated for the social media age in which we live.

 “In today’s wired world, every bystander with a camera phone, a blog or a Twitter account can play reporter and turn an off-hand comment into a worldwide news story. For almost any setting, the best policy today is not to say, write or do anything that you don’t want to see in the newspaper tomorrow, on the TV news tonight or on Twitter or YouTube in the next two minutes.”

 So – given that we take this truth to be self-evident – how does this square with official employee use of social media? Already this week I’ve come across – and published – the quite extraordinary assertion that “….since this type of communication is often viewed as less formal than other (sic), there is increased risk for inadvertent disclosure”. And we know, from some very high-profile examples, that – above and beyond inadvertent screw-ups – there are also employees who come over all Tourette’s when confronted by Twitter or YouTube.

 As I’ve said already, I’ve changed my mind. Doing nothing and hoping it will go away is not an option. Every organisation, by now, should either have, or be giving thought to, a social media policy. Preferably one that doesn’t entertain the notion of allowing employees free rein to post to social media either during company time, from company machinery or on behalf of the body corporate. The sanctions against anyone doing it should be quite draconian.

 I was, frankly, open-mouthed when I found out that WholeFoods has over 1,370,000 followers on Twitter. It is extraordinary. I was reasonably shaken when I saw Starbucks had nearly 294,000. Even allowing for the large proportion who became followers on their first visit to Twitter and have never visited again, that still a lot of potential dialogue and a lot of room for error.

 I know that Ford and Coke have created social media ambassadors – carefully trained, briefed and monitored social media spokespeople – to deal with their respective 15,000 and 8,500 followers. I’m presuming that WholeFoods and Starbucks has done the same.

 Best Buy, with its Twelpforce, hasn’t and the experiment is not considered, universally, a success. They’ve had some Tourette’s incidents with some of their employee Tweeters.

 The point is, I guess, that I’m not convinced of the value-add of social media. If it didn’t exist, would anyone actually bother to invent it? What I am convinced of is the increasing amount of time, effort and budget that is going to have to be invested in it – and its ancillary activities like training and monitoring – if those companies who have so bravely (and so very quickly) embraced the technology are going to keep on top of it.

 I am also convinced that the rise of social media has introduced a new, and very elevated, level of risk into external and internal corporate communications that we, the gatekeepers, ignore at our peril. As social media cannot be (properly) monitored and isn’t regulated, so it is difficult to create a plan for its use or target the message.

 Every organisation should, by now, either have, or be working on, a social media policy. And it should aim to restrict corporate usage. Before the trouble starts.

That’s the way to do it, that’s the way to do it

Posted on by in Communications Strategy, External Communications, Marketing, Public Relations and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , .

This is just a bit of a shout out to my homies at Morrisons (the UK supermarket chain, purveyors of splendid vittles to the masses). It’s not often that I come over all enthusiastic about things, but in this case, my hat is off and there’s a fair amount of awe in the air.

It’s simply that these people have got it so, so right. Everything working in perfect harmony. Branding, marketing (national and local), external communication, store design and layout, staff training (and therefore, I presume, staff communication). As an example, I will cite the chappie who pushed a leaflet through my letterbox recently (after having struggled up my five-mile driveway, obviously, and having avoided the guard lions). I get lots of gnolls pushing leaflets through my letterbox. This bloke was smart, energetic and he was wearing a branded t-shirt. Do you know – I actually EMPATHISED with him.

It is brilliant. I know that all of this is not, strictly, communications. This is strategic development and ops, commercial and supply, HR and finance. But the undoubtedly correct decisions that they have made have been rolled out and presented to their customer base in – as far as I’m concerned – an almost perfect manner.

I could wax even more lyrical – about their choice of brand spokescelebrity, for example, and how they’ve been used, about the idea of food poetry in store – but I won’t. This is best practice and we should all be able to learn from it.

What I would, however, like to flag up – and it’s not my field of expertise, so I’m being presumptuous – the issue of Morrison’s timing. It couldn’t have been better. Tesco, Sainsbury, Asda – is it me, or are they all a bit – well – tired at the moment? My suspicion is that they’ve been back-footed by a small player, given a lesson in reinvention, and they may, just may, be having a little panic right about now.

And all of this has translated into a really shiny results announcement yesterday – yes, the management recognised that these are interesting times for the economy, which may, interestingly, have favoured their performance, and therefore it might not be wholly sustainable, but still – a genuine result from a glow-in-the-dark performance.

And – ooooh – and (as far as I can see) not a Twitter feed in sight.

Anyway – there we are. Normal service (me complaining about stuff) will be resumed shortly.