I’m not a feminist but…

In the world of PR, we’re all quite used to seeing days or weeks celebrating every cause imaginable. Did you know that we’re currently in National Bed Month or that next week is dedicated to the great outdoors with National Outdoor Week? Probably not, but it’s likely that you’ve seen splashed all over the media this week that it’s the 100^th anniversary of International Women’s Day. Last Saturday saw Trafalgar Square filled with marching feminists armed with placards and the Beeb has an all-female audience on Question Time this week.

To be honest, as a child of the 80s, I’ve always felt myself to be on an even playing field with my male peers and so thought of feminism as an issue of yesteryear. After reading today’s papers I can see that we’ve actually got some way to go and there’s a serious male/female imbalance in certain industries. For example, only 8.1% of directors in FTSE 100 banks are women, yet PR is a profession where the ratio falls heavily in favour of the ladies – so could it be that we’re just better matched to certain types of jobs?

I’m inclined to believe so and am comfortable in saying that I’m an ‘equalist’. As long as industry leaders are recruiting the best talent for their business then we’re all chipping away at that glass ceiling and we’ve got feminism to thank for the opportunity.

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Tags: equality, feminism, international women's day, pr, pr industry

The Freshest of Awards…

Everyone at Peppermint is over the moon at having scooped three Fresh PR awards.  We knew our little Red Recession Dress worked wonders for our client, The Big Discount Store, and we were all really proud of what was a simple, yet highly effective idea.  Truth be told, though, we were more than a little surprised and deeply humbled by the hat trick of awards, given the quality of competing campaigns from around the country.

In the end, we nabbed Freshest PR stunt, Freshest Consumer Campaign and Freshest Low Budget Campaign. We were also one of two nominations for the Grand Prix award; where we were pipped to the post by SKV Communications for their brilliant J’aime la Tour, Visit Blackpool campaign.

It was lovely to chat to so many people at the dinner who remembered reading about our little campaign. The night was great fun, the host was irreverently hilarious, and we had some wildly supportive people on our table who cheered extremely loudly for us. So a big thank you to them, to the judges for their votes, and to our fabulous team for all their hard work.

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Tags: Fresh PR Awards, pr, The Big DIscount Store

BBC’s Clever Culling Techniques

As the BBC announces it’s to hack away at its multi-service broadcast offering, I’m left wondering whether the Beeb is hoping to drum-up protest from sympathetic fans in a bid to secure its future.

6 Music is probably the most controversial station to be axed. Although it has a relatively small audience of 700,000, its fan base is made up of dedicated music lovers who tune in for a unique sound that can’t be heard anywhere else on the UK’s airwaves. These are the same fans who Mark Thomson may well be hoping will set up a Facebook/social media protest to save the station’s future…

Taking into account that Thomson is pretty much cornered –  as he knows that whether the next election sees Labour or The Tory party in power, the BBC’s likely to have its license fee cut – I suspect Thomson is trying to make a rather clever PR statement.

We’ve seen it all before with Cadbury’s Whisper…  a company threatens to pull a brand and then sits back and watches as fans start huge Facebook/Twitter/blog campaigns to save it.

I’m sure the rebellious statements about the planned 2011 closure of 6 Music issued today by Jarvis Cocker and comedian Phil Jupitas will be music to Thomson’s ears.

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Tags: 6 music, BBC, Mark Thomson, pr

Woman describes abortion in graphic detail – is this taking things a tweet too far?

A story that split opinion in the Peppermint office today was that of  Angie Jackson, a 27-year-old  American woman who made the decision to post the details of her abortion in a bid to ‘demystify’ the topic for other women.  I admit, my initial reaction was ‘how awful!’ and that Angie Jackson had taken things a step too far.

However, you can also argue that the whole point of Twitter is that it provides a way for people to express themselves without restrictions.  It’s possible that Angie Jackson’s tweets may have helped a confused young woman in making the difficult decision of whether or not to keep a baby, or perhaps the information she provided may make teenage girls think twice before having unprotected sex? The graphic tweets shocked many into vocally expressing their outrage, which led me to wonder, how many women were quietly thankful for this subject finally being brought to light, albeit by just another of Twitter’s millions of users?

Angie Jackson, who goes under the Twitter name ‘antitheist angie’, is providing millions of women with candid, first hand information on a subject that isn’t freely available anywhere else. The number of users ‘following’ Miss Jackson has more than doubled since she began posting her progress, showing that people are in fact interested in reading the details of the termination.  It may not be ‘comfortable’ reading, but can these tweets really be deemed wrong, or unacceptable?

The internet has always been a place where freedom of speech is championed and censorship is near impossible. However, many might argue that Angie, who says “I have people calling me a killer”, has broken unwritten social networking boundaries. If it becomes acceptable to tweet about a subject as serious and controversial as abortion, what comes next?

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Tags: abortion, Daily Mail, pr, social media, Twitter

Don’t shoot the messenger!

Google finds itself in hot water today as an Italian court has convicted three of its execs in a trial over a video showing an autistic teenager being bullied. As keen social media-moguls, the Peppermints have been in lively debate about the case – there’s no denying that this type of content can be deemed offensive but should it be censored or should we be able to access the good, the bad and the ugly?

Some media coverage has argued that the employees in question should be held accountable for their actions, and are responsible for the quality of content uploaded. But social media sites have reached such popularity because of their user-generated content – for this to be subject to strict controls would go against the very essence of the medium. We use social media as a communication platform and user-generated content should also be user-moderated. Most sites have adopted this policy and if users see something they disapprove of, they can report it and request that it be removed.

In some coverage, the case has been compared to prosecuting the postman for delivering hate mail. How can individual Google employees be accountable for an upload of content onto the site?  Surely it should be the user that takes the rap for it? This is not to mention the logistical nightmare this would present for YouTube. Imagine the manpower that would be needed to trawl through all the videos on submission, ensuring each one conforms with guidelines – this would be nigh on impossible.

We relish the free speech that social media brings and we work tirelessly to harness the benefits it can bring to our clients – now we need to take on (and be allowed to take on) the responsibility that comes with it.

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Tags: Facebook, Google, pr, social media, social networking